Entry 107 - 11.03.3303
03 Nov 2017MBaldelli
Left to Unlock Professor Palin: 450 LYI often warn greenies to never fly tired; you make mistakes -- sometimes even fatal -- when you're flying exhausted. And here I was ignoring my own advice during the last week. What did I do? I accidentally changed out my firing groups to my Heat Sinks and when I went to honk the system I entered, suddenly I saw the Cockpit go cold and heard the familiar sound of the Sink popping off. Not believing it, I tried again... And fired off the second one. When I realized that I was on the wrong fire group, I face-palmed hard, realizing that both had been exhausted. I didn't need them this trip... But I'm never comfortable flying without some safety.
Yeah, it's that time of year for me... Sure I'm in a comfortable and carefully controlled environment out here in the Deep Black, and I'm getting less sleep than I usually do.
Most of the time it's because my body's making the adjustment from the warmer summers of my home world back to the cooler of Autumn and Winter. But as I'm far from home and well outside of any gravity well, the other problem that occurs this time of year comes to haunt me as well. The birthday of a lost loved one.
When I'm home, I make it a point of going to visit the tombstone on his birthday. It's not as though his body's buried there. I was present when his family scattered his ashes into the ocean. That tombstone's just a tangible marker of what's left of him that will probably outlast me and the generations that follow. It's just a tangible marker that reminds me that I survived the accident and he didn't.
As I'm going to be heading back sometime soon, I don't think I'm going to make it back in time this year for my tradition. While this will be the third time this happened since his passing, I know from those experiences, that I won't be sleeping all that well until I make the visit. So I'm going to need to make the most of it in the meantime and try to sleep when I can for as long as I can. I don't need to be making mistakes like I did with the Heat Sinks and Fire Groups.
Enough of me feeling maudlin. That's not going to keep me in the here and now.
I'm beginning to also get the feeling of the horse seeing the barn as I'm less than 500 LY from my goal to unlocking Professor Palin. And based on projections, I should be through with this over the weekend. While I'm most assuredly not going to be collecting 25 Unknown Fragments which will attract the attention of Thargoids in the area, at least I'll have the option when necessary.
Funny thing when I was flying tired... I really began to miss flying the Leif Eiriksson. While I never did like the claustrophobic feeling of being in the cockpit and lord knows that the crew quarters were certainly more cramped than the Zheng He; what I've been missing most about the ship was the throatier sound of the engines as I would gun the throttle. I think the next time I go out into the Deep Black I'll be taking the DBX instead for the arm. Well, after I seriously retool the FSD and other bits in that ship.
And with that, I'm going to sign off and start earlier.