Mining in the Morning

The prime annoyance of parenthood for me isn’t the changes to your lifestyles that are required.  No, the annoyance comes because it seems that as soon as you have finally hit some sort of routine that accommodates a change, another change shows up.

We got hit with a big change recently: Kindergarten. 

Our local school starts at 7:50am. 

When the clock beside my bed says 7:50am, my first thought is usually that I have another 20 minutes or so before my alarm clock goes off.

Now, however, with my daughter required to be in class at 7:50am, things are starting a little earlier at our house.  So we all get up earlier.

But there is still no point in my getting on the road before 9am still.  Traffic is awful and in the land of Silicon Valley software nothing starts before 10am anyway.

So I sit at my desk at home reading email and mining.

I think I have the mining thing down now. 

With the Retriever armed with drones I seem to be pretty impervious to rats.

With the 3 minute cycle on the strip miners, I can look away for nearly six minutes at a stretch without worrying about my cargo overflowing.

I just keep filling up a jet can.  I have to use a jet can of course, because every asteroid field I visit looks like this:

There is no space to anchor a secure container, there being a minimum space required between cans, so I make due with an open one.  That means that, once in a while, I have to deal with some bozo can thief.  Not that there is much that I can do besides move somewhere else.

After I get it close to full, I bring out Wil and his Mammoth to haul the ore back to HQ.

So I sit with work email up in one window, with EVE in a window in the background, positioned so I can see the overview and my cargo bay.  The joys of working in 1600×1200.  If I get up and get ready in short order (not tough when you wear jeans and a polo shirt every day) I can get in nearly 90 minutes of mining and get some of my overseas email answered before heading into the office.

By doing this most mornings, I have managed to hit a mining milestone.

I initially seeded my miner with 5 million ISK to buy skills, buy his Osprey, equip it, and to generally live on.  Since then he has been self-financed.  I handle the logistical support with my main account (Wil bought the Mammoth), but my miner has purchased all ships and equipment out of what he has earned.

So I was happy to hit the 100 million ISK saved mark at last.

I also started pricing ships.  I was surprised to see the Hulk priced down near 120 million ISK.  So that amount, plus 28 million ISK for the Exhumers skill , with  some additional ISK thrown in for equipment and I am set.  I had planned to buy a Covetor first and then save up for a Hulk, which I had read was in the 500 million ISK price range at one point, but now I may not have to.  When it comes to training there is only a 3 day gap between being able to fly the Covetor and being able to fly the Hulk.

I also hit another landmark, this time on the skills front.  My miner is now less than 30 days away from being able to fly the Hulk.  I finished up Industry V a while back and Astrogeology V finished up yesterday (which will give me a small boost to mining yield), so I have only Mining Barge IV and V and then Exhumers I, II, and III to do before I am there.

All of which will give me more than enough time to earn the additional ISK required to buy the Hulk and all the trimmings.

I might even have enough to finance a battlecruiser for Wilhelm.