Caaaaaaalifornia
Okay, so Friday night I got home from that amazing baseball game at like 12:30am... and did some normal logging in stuff and whatnot and by the time I got to bed it was like 2:45am. I had to be up at 4:30am. So yeah, not much sleep. I got up and got out of the apartment a bit later than I wanted to on Saturday "morning"... got to the airport at like 6am and was parked as far from the United counter as is humanly possible... finally got my ticket and into the security line at like 6:25... got to the gate at 6:45 for boarding at 6:55. Whew. Grabbed breakfast at Burger King really fast and got on the plane, where I slept another hour or so, for a whopping total of 2.5 hours or so of bad sleep.
Got off the plane, hopped on BART, got to Berkeley... Kui met me at the station and we walked back up to his place and I set up my laptop and we logged into PP and started jobbing people for the blockade.
Wooo blockade. That was CRAZY. We had like 150 people fighting for us in those first three rounds... we fielded like 2 war frigs and 2 war brigs in the first one (a round we did not win because both RP and NH spent all their time shooting us instead of each other -- and NH didn't contest points so RP got a lead and held it). After that we got some help from a certain monarch of a certain large flag, because both of our opponents had pissed off said monarch, who decided "Okay, we're coming in officially to help you guys, I'm doing a /fb". As if we didn't already have enough jobbers... well, yeah. I'm not quite sure what happened that second round exactly, although I believe a few people stopped jobbing for RP due to "omgholyshit bigflagmonarch is supporting CN" though my friends in said crews in RP also were taking in their own ships, so I don't really know. All I do know is that we decided to put a lot more people in frigates than brigs, and we went around taking points, not worrying about shooting people -- also RP got into the round LATE that second round -- so we just fought NH for position, and sank a few of their ships, and got in and collected points. Same for the third round. Lots of frigates, lots of shooting. Honestly, I was having a carp-off with Notical for most of it so I didn't really notice. Between puzzling, and jobbing people, I was pretty busy.
Well, the break happened at 3pm.. I ended up falling asleep for half an hour or so while Kui did a ton of chatting about moving cannonballs and whatnot. (Shur helped us!! But he also used up way more shot than ANYONE else...) Then we went out around Berkeley. Walked down to Shattuck to the ATMs then discussed food, walked through campus to Telegraph and went to Jamba Juice, couldn't agree on food so we went back to Kui's with the idea to order pizza... which we kinda forgot to do for a while.
Started getting ready for rounds 4-6 at 6:15pm or so. Got a ton of jobbers again. Got 3 war frigs staffed and took them in. BLEW A LOT OF STUFF UP. There was this awesome moment where all three of us cornered a war frigate and took it from no damage to sunk in one turn of shooting. It was rad. Kui was like "Oh you HAVE to see this!" so I looked up. Hehe. There was a lot of shooting and sinking going on by us, although we didn't get sunk much ourselves. We had some great navvers; I'd include names but I'm really trying to keep this nonaffiliated. Rounds 5 and 6 were really crazy close though. I mean, we had a somewhat poor navver in 5 -- good nav but not navving to SINK and take points -- Kui kicked them off the helm and sunk an NH frigate at the last moment and we barely squeaked ahead in points after that. Round 6 was similarly close. 5, I think RP still had a presence but it was mostly them taking in ships and us sinking them -- by 6 it was us vs NH mostly -- and as a certain best friend of mine said, "So I'm jobbing for NH... and every 5 minutes there's a /jc message of 'If you were on [adjective fish] which just sunk please proceed to the [other adjective other fish].' WHAT on earth are you guys doing?" To which I replied "Same thing we do every round, Pinky... try and take over the island."
Kui finally remembered to order pizza around 9pm when I was like "HUNGRY! CAN'T CARP WITHOUT FOOD!" Hehe. I really had started to lose brainpower and the carp station was getting fuzzy in my sight.
Anyway, fortunately after round 6, NH also agreed to pull out. At that point it was 5 rounds to us and 1 to RP, and RP had already said "We have like 5 ships left. We're done. Good game, mates." and basically all NH could achieve by then was keeping us from taking the island... I think RAWR convinced them to pull out, and so they did. Whew.
At that point I gave Cioj a call and he ended up coming over and hanging out talking to me and Kui until 1am or so. That rocked, he's such a cool guy. It was a lot of fun. And a lot easier than finding a coffee shop to meet at or whatever. He was even like "Hey, ya know, I navved against you guys, and you fought well, and it was fun, and I'm happy for you."
So, we organized and went back in at 2am. We also organized defenses for Nu and Cranberry -- Robertdonald had declared blockades on our two allies' islands in an attempt to get us less support for own blockade. And since both flags (Epic and TAE) had come out to support us anyway, we went over there and helped them stomp the opposition. I kinda conked out around 3am though.
In the end, we took Luthien AND successfully defended our allies' islands. WOO! I'm so proud of people that I can't even begin to express it. I feel awful about the whole political situation, and I never ever ever wanted to go against Looterati and sink Looterati ships, but I'm happy we won.
And dammit, I hope the flag names our distillery Distilmarillion. Oh boy am I funny with the names.
Anyway, I don't really remember much past 3am. I laid down "for a minute" on the bed because I was really getting tired, and the next thing I really knew, it was around 11:30am and Kui came in and woke me up. (I seem to vaguely recall him shutting off the computer and throwing a blanket on me and turning off the lights and going to sleep on the couch in the other room sometime around 5am, but I don't really know.)
So, I woke up and we logged into PP and were like "YAY! WE HAVE ISLAND!" and talked to some people, and then I went to call I-Gene only to find he had already sent me some IMs... and Ryan was coming over to hang out with him and Berkeley was on the way, so hey. Gave Ryan directions and he came by to pick me up. (Kui had frisbee practice at 2 anyway.) We went to I-Gene's new house, which is neato! It's in a development, so it's very new-seeming and all, and has lots of skylights and stuff. I-Gene and Robin and Ryan and I went to lunch at Boston Market and Jamba Juice, and then I-Gene and Ryan and I went over to SVGL to play a ton of IIDX and stuff. Woo.
SVGL was fun, though I don't think I did anything particularly noteworthy (except that I was still able to pass stuff at all given I hadn't played since last time I was at SVGL in July). I did pass some 7-key stuff on right scratch, that's all I can think of. Got close on Monkey Dance, and nowhere near close on Silvia Drive. Also played some Medieval Madness. Mmm pinball.
We came back to I-Gene's place afterwards, where Ryan got to see Katamari, and afterwards I-Gene and I played a whole ton of PNM, wheeee! Then we went over to IHOP for dinner (I had a surprisingly tasty, but messy, fajita salad), and then I came back and I have been online catching up on things from the last day or two (but sadly not really enough of my friends list). Now I should sleep.![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
catamorphism, I'm not sure what time I'll get out of here tomorrow, and I need to get into the city to catch up with someone too, so... I'll try to at least give you a call to let you know if I'm going to make it to find you, but lateness and fear of bussing to unknown places may win out over me. Bleh.
Got off the plane, hopped on BART, got to Berkeley... Kui met me at the station and we walked back up to his place and I set up my laptop and we logged into PP and started jobbing people for the blockade.
Wooo blockade. That was CRAZY. We had like 150 people fighting for us in those first three rounds... we fielded like 2 war frigs and 2 war brigs in the first one (a round we did not win because both RP and NH spent all their time shooting us instead of each other -- and NH didn't contest points so RP got a lead and held it). After that we got some help from a certain monarch of a certain large flag, because both of our opponents had pissed off said monarch, who decided "Okay, we're coming in officially to help you guys, I'm doing a /fb". As if we didn't already have enough jobbers... well, yeah. I'm not quite sure what happened that second round exactly, although I believe a few people stopped jobbing for RP due to "omgholyshit bigflagmonarch is supporting CN" though my friends in said crews in RP also were taking in their own ships, so I don't really know. All I do know is that we decided to put a lot more people in frigates than brigs, and we went around taking points, not worrying about shooting people -- also RP got into the round LATE that second round -- so we just fought NH for position, and sank a few of their ships, and got in and collected points. Same for the third round. Lots of frigates, lots of shooting. Honestly, I was having a carp-off with Notical for most of it so I didn't really notice. Between puzzling, and jobbing people, I was pretty busy.
Well, the break happened at 3pm.. I ended up falling asleep for half an hour or so while Kui did a ton of chatting about moving cannonballs and whatnot. (Shur helped us!! But he also used up way more shot than ANYONE else...) Then we went out around Berkeley. Walked down to Shattuck to the ATMs then discussed food, walked through campus to Telegraph and went to Jamba Juice, couldn't agree on food so we went back to Kui's with the idea to order pizza... which we kinda forgot to do for a while.
Started getting ready for rounds 4-6 at 6:15pm or so. Got a ton of jobbers again. Got 3 war frigs staffed and took them in. BLEW A LOT OF STUFF UP. There was this awesome moment where all three of us cornered a war frigate and took it from no damage to sunk in one turn of shooting. It was rad. Kui was like "Oh you HAVE to see this!" so I looked up. Hehe. There was a lot of shooting and sinking going on by us, although we didn't get sunk much ourselves. We had some great navvers; I'd include names but I'm really trying to keep this nonaffiliated. Rounds 5 and 6 were really crazy close though. I mean, we had a somewhat poor navver in 5 -- good nav but not navving to SINK and take points -- Kui kicked them off the helm and sunk an NH frigate at the last moment and we barely squeaked ahead in points after that. Round 6 was similarly close. 5, I think RP still had a presence but it was mostly them taking in ships and us sinking them -- by 6 it was us vs NH mostly -- and as a certain best friend of mine said, "So I'm jobbing for NH... and every 5 minutes there's a /jc message of 'If you were on [adjective fish] which just sunk please proceed to the [other adjective other fish].' WHAT on earth are you guys doing?" To which I replied "Same thing we do every round, Pinky... try and take over the island."
Kui finally remembered to order pizza around 9pm when I was like "HUNGRY! CAN'T CARP WITHOUT FOOD!" Hehe. I really had started to lose brainpower and the carp station was getting fuzzy in my sight.
Anyway, fortunately after round 6, NH also agreed to pull out. At that point it was 5 rounds to us and 1 to RP, and RP had already said "We have like 5 ships left. We're done. Good game, mates." and basically all NH could achieve by then was keeping us from taking the island... I think RAWR convinced them to pull out, and so they did. Whew.
At that point I gave Cioj a call and he ended up coming over and hanging out talking to me and Kui until 1am or so. That rocked, he's such a cool guy. It was a lot of fun. And a lot easier than finding a coffee shop to meet at or whatever. He was even like "Hey, ya know, I navved against you guys, and you fought well, and it was fun, and I'm happy for you."
So, we organized and went back in at 2am. We also organized defenses for Nu and Cranberry -- Robertdonald had declared blockades on our two allies' islands in an attempt to get us less support for own blockade. And since both flags (Epic and TAE) had come out to support us anyway, we went over there and helped them stomp the opposition. I kinda conked out around 3am though.
In the end, we took Luthien AND successfully defended our allies' islands. WOO! I'm so proud of people that I can't even begin to express it. I feel awful about the whole political situation, and I never ever ever wanted to go against Looterati and sink Looterati ships, but I'm happy we won.
And dammit, I hope the flag names our distillery Distilmarillion. Oh boy am I funny with the names.
Anyway, I don't really remember much past 3am. I laid down "for a minute" on the bed because I was really getting tired, and the next thing I really knew, it was around 11:30am and Kui came in and woke me up. (I seem to vaguely recall him shutting off the computer and throwing a blanket on me and turning off the lights and going to sleep on the couch in the other room sometime around 5am, but I don't really know.)
So, I woke up and we logged into PP and were like "YAY! WE HAVE ISLAND!" and talked to some people, and then I went to call I-Gene only to find he had already sent me some IMs... and Ryan was coming over to hang out with him and Berkeley was on the way, so hey. Gave Ryan directions and he came by to pick me up. (Kui had frisbee practice at 2 anyway.) We went to I-Gene's new house, which is neato! It's in a development, so it's very new-seeming and all, and has lots of skylights and stuff. I-Gene and Robin and Ryan and I went to lunch at Boston Market and Jamba Juice, and then I-Gene and Ryan and I went over to SVGL to play a ton of IIDX and stuff. Woo.
SVGL was fun, though I don't think I did anything particularly noteworthy (except that I was still able to pass stuff at all given I hadn't played since last time I was at SVGL in July). I did pass some 7-key stuff on right scratch, that's all I can think of. Got close on Monkey Dance, and nowhere near close on Silvia Drive. Also played some Medieval Madness. Mmm pinball.
We came back to I-Gene's place afterwards, where Ryan got to see Katamari, and afterwards I-Gene and I played a whole ton of PNM, wheeee! Then we went over to IHOP for dinner (I had a surprisingly tasty, but messy, fajita salad), and then I came back and I have been online catching up on things from the last day or two (but sadly not really enough of my friends list). Now I should sleep.
catamorphism, I'm not sure what time I'll get out of here tomorrow, and I need to get into the city to catch up with someone too, so... I'll try to at least give you a call to let you know if I'm going to make it to find you, but lateness and fear of bussing to unknown places may win out over me. Bleh.
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I am a bit disappointed that CT weighed in fully with you guys. It rather made the blockade a foregone conclusion. In the one round I jobbed with NH (four, I think) I noted that while they were navving very well, they could field one war frig and war brig (normally a good force in a blockade) while you guys had THREE war frigs and a war brig.
Effectively, this didn't change at all the situation that CT can grant anyone an island, even without an official alliance.
Even so, it was pretty fun. And hey, the money I made may sponsor my own island plans some day. ^_^
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Well, that is... the thing is, we had already asked a ton of CT people to job for us anyway. Having Misery do /fb's got us a few more people, but Kui had literally asked a couple hundred folks to job for us in the first place. We also paid several hundred thousand poe to people for helping out, which didn't hurt.
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I was there! So much for Incredible carpentry being important :b I think I am officially declaring that where I lost my leg.
I didn't really want to fight you either, I would have jobbed for you guys in a heartbeat had they not been direct allies.
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Yeah.. I know, I felt really awful sinking Looterati ships. I kept saying that I wished I could see what real flag the ships belonged to so I could at least feel a little more or less guilty.
(and trust me, I know what you mean about the Incredible carpentry not being important. Though... it is to some extent. We got shot quite a bit, and having several incredible carpers really did keep down the damage and make it possible to be in there longer. It's just a matter of overwhelming damage vs. slowly accumulating a few shots per round.)
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We weren't aboard Looterati ships in the later rounds. I can't remember if we stopped sending our own in after the first or second or third round.
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