===Update 15 June 2013===

As of last week, I am officially an instructor at Dust University and I have to say that I am happy for this position. Teaching others about the profession is something I wanted to do for a long time especially since it will give me a chance to build up more interest in the weapon.

When I first started my profession back during the Codex build in closed beta, I was at a severe disadvantage because the knives were weak and were laughed at very often. Many even thought I was a complete fool to think that the nova knifing is a profession at all (a few still do). But at the time I didn't see that as a problem but instead I saw it as a challenge and by enduring that challenge I was able to overcome the stigma that came with the profession.

It is because of this determination to overcome the challenge that I was able to make an otherwise laughable weapon into something that is viable. Now that I am an instructor, I intend to pass on my knowledge and experience to those willing to accept the challenge. That said, if any of you are new to this game and intend to dive into this experience to see if you have what it takes to be a ninja, you can go ahead and join Dust University and attend my lectures and squad up after. Alternatively you can always go to Bojo's School of the Trades if you like and more than likely you'll probably find someone there who specializes in the same thing who can help you.

As a fun little tidbit, I was able to get into my first Planetary Conquest battle last night against The Southern Legion in an effort to defend our district. I really didn't know what to expect since this was my first time going into PC. Considering that PC battles always demanded players to field their best gear and weapons, I figured my team was going up against a tough opponent. Thankfully, since we are a dedicated training corp, our team was able to cohesively work together due to the careful guidance of the squad leaders.

As I entered the match, the first thing I did was to ensure that no one tried to sneak into the Orbital Artillery Outpost. To that end, I spent a great deal of time attentively camping the objectives while making sure that the enemy drop uplinks were neutralized. We were able to secure Alpha and Bravo for the time being before the enemy brought in their tank and murder taxis backed up by a bunch of proto-heavies which were a pain in the ass for me to kill. At that point, the fight got really intense as we struggled to regain control of the key objectives. Alpha fell to enemy hands and Bravo was being swarmed by the enemy. We suffered losses left and right but slowly we regained control as we held together and pushed through while I kept up with destroying uplinks and scouting the outpost for any infiltrators.

The enemy tank on the other hand was a major concern to us, but amazingly enough the tank didn't become that much of a threat once the enemy was pushed out of the facility and the tank was left to fend for itself. The match seemed as uncertain as playing Russian Roulette still because the objectives were constantly switching hands left and right. To make things even worse, The Southern Legion had orbital support from Eve side while our Eve fleet was still trying to assemble. But despite all that we won the match with a close margin and with only a small fraction of our clone count lost. In the end, we sent a letter to the enemy thanking them for a good fight.

Rewards that I gained:
1.4 million ISK
7,000+ SP
And a bucket load of salvage.
KDR: 8-10

Even with the loss of 10 proto mini scouts, I was still able to make a profit.

---Upodate 15 June 2013---

Today I had a conversation with a felllow merc merc who goes by the name OZAROW (before I got disconnected) about an idea he has for trying to stur up interest in a certain aspect (or lack thereof) of Dust known as gladiator style fights. The goal here is to get as many people interested in placing bets to see who can dish out the most kills with a certain weapon sanctioned for a particular match.

How this would work, as OZAROW described it, is that a competitor would join the corp that he establish (since I got DC'd I didn't get the name) and place bets as donations to the corp which in turn becomes the pot holding the earnings. The winner will earn the pot in addition to the regular rewards handed out by tthe matches. You are not required to use your main as you can have an alt join the corp and make a minimum donatioon to place bets. You don't have to make any big donations. Small donations like 250,000 ISK for ambush or about 500,000 ISK for skirmish is about ok for starters.

The channel being used to host the bets is R.E.D merc bets (exactly as it's written) and it is open to everyone. I understand a lot of you are little apprehensive about donating ISK for a bet to a corp we know nothing about, but we can start off small at least and see how it goes from there.

I figured this would be a good getaway from the constant grind and at least grab CCP's attention so that the REAL gladiator style feature can be implemented sooner rather than later so that players won't have to go through the whole Alt-joins-corp hassle. What do you think?