[EVE] When the Loot Table Knows Your Lore

I wasn’t expecting anything sentimental from the Winter Nexus loot tables.

SKINs, boosters, the occasional questionable fashion choice—sure. But halfway through clearing another icy site, my cargo scanner chirped and flagged something… odd. I cracked open the container and just stared at the manifest for a long second.

Industrial-sized container of bubble bath.
Concentrated. Viscous. Enough to drown a station in foam.

The shipping label caught my eye next.

Destination: R-AG7W
Sender: A.E.

I laughed out loud in my Endurance.

Of course.

I could picture it instantly—the Keepstar, smothered in bubbles, space turned into a bath toy nightmare while fleets clashed and history happened. Asher’s bubbles. The kind that didn’t pop easily, didn’t wash away, and definitely didn’t get forgotten by anyone who’d lived there when the shields went up.

I drifted there for a moment, letting the memory settle. R-AG had been loud. Chaotic. Home, once. And here I was now, mining festive ice in highsec, holding a joke-in-a-box addressed to a place that no longer felt like it existed in quite the same way.

I secured the container back into my hold, still smiling.

Winter Nexus had a strange sense of humor—digging up old wars, old wounds, and wrapping them in tinsel. Somewhere out there, someone had labeled this thing with intention. Maybe nostalgia. Maybe spite. Maybe just a very specific sense of comedy.

Either way, I carried on. Harvesters cycling. Snow drifting. Bubbles in a box.

New Eden never forgets. It just learns how to laugh about it later.

[Life] Merry Christmas

Christmas can be a complicated season. On the outside, it’s lights and traditions and doing everything I can to keep the magic alive for my kids. It’s just my immediate family, and we work really hard to make the days feel special — baking, decorating, wrapping gifts, creating moments I hope they’ll remember fondly. During the day, there’s noise and purpose and motion, and I pour myself into that role completely.

But when the house finally goes quiet at night, the loneliness has a way of settling in. There’s no extended family gathering, no busy calendar full of visits, no one dropping by. It’s in those quiet hours that the weight of how small our circle is becomes very real, and Christmas can feel less like a celebration and more like a reminder of what’s missing.

Still, I’m grateful for something: the gaming community and the friends I’ve made through gaming. In a season that can feel isolating, they’ve been kind, welcoming, and genuinely lovely. Sometimes connection doesn’t look like a crowded living room — sometimes it looks like shared worlds, late-night conversations, and knowing you’re not as alone as you thought. And this Christmas, that has meant more than I can put into words.

[Life] Steam Replay 2025

My steam replay this year wasn’t an accurate telling of the games I played, because most of my games are not on steam. There’s Wurm Online – does have a steam client, but I don’t use it since my characters are not grandfathered in. Only newly created steam characters can play through that client. Then there’s World of Warcraft, also not a steam game. Probably my actual most played game this year, though EVE Online might be close.

I hear we didn’t play new games in 2025, but instead opted to play older ones. That is absolutely correct in my case, new games made up 2% of my playtime. In fact classic games came in at a whopping 94% which makes sense since again, EVE Online? Classic.

A lot of games that made the list (for me at least) were idle games, since I tend to leave them running for a few days at a time. Euro Truck Simulator 2 was also pretty high on my games played list. No surprises there, I love it. I think I’d love it more if I had a wheel to play it with, but for now I’m still holding off. I’m just not good at playing with a controller.

EQ2 did also start making the list, but not until later in the year, so it didn’t have as big an impact as I was expecting. Wobbly Life is there since I play that with the family, and a few new games like Whisper of the House, and Urban Jungle. Enjoyed them both. Project Zomboid is also listed, I played that briefly, along with Necesse. Erenshor, Date Everything, Tropico 6, Captain of Industry – lots of games, just not a lot of time, unfortunately. Life has kept me pretty busy this year, and I haven’t really had a lot of time for gaming. Plus, other hobbies keep fighting over that elusive ‘time’ and this year (for the first time in forever) art in all of its various forms was at the forefront.

So here’s to 2026. May it be filled with as much, or as little, gaming as you wish.

[EVE Online] Even Explorers need a Holiday

Filed by E

I told myself it was just a break.

Not a retreat. Not giving anything up. Just… stepping sideways for a bit. There’s no Winter Nexus out in j-space this year—apparently shattered wormholes don’t get festive snowstorms, which feels like a personal slight—so I let myself drift back to highsec for a while.

I’m flying my Endurance, quietly mining faded volatile ice in a system that barely remembers what danger looks like (Until Safety is in the system, at least). The ice glitters as the harvesters bite into it, soft and fractured, like the universe decided to be gentle for once. It’s a far cry from collapsing connections and living out of bookmarks and instincts.

I should feel relaxed.

Instead, I feel exposed.

There’s no cloak-and-wait here. No safes that only I know. Local chat scrolls by in plain sight, and CONCORD feels like a very strange substitute for situational awareness. I keep flicking d-scan out of muscle memory, even though nothing ever changes. Old habits cling hard.

Still… the Endurance feels right. Built for cold. Built to endure. The rhythm settles in—harvesters cycling, hold slowly filling, the quiet hum of winter NPCs minding their own business. For once, the universe isn’t asking me to be sharp or fast. Just present.

I catch myself smiling at that.

This is good. A pause. A chance to let the constant edge bleed off before I throw myself back into j-space, back into scanning chains and rescue pings and beautiful, dangerous emptiness. Highsec doesn’t feel like home anymore, but it makes a decent place to rest your boots and watch the snow fall.

I’ll go back soon. I always do.

But for now, I stay right where I am—mining ice, feeling a little exposed, a little safe, and quietly grateful for a softer stretch of stars.

Even explorers need winter holidays.

[WoW] Gold Making (Week 51) – 2025

Holidays are finally here, but my gold making has been pretty stagnant lately – which I’m actually OK with. I periodically posted to more than the base 10 servers I find myself on, but if there were no sales the day after I would just let the items lapse and collect them from the mailbox without reposting. Casual gold making seems to be working well for me, and helps prevent burnout. I know everyone is busy grinding holiday stuff and working on Legion Remix while they can.

The big sellers of the week (notice I’m not selling furniture or doing any current tier stuff, I’ll talk about this in a minute) included more ‘random’ items than usual. For once, recipes were not at the top of the list. Transmog wasn’t, either. This week I sold a very small number of expensive battle pets, and a large number of mounts and toys, for whatever reason. I also didn’t sell anything especially expensive, maybe folks are spending all of their gold on furniture these days. The most expensive item I sold ended up being 190,000 gold. Still, sales are sales, and I don’t mind the slow down. None of my items are in demand or are even from the current tier of the game, which is something I tend to do on purpose so I can avoid a majority of the competition. I don’t especially enjoy AH PVP – some people are all about that, and that’s great for them.

In any case, I hope everyone has a very happy, safe, holiday. No matter where you spend it. I’ll hopefully be spending most of mine in Azeroth, trying to finish the remaining class halls I need to get done and maybe doing some decorating, finally. We’ll see!

As always, happy gaming!