week in review

Well, since I didn't mention anything during the week, here it is all at once. Work was "formal training." That ended up being a classroom setting, going over stuff I already knew cause I'd been working for a full week already. The other two in the class were mostly confused, cause they didn't know how stuff applied to the real world. In our after class review, I mentioned maybe giving people a day of sitting with someone before training began, but they said, "No, cause you'll pick up bad habits." Thing is, when I asked for specifics on certain procedures, the trainer said, "I'm not sure how your manager wants that to work, you should ask her or your neighbors." No big, somehow I earned a rep as the golden child of PASS, and it sounds like I'm being eyed for a move to the Process Improvement team. Rock. As long as more money's involved.

News wise, the astronauts made it back safely. Rock. I got annoyed with MPR for mentioning that one of the candidates this year has received money from Muslim groups. They didn't mention who the other guy has received money from at all. The really annoying part is that throughout the week they were almost eviscerating the other guy for bringing up the original fellow's ties to Muslim groups during debates. Quick flip of the coin there, huh? I wouldn't have minded so much if they'd pointed out the dude saying something like, "I have no ties to Muslim groups now, I was young then," or something. But they didn't. Let's get off the Islamophobia, please. In my late teens, I thought I'd seen a shift from a united nation during the end of the Cold War era to a deeply split, catty, and embittered land when we didn't have a favored enemy. I think I was wrong. America's big. We'll never agree, outside focus or not. Makes me think I should refocus on a few ideas I had about forcing party politics out of the voting floor.....

Gamewise, early in the week on EVE, one of my agents offered to build a Breacher for me. I'd been flying around in a Rifter, which is a fast, heavily gunned killing machine. The Breacher is a little slower and less versatile, and it reverses the Rifters weapon configuration, switching three guns and one missile launcher to three missile launchers and one gun. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the power grid for 3 long range launchers, so I went with one missile launcher, one short range gun and two rocket launchers, with mostly speed boosts on the back side. OMFG do I love that ship. WHOA! The Rifter is tough as nails and reliable, but overall pretty boring. My rig is set up to fly in circles, take a little beating and slowly wear down one target with missiles while chewing up another with guns, moving the guns from target to target as necessary. The Breacher just blows through guys. Especially when I pop in an EMP set up or two. Without EMP missiles, it's a bit more slow at the killing. Even so, it's a ship that requires a lot of tactics and fast reactions to keep the missiles flying. I love it. Except it's ugly.

So what did I do? Researched all the frigates and found the most missile heavy of them all. The Kestrel. Slower, but a little more versatile, than the Breacher, it's a pretty ship with ports for 4 launchers and no guns. Trouble is, it's Caldari. I'm Minmatar. So basically, I had to learn to fly all over again. That was about 4 hours of training for my avatar, but all is good, and I'm about to go hop in the Kestrel now. Hen Wen is the next name on my Prydain list, but I think I'm gonna save her for a different ship. That means the Kestrel is going to be Gwydion.

And that's all I got for the week. This weekend, I think we'll look at a couple of houses and tomorrow, we get to catch the MN Orchestra on the FREE. hoohoo.