Archive for the ‘Larz Smith’ Category

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Moving Closer

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

The last few nights have been very slow and left me with loads of time to reflect on things.  I decided that this weekend since my POS was down to move out of Sheroo and over a lot closer to Jita.  While the move was uneventful (thankfully) it was boring.  I am now happier as I am only 3 jumps from Jita and have all the slots I need for production.  I am also happy that future parts/product trips no longer involve jumping into a certain .5 system that everyone loses ships in.

Think it is about time to reactivate Namroc into the world.  I sent him away on vacation for a bit, but now that profits are back where they need to be I can let him come back and have some fun.

Some recent digging in my Jita hangar has found 2 interesting items I don’t really need, a Cynabal and a Firetail.  Now the question is what in the world am I going to do with them?  Do I just sell them and collect some isk?  Do I give them to some friends that can fly them?  Not sure just yet, I am monitoring communication incase someone comes up with a good idea in the next day or two.

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Tower Down Repeat Tower Down

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

Just wanted to let everyone know our tower was unanchored today without issue.

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General Update

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

So I have officially pulled out of Caldari invention for the time. After reviewing margins in EMU they aren’t what they use to be and that means time for a change. I finished my last 2 Manticores and I put the rest of my prints on Jita contract, shame they were some good ones (4 x 5 run Nighthawk and a 5 run Vulture). I still have 2 3 run Bustards which I will cook off once profits are back.

I took a dive off the deep end and stuck all my isk into a batch of Vaga inventions. My first 6 are cooking now and I have another 12 waiting for parts. Given their prices seem to stay constant right now (even spiking) I think this will be a good direction until things shuffle again.

I have started putting Nam back into combat training again, which means he is not long to stay in Larz Corp. Given my 2 choices for PVP being the hounds within the alliance or back to 0.0 I think I am going to send him back to 0.0, I base this choice only on one thing: I don’t know how long Nam can stay in combat and I don’t want another sec status grind to deal with should I need him in HS again. While the hounds fly more of the style I like (gotta love LS pirating) the sec hit is too much of a factor for a short term PVP run.

I am also counting (dreading) the days until I rip the tower down. With the increase in POS fuel prices it doesn’t make sense to run a tower for 2 people with my margins as tight as they are now and with Nam moving on one person is not worth having a tower up. I am down to 1 month fuel bank and the 2.5 weeks in there now then the thing comes down. Should be nice, the sale of the tower and labs should net enough to fund the rest of the Vaga builds.

Nam is in a bit of a pickle, he has “enough” combat skills to be quite effective, but there are some specialty areas he could use some focus on:

  • T2 Large Hybrids
  • T2 Sentry & Heavy Drones
  • Interdictors & Heavy ones
  • Logistics Ships
  • Command Ships
  • T2 Missiles

Yet the 0.0 corp I am going to send him to has 2 sides, when they roam they roam hard and are very effective, yet the down time is spent in corp mining ops and plex running. The latter Nam is good with, but mining is epic fail atm. So I think that Nam is going to need to get to Hulk level and support skills and then start focus on the PVP stuff.  The good news about the PVP will be you can expect to see more of those interesting ship fits we use to run here.

Hosting has been fun, we did our first install of the API bridge for PHPBB, from what I hear it is going well.  Things have been a bit slow and we are about to drop some accounts for payment issues.  It kinda stinks there is a good bit of isk in the collections bucket I hate to leave, I wish people were a bit more responsive if they wanted to drop services.  We also have another update to the KB’s to do so I will write something up for that when we get close to doing it.

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General Update

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

So I finally got a chance to sit down and do some blogging again, however short-lived it will be. Seems I have another long week of travel ahead before I can settle back into a routine.

I have noticed since PI came out prices of Caldari T2 ships seem to have dropped. Hoping to increase my margins a bit I shipped 11 Falcons out to NC space last week, so far 1 has sold. Jita has been kind on moving my product, but at the lower prices so only half victory there.

I haven’t been in the loop with market changes, but it seems when I bought 2 months of POS fuel the other day it cost a lot more than it use to. Anyone care to explain what I missed there?

Also for anyone thinking of building the mighty Oynx and selling it, that doesn’t work very well. I jumped off the deep end on it and over 1 week only 1 out of 4 sold in Jita, and I have been lowest price a lot of the time. Bad news, I got 6 more BPC’s of that to cook, I think I will wait those out a bit, or just sell the prints.

Hosting business has been quite slow lately, in the last 30 days I have had 1 new forum account. I think once this next round of Falcons sell I will be sending some isk to Roc for a advertisement round. I had talked with him about it a while ago, but been slammed by requests from the contest we ran I didn’t have time to see it all the way, now I need it more than ever.

Larz and Nam now have completed all skills required to build my line of products, so they are both back on PVP training. I also bought my first ever set of +5 implants and Larz got those installed promptly. Some people (who don’t PVP a lot) might not understand the time lapse on that, but from a PVP side, since you can’t unplug implants at will (and save them) we tend to keep our clones empty or at best like +3/+4 implants.

Larz is racing towards a carrier now, not that I really need one, but I like options, Nam is generally rounding out some trainings I needed to get done and been holding out on.

I was also noticing no one has bothered with my poll, do I just not have readers anymore or is the poll broke?

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Questions For The Readers

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

So I am again testing my readership to gain some insight into what content I need to focus on here. As always service updates with POD will always show up here, but your answers will guide towards content and format.

Why Do You Read The Blog?

  • I like the invention updates (0%, 0 Votes)
  • I like reading about the hosting stuff (0%, 0 Votes)
  • EMU all the way (0%, 0 Votes)
  • IDK (0%, 0 Votes)
  • You blog sucks (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 0

Vote

Loading ... Loading ...

Posted in EMU, Larz Smith, Namroc Smith, POD Splatter Hosting | No Comments »

Invention Update

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Odd I go away for 1 week and then come back to take my 20+ falcons to market.  Before I left I am selling these things around 95m in short order, now they are 93m on a good day and I have had 10 sitting for 3 days now in Jita.  Did I miss something, anyone fly these things anymore?

To adjust I am now cooking more of the follow until sales pick back up:

Bustards, Harpy, Hawk, and Bas.  Still got 2 Falcons in inventory, 12 more to build, and 9 coming out the oven in < 24 hours.

I will say the POS has greatly increased production and I am going to start training my first indy alt in 16 days after Larz gets done with a few skills.

Been playing around with PI, I like it, but I am not going to go any further on it.  After this next cycle I am going to pull down my command centers.  After playing with a PI tool I can see what is needed to make POS fuel, and I plan to do that in the future, but now isn’t the time to play pretend SIM City in space :)

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Moving Sucks [OOC]

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Just thought I would share a bit on my moving experience.

So last month we decided to pull out of Florida and move to Washington.  Yep we do stuff like this.  So after contacting the great company of U-HAUL about the move they told me I could save a fortune and use a trailer to move instead of a truck.  Long story short, their computer messed up and we cannot haul anything with our SUV, it is a fuel saver, not a puller.

So instead of about $800 for a hitch and trailer I shelled out $1800 for the truck and about $1000 so far in fuel for it.  Now when we get to our new town in WA we find out that the rental we were going for was already taken and we didn’t have any other options.  Great, wife, kids, dog, and mother with no place to live.

After several nights in a hotel (not cheap in the above config) we finally think we have a place to move now, but we won’t not 100% until tomorrow afternoon.

Wish us luck, we need some.

Posted in Larz Smith | 1 Comment »

I’m Leaving EVE, Who Wants My Stuff?

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Actually that was just to grab some attention, you know i’m not going anywhere.  I do want everyone to know that this week and next my in game presence will be very limited, and that I won’t be answering comments or emails in a timely fashion.  If you are wanting anything on the hosting end please get the requests in before Monday.  I’ll be back in regular rotation around the 7th of June after our move.

Thanks

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Game Changes 2nd Edition

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

I voted, and as promised all my votes went to Mynxee.  While I won’t twist any arms to tell you who to vote for (insert subliminal message here).

After some additional thought I decided to release my second round of things I would like to see changed:

  • I should be able to see the market for any region from any region and buy/sell things.  Now I expect the limitation to be that I can only sell things where the item resides.  Think about the posibilities here:
    • No more need for traders to camp Jita.
    • My main doesn’t have to transfer ISK or go to a hub to buy things.
    • I can price check from anywhere without an alt or 3rd party tool, not that we all don’t love EVE Central, but come on.
  • Why do I have to be in the same region to act on a contract?  I can understand searching and displaying on a regional level, but with the communication system in EVE I should be able to work with what I find without flying all over the place.
  • Improve bulk buying.  If I need 3000 units of something and the first 10 cheap orders at that station are only 100 qty, why can’t I have a way to put in what I want and it buys the orders from the cheap on up without overpaying.
  • Sec status:
    • Let’s have a skill to lessen the loss when I do something, think of it as Fast Talk for the crime.
    • Let me trade LP points for sec status.  Take the relationship of the corp to concord for cost and let me buy it.
    • Bribe skill, hey if I drop x amount of ISK on the floor in a Concord office, some buttons should get clicked and give me sec back, maybe not all the way back to 0.0, but at least take an edge off.
  • Faction standings:
    • Again same concept as sec status, I spend LP with my corp and depending on their relationship to a faction of my choosing my standings with that faction go up.
    • ISK based thing as well.

Before I get off into random tangent this was just my thoughts tonight as I grind away for my POS rights and try to move the Orca 18 jumps to Jita.

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General Update / Invention Update

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

So in spirit of me being a bit lazy today I decided to wrap all my update notices into one posting.

Invention Update

So things are going well. I put in an order for a second set of part BPO’s as I am producing so much that my lines are taking 2+ days to run parts. It seems like everyday I am putting 3 Falcons up in Jita for sale. I recently expanded my lines since Nam now has PE 5 so i just put 9 Manticores up for sale. I looked at the volume sold before picking that one, but for some reason my low priced ones are not selling for 3 days now. I am in the process of building 3 Bustards now and I have invented BPC’s for 15 more, the only downside to these is the amount of ISK it takes to get the parts built.

Last night Larz encountered a first, I actually had bought so many raw materials that I couldn’t fit everything into the Orca. Now keep in mind this is a cargo maximized Orca, and I am talking I had stuff everywhere. Time to start looking at buying a Providence again or hunting down the location of my Ark. Yes I do not recall at the moment who I lent it too last.

Nam has been working hard for standings, we are now in the mid 4′s with Amar so that POS gets even closer. I am actually quite happy it is taking so long to get as this gives me time to optimize my process and make sure I can generate a profit once I start fueling it. Before when I had these things they were always doing reactions somewhere out in 0.0 so profit was never a question, not these way there is a bit of chance with it.

Nam has also added T2 Heavy Launchers to his mission Drake.  Not sure why I didn’t do this sooner, Nam got trained for them like 2 months ago, but never thought about it.

General Update

So I have been looking at optimizing the CRON jobs we run for the POS and Killboard hosting.  As we said before we run on Windows so I wrote several PHP scripts we execute on schedule to handle the CRON process, but I would prefer to have some multi-threaded scheduling application (read free) to do this, Windows Scheduler is not going to cut it.  Anyone want to suggest something nice please let me know.

Mynxee For CSM 5!

What can I say, if you don’t vote for her your just silly?  Actually she is getting the campaign engine running very early in the game.  Good looking website, lot’s of content on her views, ideas, and points.  There is also several EVE Forum posts going that have her speaking up from her point of view.

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