Today's Notes 11/30/20

Good afternoon everybody,

Actually was up at 9:30 AM, but last night I remembered I had a bunch of Doctor Who audio plays that I got from Big Finish and went through the effort of downloading all the ones I purchased up till the end of 2013. It's been a while since I listen to them, so it's going to be a lot of fun as the folks at Big Finish really went all out in creating plays that totally captured the spirit of the classic Doctor Who series.

We did do a bonus stream today, kicking off with Fitness Boxing, and had a solid 33 minute workout, as the focus on strength and cardio continues.Did have one missed punch that was totally due to the left handed joy con becoming de-synced from the Switch. Other than that everything was pretty damn solid from start to finish.But since this was a bonus stream we added to it with some Animal Crossing New Horizons, and visited the island of another player, and it amazes me what people have managed to do with the in-game tools. Granted I like my little tree covered island the way it is, but seeing the creativity others have put it still is awesome.The bonus stream was capped off with a top 5 finish in Super Mario 35... I probably could've finished higher, but I made a boneheaded mistake in world 1-4, but hey I did say i wanted to finish in the top 5 so I can't complain too much.

During this bonus stream we got a big raid from GGVexy (twitch.tv/ggvexy) who streams out of Australlia, meaning it was 4 AM local time when she ended her stream. So big thanks to Vexy for bringing her viewers on over. Since I'm on the East Coast of the United States, normally it would be me raiding her, so it was cool to have the tables flipped.

Last night's Overwatch stream was pretty meh, had a long losing streak of matches, so I was lucky to end on a win. Tonight we'll be resuming Kingdom Heart Re:Chain of Memories, and depending on work, we'll start the stream at 9:30 PM EST for sure, if I can start earlier, we probably will, but that's iffy at this point.

 And on that bombshell we'll see ya later! Have a great day folks!

Today's Notes 11/29/20

Good afternoon everyone,

You know that feeling when you wake up and realize that entire day has already gone by, that was me today, then again, yesterday I was busy testing an PS2 (one of the original models, you know the big fat one) and I couldn't get any picture or audio from it. I'm going to safely assume that the United States Postal Service may have broken something inside of it while it was in their possession for 18 days. Still that disappointment aside, I have looked into getting my old PS3 fixed, and I almost feel I'd be better off just getting a certified refurbished one as the costs are that different.

Kinda feel like having a pizza today, maybe I'll order from Papa Johns, they do a great job with some of the combination I like...the Super Hawaiian Pizza is always awesome. I do like the fact that Papa Johns has a more complete track your order system when compared to the last time I ordered from them. It's nice to see what the status of my food is.

And as I typed that, here I am about to talk about today's Fitness Boxing session which, left a lot to be desired when it came to me doing Triple Combos, for whatever reason I really didn't have any snap when doing uppercuts, resulting in a lot of missed combos, and a low score of a 92 for it. Ah well, the overall workout was solid, but to be off that much on Triple Combos when I normally will be about a 97-99 on that routine is disturbing.

That said, I'm not going to say I'm a better athlete that Nate Robinson, because I'm not... hell I'm nowhere close to being in the shape he was in last night when he got his Lurch-moving self knocked out by Jake Paul. I however will say I would probably throw more punches in a fight against Jake Paul to make sure I didn't embarrass myself on pay-per-view!

Last night's stream of Twitch Sings was the usual amount of fun, and I've noticed that Twitch has started removing completed videos where a person sings by themselves. It's a good things I've basically backed up all my duets up through yesterday. We'll continue to get as much out of it until it's totally shut down!

Tonight we'll be playing Overwatch over on twitch.tv/fredcasden, starting at about 7 PM EST, and I've certainly been putting in the match time to earn the in-game currency through level ups to stock up from the upcoming Winter event. It's always nice to see that I could easily purchase skins for free just by planning ahead. I do wonder who'll be getting new appearances for the Holiday season, and I doubt we'll be getting a new skin for Dva since she just got one for Halloween. 

I seriously wonder if Donald Trump is thinking that if he continues to throw his hissy fits people will just say 'fuck it' and let him stay being President... it's too bad for him that the real world doesn't work that way. He lost cleanly to Joe Biden, it was so clean that even Mister Clean would go 'damn that's pretty fucking clean'. Trump is a Loser. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it, he is a loser. 

And on that bombshell, that wraps up today's notes! 

Best Moments Week Of 11/22-28/20

 Here are the moments from the games played on my Twitch Channel for the week of November 22-28, 2020 which included: Overwatch, Fitness Boxing, Super Mario Bro 35, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Kingdom Hearts RE:Chain of Memories, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Paladins, Nickelodeon Kart Racers, Star Trek Online, WCW Nitro, WWF In Your House, ESPN Baseball 2K4 and Twitch Sings! Be sure to follow me on twitch.tv/fredcasden to join me live! 

 

Today's Notes 11/28/20

Good afternoon everyone,

If you're a regular to this blog page, you'd have noticed I changed it's appearance yet again, trying to find a nice overall look is often problematic for this thing. I really wanted to use some of the artwork I've had made by Daemonswolf, but blogger is rather limited and clunky at times to get things set up right.

Anyway, this morning Fitness Boxing session was a little odd, as for the first time in a while footwork was incorporated, and man that threw off my timing in a bad way. Also for a Strength and Cardio session, it surprised me that the sets ended up happening in the orders of 8 minutes, 11 minutes and 15 minutes. Never seen that happened, normally the straight Cardio session are sets with that increase in duration.  And you may have noticed the trainer's attire is the same as yesterdays... yup totally forgot to change that... oh well.

 Last night's stream over on twitch.tv/fredcasden ended up being a variety stream featuring WCW Nitro, WWF In Your House, ESPN Baseball 2K4 and Animal Crossing New Horizons. Certainly a hodgepodge lineup to say the least when you think about it. Goes to show when I don't have a plan for a stream things can get really damn random! 

WCW Nitro still has some of the worse controls in any video game I have ever played, as getting any move to happen with Mortal Kombat style button combination was maddening... and combine that with the frequent (and I do mean frequent run-ins) forced me to go into the options menu to adjust a few things. We managed to get through the 10 match tournament mode, and for all intents and purposes we are counting it as a game finished on stream to count it for this years gaming tour.

On the other hand we won't count WWF In Your House for the gaming tour because of what I would classify as finishing the game is beating the WWF Championship mode (which is a series of 2 on 1, 3 on 1 and 10 on 1 matches). The lack of back ground audio, crowd noise or music really takes away from the game, as I remember WrestleMania The Arcade Game having some sort of back ground noise to add to the chaotic brawling. Much like WCW Nitro, the Mortal Kombat style button combinations leaves a lot to be desired.

ESPN Baseball 2K4 was a firm reminder that Visual Concepts made some damn good baseball games back in the day/ Granted I had to remember how to switch bating to 'timing only' because the true aim system was damn near impossible. Also the Barry Bonds stand in being called Joe Young sure was a Mighty bit on the nose. Much like with Michael Jordan in the late 90s with a number of NBA games, I wonder why Bonds wasn't in a bunch of MLB games in the early 2000s.

Animal Crossing New Horizons continues to be the ultimate chill game that I can easily go to in order to lengthen stream, or just for a bit daily light gaming. I am starting to see more interactions between the residents on my island, with Blanche actually asking Agnes to use her catchphrase as her own. Cute, fun stuff.

Good news in terms of things arriving in the mail, Daemonswolf of Darkwolf Creative (darkwolfcreative.com / twitch.tv/daemonsw0lf) sent me an old-school FAT PlayStation 2, it was shipped out way back on November 10th and it finally arrived today, after she and I both started hasseling the United States Postal Service. Looking forward to testing it out! 

Also in the mail today was an autographed picture of Jack from the Mass Effect franchised, signed by Jack's voice actor Courtenay Taylor, and I made sure to get a certificate of authenticity, even though I requested it be personalized to me (it's always nice to know its the genuine article). Love the fact she put down the line 'I Will Destroy You' on it as well, which was a nice touch. 

With today being Saturday, Twitch Sings is on the agenda, and at this point we only have a few more streams where we can make use of this awesome game. Sadly starting December 1st, a lot of songs are going to be removed from it, so hopefully a lot of my favorites will be around till the very end.! Tonight's stream will probably start about 7 PM EST.

And that will wrap everything up folks! We'll see ya later!

The Nonsense Of Comcast's Data Cap

This week Comcast announced they are rolling out their 1.2 terabyte data cap to all states that it provides Internet Service... and needless to say I have my thoughts and opinions on this.

Today's Notes 11/27/20

Good afternoon everybody, 

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, and I know for a lot of folks, things were tough not being able to see family as per normal circumstances, but 2020 has not been a normal year to say the least. Still with things like Zoom, Skype and other video communication links, people can stay in touch a lot easier. Hell the IRS has been working on ways to expand how it can actually serve the public but incorporating that type of programming and you all know this year have more than proven its worth.

We got today off on a good start, with the fact I finally got an update on a package DaemonsWolf (twitch.tv/daemonsw0lf) mailed off to me more than two weeks ago. The United States Postal Service has been incredibly slow this November, thanks in no small part to the Donald Trump sabotaging it in order to tamper with the election that he LOST! (Yup, here's a reminder that TRUMP IS A LOSER). Anyway, if it arrives today, we might just have another variety stream featuring old school games... well old school as in late 1990s early 2000s.

Today's Fitness Boxing session felt real good, hell, you know you have a good workout when you feel that weird feeling jazzed up when you finish. Things just flowed really good, even though I may have missed more combos than I would've liked, and my timing could've been better, but felt really good afterward. It's always hard to describe, and since I'm doing this daily posts, finding different ways to talk about my workouts is not easy.

Last night's Star Trek Online stream was a long one, as we started at 6:30 PM EST and went to about 12:30 AM EST, doing a lot of missions in the Klingon Empire to get my Cardassian caught up on story events. We ended up maxing out my Alliance Battlecruiser and switched over to the Titan Science Destroyer to break that it. It's one of the few 'cross-type' ships as it can switch between being focused on being a typical escort or a science vessel. Being a hybrid for lack of a better term, it does lack some of the hull strength a typical science vessel has over an escort, but it certain pack a punch. 

With Comcast looking to screw over it's customers in 2021 (and I am one of those customers, have been since 2006), obviously falling asleep watching YouTube or Twitch streams is not going to be totally logical to do. Believe me, I often leave a lurk on as many Twitch channels as I can to give, and that bandwidth does add up quite a lot. So my intention is to start listening to audible books again, and obviously that means using Audible for the most part. Now the funny thing about Audible is it's desktop app on PC doesn't always work, in fact even if you download the audio book to your PC, it will still stop playing after 6 minutes. This isn't the case with the mobile phone version of the app though. It's really a weird thing, as it doesn't effect everything that I have in my library at the moment.

Anyway, what I started listening to was the audio book for Red Dward, based on the show of the same name and is narrated by Chris Barrie who played Arnold Judas Rimmer on the show, who does an incredible job of bringing to life not just his own character but the characters of Lister, The Cat and Kryten. Certainly a great listen.

That will wrap things up for now, see ya later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden for my usual nonsense!

Today's Notes 11/26/20

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone,

It's a day many use to say thanks to all thing that were positive in their lives during the year, but 2020 has been on hell of a year so far hasn't it? Personally I'm grateful I have a job that was able to easily switch to having people work remotely, and when this whole Covid-19 thing gets settles I hope my job keeps up the practice as it's proven to get more people onto shifts that they normally wouldn't work (case in point I prefer afternoons but as you all know I've mostly worked evenings forcing a change in the streaming schedule). Also I'm very thankful to everyone who has support my Twitch channel (twitch.tv/fredcasden) this year in different ways, through either subscribing, bits, straight donations, gifted games and so forth. You all make it worth doing!

I will admit I didn't get up till about 1:30 PM today, so yeah, the day is already passed me by for the most part, but we did get in the daily Fitness Boxing session, a nice solid workout that included Beginner Combo #1, Uppercut Combo #1 and Hook Combo #1. Hell at the time I'm writing this I still haven't eaten anything yet! But I will resolve that shortly lol bwahahaha.

Last night's stream was pretty epic, big thanks to Foxy_Melly and Mech3003 for choosing to re-sub to my Twitch Channel using their Twitch Prime subscriptions! And also we had a huge raid from DaemonsW0lf that ended up extending the stream and extra hour which was awesome. Oh in terms of what we did last night, it ended up being a night of variety, featuring Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Paladins &, Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2 Grand Prix. PandaSweet81 also joined in for some of the madness during the Paladins segment, and we were both reminded of just how bad and random people can be in not picking proper team combinations or focusing on the objective at hand.

Tonight we'll be doing a Star Trek Online stream, because of course its Thursday, and I'll probably start way earlier than normal because of it being Thanksgiving, or as I have called it the past few years, Treksgiving. We may end up doing several episodes to try and get my Cardassian in the Klingon Empire closer to catching up to the overall story.

Now if I can be serious for a moment, many of you are unaware of whom I use as an Internet Service Provider, that being Comcast who is rolling out more data caps on customers in 2021 (https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/data#e7d0f35e-2633-43bb-8248-d820d9ca6b59). Now some markets have already had data caps, and let me tell ya something a cap 1.2 Terabytes is not enough to account for Streamers, not to mention Comcast does not exactly bill its customers at the end of the month, the billing cycles at least for me are towards the middle of the month, meaning it's never an exact time period for these data caps to be calculated. Say for example if I had a big month of data usage in from September 1 to September 30, but my billing cycle is Sept 10 to October 9, and I receive my bill or my account info isn't updated to account for the next bill until October 10, the time frames do not match up. And let's be straight up here folks, Comcast tried to sneak this in for the states they are now putting under data caps by being very sly about things... one they plan on rolling out an Unlimited Data Plan next year as indicated on that page I linked to (indicated by the coming soon image)... but they put the information about the states being added to the Data Cap nonsense in small print, with the hope no one would notice. 

Starting in March 2021, customers not on an unlimited data plan who exceed 1.2 TB in a month will have a one-time courtesy month credit under the plan applied to their accounts, and will be responsible for any data overage changes after that. Blocks of 50 GB will automatically be added to customers' accounts for an additional fee of $10 each plus tax. Charges will not exceed $100 each month, no matter how much data a customer uses. *Includes the states of CT, DE, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, parts of NC, NY, parts of OH, PA, VA, VT, WV, and the District of Columbia.

And on that bombshell, we'll wrap this up here... time for me to go raid the fridge!

Today's Notes 11/25/20

Good afternoon everybody,

It's the eve of Thanksgiving and for some reason that I cannot wrap my head around, millions of people are risking themselves and their own families to travel via airplane for the festival of consuming a large avian creature. Look I somewhat understand it in normal years, but in a normal year Thanksgiving is one of the more dangerous holidays, now compound that with COVID-19 and the fact that its been spreading like wild fire over the last few months.... it doesn't make sense why anyone would want to be in a confined space and risk exposure. Do you seriously trust everyone to follow the rules of keeping their masks on during flights to say nothing of how some news stations around the country have shown footage of packed airports... look, if you are too far away to drive to where you want to go, then it's not worth the risk. But I guess idiots are going to be idiots.

Anyway, today's Fitness Boxing session was pretty damn good, or at least I felt good afterward. Lot of work on the core with Hook Combo #2, Uppercut Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #2. For the first time in a few weeks I did step on the scale, and my weight dropped from 121.5 kilograms to 119.3 kilograms or from about 267 pounds down to 263 pounds. Part of the reason why I stopped stepping on the scale every few days as per the games instructions was because my weight was either staying steady or fluctuating upwards... and that was kind of depressing. I think I'll continue to do that, only weighing in once every couple of weeks, that way there is room for chance.

 

 Last night's stream of Kingdom Hearts RE Chain of Memories was what it was, actually got my butt handed to be by Cloud and Hades in the Olympus Coliseum, and it wasn't until I fast the Trickmaster at the end of the Wonderland did I understand the 'sleight' system. Because of my lack of enthusiasm for this game, we'll just limit it to Mondays and Tuesdays for the foreseeable future. Besides there are '13 floores' and we've already covered 4, so it kind of breaks things up evenly, and from what I understand 1 floor is basically fully of mini games involving Winnie The Pooh.

Not totally sure what we'll be doing for tonight' stream as of yet, we might make it a variety stream where I just bounce from game to game. We'll see for sure later on over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 11/24/20

Good afternoon everybody,

You know that feeling when something totally unexpected happens? That basically was what happened last night during the start of the Kingdom Hearts RE: Chain of Memories stream, when someone I knew from High School popped in, which certainly was a shocker. Goes to show you never know when surprises may happen.... but that's the whole point of surprises now isn't it?

Speaking of Kingdom Hearts RE: Chain of Memories, I can safely say my tolerance for the game is going to be very limited, based totally on its card-based combat system in a 3D environment. Yes I made it through Traverse Town and Agraba, but having to constantly reset the deck to try and make sure I can do anything is very tedious. I'm betting that if this was in a 2D format it would be more appealing, as it seems like it should be more of a traditional RPG style. Also the blatant reuse of graphics from Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 is pretty damn obvious. Anyway, we'll continue it tonight... and hopefully I can figure out a way to down it's audio cause I did listen back to the clips from last night and it was unusually loud, which is amazing considering how the audio for Kingdom Heart Final Mix was often very quiet in comparison. 

Anyway today we did get the day started with a solid 30 minuet Fitness Boxing session, with Hook Combo #1, Beginner Combo #1 and Triple Combo #1. Did have a couple of punches register as awkward misses, which surprised me... and those who have seen any stream that has featured Fitness Boxing knows my reaction to when I do something and it not registering. I am hoping that with its sequel, that issue gets resolved, but we'll eventually find out about that.

With this Thursday being Thanksgiving, the weekly updates for Star Trek Online have been moved up to today, which means we have some patch notes regarding thing... and another indication that the developers screwed up even further when it came to the release of the T6 Titan... as some folks were able to get it for free using an in-game coupon.  

General:  

• Updated Memorial plaque to include Ben Cross.   
• The T6 Ship Coupon Rewarded in Event Campaigns no longer allows players to claim the Titan Science Destroyer [T6] as it is a new ship.  
  • All players who already used the coupon to claim the Titan Science Destroyer [T6] will continue to have access to the ship 
• Resolved an issue where ships didn't come stock with experimental weapon equipped. 
• Titan-Class Science Destroyer [T6] Updates:  
  • Fleet version is now correctly sorted as a fleet ship in the ship vendor. 
  • The registry number on the left Luna nacelle now appears properly. 
  • The rear phaser nodes now fire from their correct positions. 
  • The mission pod no longer has a gap underneath it when combined with other Luna hull and saucer variants. 
• Updated help text to include new features of loadouts.
  

And on that note, I'll wrap this up to go have some lunch! See ya later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 11/23/20

Good afternoon everybody...

Well woke up late (again) but I decided to do a bonus stream of Fitness Boxing, Animal Crossing New Horizons and Super Mario Bros 35. The Fitness Boxing session was a solid Strength and Cardio routine, certainly felt good, hell I got into such a good groove that when I did the traditional 16 ounce water chug all that H2O went down smooth.

That said, some troll did pop into my stream saying if I 'danced to a song' that is apparently featured in either Just Dance 2020 or 21, they'd give me 500 bits. Let me state the following, no matter how large or small a channel, trying to entice a streamer into doing something they don't want to do is going to get you timed out, if the streamer is on their game. Calling them derogatory names is going to get you instantly banned and reported. So if anyone wants to know the twitch name of the troll I had to deal with, it's byhecml_yt. 

I have noticed that if you get into the habit of giving items to residents in Animal Crossing New Horizons, it makes it easier to want to track each one down every day... that said, it is more often than not tough to remember what items they gave me, which sometimes results in me giving them an item they gave to me, and there is a line of dialog within the game making them wonder if its the item they gave me before and then shrugging it off. Best advice, the second a resident give you and item that you don't want give it to another resident.

Had a nice run of Super Mario 35, finished in 3rd place only because I ran out of time... still being in the top 3 is always nice when it happens.

Last night's Overwatch stream was full of fun and chaos, including some great unintentionally funny moments. Big thanks as always to Kalenal and PandaSweet for joining in the mayhem that is Sunday Night Overwatch.

Tonight's stream will see the return of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix, with the 2nd game in the collection, Kingdom Hearts RE Chain of Memories. It was originally released on the Game Boy Advance, and then later saw a remake for the PlayStation 3 I believe. I've never played either version before so there is going to be a learning curve for sure!

And that covers all of today's notes, we'll catch ya later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

Today's Note 11/22/20

Good afternoon everybody...

Woke up super late today, but this is more understandable as I ended up trying to figure out what would it take to get my old Playstation 3, and what it does is when it powers up, the green light turns yellow then red. With what I read there might be a hardware failure within the consoles motherboard. ... The most common reason for Montherboard errors in Consoles is caused by overheating. And if I remember right, I ran the PS3 real damn hard back in 2012-2014. So probably I will end up either looking to get it fixed or finding one on the secondary market at some point. 

Did do a Fitness Boxing session, solid workout, nothing too out of the ordinary. but we're getting closer to fully unlocking all the customization options for the trainers while also being physically active!

Last night's stream started with Twitch Sings, and we did a nice mix of solos and duets, actually finished doing all my favorite songs on expert, and I started to try and do songs I've never heard of... and yeah that didn't go well. particularly when I was reminded at how much 90s R&B sucks!  

On the plus side, we test out, live on stream hooking up my old Playstation 2 Slim, and my biggest concern with it is how warm it gets considering there is next to no ventilation on the PS2-S. The positive side it works, looks and sounded decent, not sure how to switch it from being 16:9 visual output to 4:3 but hell, it was cool. All my memory cards still had saves and amazingly enough I still have nearly every game I have a save file for, with the exception of Street Fighter Anniversary Collection and Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution. That said, we were successful in running a PS1 game on the PS2 through my Elgato Capture Card, and so that means we'll be able expand things out a bit more than I thought.

So the PS1 game we ran last night for bit was Darkstalkers: The Knight Warriors, and fuck me, I can't remember the last time I played a fighting game that didn't allow for use of the analog sticks, but trying to remember how to play it was an experience. I'm also reminded  of how small and uncomfortable the PS2 controllers feel for a fighting game when you're limited to trying with doing down-forwards, down-backs with a D-Pad.

On the other hand, the PS2 game we tested out was Marvel Vs Capcom 2... and good lord how many hours did I sink into that game back in the day, just the scores on the leaderboard are silly as hell. But since the memory card still had my save, it means I have all the characters unlocked. And since I could use the analog stick with it, that means remembering how to play and do supers and stuff cam pretty natually. As usual Sakura ends up being my main because Sakura is BAE (she is my main in Street Fighter Alpha 2 and 3 as well). 

Tonight of course we'll be playing Overwatch, I already have the new Symmetra Skin so hopefully if anyone needs wins we'll be able to get them the victories needed to get the new skin. Tomorrow we'll be returning to Kingdom Hearts with Chains of Memories, to continue that saga

Best of the Week 11/15-21/2020

Here are the best moments from my twitch channel from over the week of November 15 to 21, 2020, which featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Super Mario Bros 35, Mass Effect, The Division 2, Star Trek Online, Twitch Sings, Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors and Marvel Vs Capcom 2! Be sure to come over to twitch.tv/fredcasden for daily streams! 

Quick Thoughts: Blues Brothers 2000

For this week's watch along over in my Discord, the featured film was Blues Brothers 2000. Makes sense since the original Blues Brothers film was featured last week.

So right toff the bat, here is a big question, as Elwood doesn't learn about Jake's death until a day after he gets out of prison and is waiting to be picked up.Now we know all the member of the band got out before Elwood did, but the question is, when would have Jake be released and when did he he did within the continuity of the Blues Brothers universe? If we go by date of John Belushi's death of March 5, 1982.... then that means no one told Elwood that Jake died until 1998... which is like a total dick move.

Okay, now I will admit I'm someone who does not have an issue with the character of Buster Blues... however, I am very much aware of how the studio (in this case Universal) pretty much forced the character into existence along with a number of other 'creative' notes that basically neutered what John Landis and Dan Aykroyd were hoping to accomplish with the sequel. Universal's meddling of things basically is what leads to the Joe Morton being in the film instead of Jim Belushi, because the studio, who didn't want to do the film to begin with and insisted on various details, wanted the film out in theaters in early 1998. Belushi ended up being unavailable because he was committed to a show on ABC (and this was before the show According to Jim). Within the context of Blues Brothers lore, Jim Belushi was already portraying the character known as 'Zee' in concert with the Blues Brothers band along side Aykroyd and John Goodman as Might Mack, in particular with the opening of the House of Blues clubs around the United States in the mid-90s, and the Belushi was also apart of the Blues Brothers Half Time show at the Super Bowl in 1996. So with Belushi being unavailable and a studio, the part of 'Zee' was re-written to create a tribute to the legendary Cab Calloway who played Curtis in the first film, with the character being called Cabel 'Cab' Chamberlain. The obvious parallel and Belushi connection is certainly seen in the Revival Tent / John The Revalator sequence will Cab is 'transformed' and the character performs the same backflip sequence Jake does in the first film when he has his realization at the Triple Rock Church.

Some people, probably most notably the idiot known as The Nostalgia Critic, aka Doug Walker, takes issue with the number of musical numbers in Blues Brothers 2000, and to a point that is kind of understandable. But when you look at in the context of how old many of performers were in Blues Brothers 2000 and how many have since passed away, the film becomes more an awesome time capsule and showcase of some of the greatest music performers of all time. Just take a look at the Louisana Gators Boys line up that includes BB King, Issac Hayes, Koko Taylor, Steve Winwood, Clarence Clemons, Bo Diddley and others, then realize throughout the rest of the movie there is Eddie Floyd, Junior Wells, Aretha Franklin, Sam Moore, James Brown, Wilson Pickett and Lonnie Brooks and you realize... Blues Brothers 2000 is rather special and I'm serious when I say, the collection of musical talent featured in it will never be equaled.

That said, I do take one small issue with the Soundtrack to the film... in particularly with some versions of songs performed by the Blues Brothers band not being on it, particularly the version of Green Onion heard after the Bluesmobile runs out of gas. Live recording of Green Onions appear on the Made In America and The Blues Brothers & Friends Live album, but I would love hear the full version of it the band recorded for this movie. Not to mention the band's version of Last Night was also pretty good.... Now don't get me wrong, the sound track album is great, but we probably could've done without John Popper's Harmonica Musings and Let There Be Drums by the Carl LaFong Trio... but that's just my opinion.

Today's Notes 11/21/20

Good afternoon everybody,

The 2020 Gaming Tour added another game finished to the list last night when I finished my first ever console run of Mass Effect, making it the 43rd game finished this year on stream. Now to the shock of some, with my Female Shepard character the Paramour achievement was done with Kaiden instead of Liara for a couple of reasons, one being I can't stand Liara, which is well established and two I've never did that route in my previous PC play-throughs, so it was something different. Add onto that, normally when it comes to the choice on Virmire, normally the one I save is whoever is at the nuke, so obviously the person saved was Kaiden instead of Ashley, but the twist here is we went to save Kaiden who was at the A.A. tower.... which meant I got to see a cut scene I never seen before of the one left behind defending the nuke, which was pretty bad ass. 

With Mass Effect being finished the question of what will be the next game featured comes to mind, at the moment I'm considering Kingdom Heart Chain of Memories in addition to a few other games. Certainly a lot of possibilities but it'll come down what do I think I will be able to finish before the end of the year. After all last year we finished 44 games with 2 that carried over into this year.

Today's Fitness Boxing routine was felt pretty good with Weaving, Defensive and Hook Combos being the three sets done. All were about the same length of time roughly 11.5 minuets each which made the session pretty even with not one set throwing a monkey wrench into the proverbial works. 

In the world of Animal Crossing New Horizons, it seems my daily routine is gifting one item to one resident of the island and if I get something back, starting a chain reaction of gifting that item to another resident and if they give me something back, gifting that to a third resident and so on and so on. It is pretty hilarious on how deep that could go, and thankfully there are only 10 residents on my little island of Ocean View.

Really thinking today's watch along will be Blues Brothers 2000 over in my discord channel, yes it is not as good as the original, but when you realize how much the studio interfered in the creative process, one must realize Blues Brothers 2000 is more about the music than it being a film. Obviously I'll have more to say on this with the Quick Thoughts bit.

Also with it being Saturday that means tonight we're doing Twitch Sings, which of course shuts down January 1, 2021. Some folks are looking for ways to continue doing some form of Karaoke on Twitch and I've given some thought to maybe using Rocksmith on stream to learn to play guitar, but since that uses license music I better not do that. Still we'll have a lot of fun later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

 

Star Trek Online's Titan Screw Up

The new Tier 6 Titan Class ships was supposed to be for Federation players open... but someone screwed up and the Klingons can get it.... and so it raises questions!

Mass Effect: PC Vs Console Controls

Since lately I've been playing the Xbox 360 version of Mass Effect I can't help but have a slight issues with some of the controls when it comes to switch weapons and using abilities, compared to how smoothly both are on the PC version. Plus: A horrible idea of how to include Shepard in Mass Effect Andromeda 2! 

Today's Notes 11/20/20

Good afternoon everybody,

Today started off real nice as my official N7 Hoodie that I ordered from BioWare's online store arrived and it's really damn comfortable... and in addition to that, so did my copy of Mass Effect: The Complete Comics Collection as well. So that's a hell of a nice way to start the day. Flipping through the comics, I can say the artwork is certainly incredible, but here is a bit of gripe I have... there is no table of contents, which seems like a rather odd thing to leave out. On the other hand Aria is on the cover so that makes up for it in a way... because the first rule of Omega is don't fuck with Aria T'loak!

I already recording this week's commentary video and its focus will be on the controls of the console version of Mass Effect versus it's PC counterpart, as well as a brief sidebar into how to include Shepard in the Andromeda series if people are that desperate for it. That will be posted by about 4 PM EST over on YouTube.

Of course I did do a Fitness Boxing session today, keeping the Strength and Cardio routine at the 35 minuet session, which includes the stretching. Made a few mental mistakes during it where I basically end up screwing up an entire combo which made me glad I did not stream it cause that would've been embarrassing to say the least.

I'm up in the air over what I'll stream tonight, if I figure things right I could probably knock out the rest of Mass Effect because I know all I have left is Virmire, Illos and the raid on the Citadel. Or I could hold off on that and maybe try a general Playstation 2 stream. Was hoping to use the version DaemonsW0lf sent me by it appears the United States Postal Service has slowed down all mail coming out of Texas due to Covid-19.

Last night's Star Trek Online stream saw us wrap up the Gamma Quadrant story arc and being the Discovery content. Did have to cut the stream little short because I needed to take care of something personal, but my Cardassian Captain is within striking distance of the being fully caught up in the current story arc. And apparently there was a bug with the Faction alignment for the new Titan class vessel which was supposed to Federation only but apparently Klingon asspcoated Captain can get it to.... which actually would make more sense for any lockbox or lobi ships.... but still can't complain too much

And that will do it for today's notes, we'll see you over on twitch.tv/fredcasden later tonight!