BB47: Forgetting More Than I Ever Knew

Getting into capital construction has been humbling with showing me how much I've forgotten over the almost 7 years I've been playing this game.

I was training up my alt Korneilia to start the production and I thought I would be set after Production Efficiency V and Capital Construction I. Then remembered as that neared completion that the number of factories you can control is dependent on Mass Production and Advanced Mass Production skills. Sigh. Add those to the skill queue.

So I finished the first set of skills and got Mass Production to III and training IV and I figure that four factories is enough to get started, right? So I go to my selected production station with blueprints and minerals in hand and start setting up the jobs. But only three would go in.

Strange, I thought, I should be able to start four.

I bring up the Science and Industry window and look at my jobs.

Why, there already is four jobs! What is that last one... a Burst? What the hell... What's the date on that thing?

I swear I don't remember ever inserting this Burst job four years ago. That's insane. Why was I building a Burst? What was I going to do with it? It wasn't like I was learning manufacturing in 2009; I built, ran, made a fortune from, and closed a Tech II manufacturing project over a year before that. The only thing I can think off since that's around Korneilia's creation date is that I was doing it as a tutorial mission or something as I was working through the new player experience at the time.

My point is that Eve, being a simulation rather than a plain game, simulates real life very well.

I've worked at the same company for 11 years and the first 8 years I did nothing but Microsoft SQL development on the same software product. I knew the database and views and stored procedures and business rules inside and out, better than almost everyone else in the company. Then I had career change through some fortuitous events and practically started over as a .Net in C# working on a new product at the same company. I was a rocky ride at first having to go from subject matter expert to newbie, but I've grown into it and I'm doing fine now.

But every once in a while I get asked a database question about the old product or some new development and as time passes it gets harder and harder to recall the old subject matter. Sure, after a bit of digging it comes back, but sometimes I just have to give up and say "I don't know" or "I don't remember". Its humbling. Life moves on.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in the Blog Banter question that Jester inspired I see more evidence that 'Eve is Real', to borrow a cliche. In real life you have to continually train and learn and investigate to remain at the top of any field, and know when to change fields to keep you happy and engaged. If you don't you become the albatross or dinosaur and get laid off. In Eve, you have to continually learn and experiment and keep up on changes in the areas you participate in or you get left behind by the crowd, outsold or outproduced or simply outmaneuvered and blown up.

And sometimes, when you look back, you'll see something and say to yourself "I don't even remember ever doing that."