Just Another Blogger Post Where The Original Draft Was Not Saved!

Good morning everyone, 

Here is another blog post where things totally were not saved in their original format by Blogger for whatever reason, and thus I’m having to recall everything that I wrote originally.

Last night's stream of Overwatch was a lot of fun as usual, we were joined by PandaSweet for the entire stream, and we had a lot of more wins than losses that’s for sure. We actually had a couple of wins that took place on the Volskaya Industries map that lasted less than three minutes and thirty seconds with us on attack. I had a couple of Plays of the Game in Junkenstein’s Revenge as Cassidy and Torbjourn, plus one in a Quick Play match as Moira. Other characters used were D.va, Ashe, Soldiers 76, Mei and Junkrat.

OF course, there were some issues with my Internet Service Provider, Comcast/Xfinity, which resulted in the first 10 minutes of the stream being counted as lost footage. I've documented and I'll collect various notes so the next time I contact them I'll have a case to force a technician to come out and check everything. 

Twitch Clips

• And boom goes the dynamite
• Play like your hair is on fire! 
• It's High Noon... Rest In Peace!
  

We had two raids during the stream, first was from Pau6always who was playing Rocket League over at twitch.tv/pau6always! We also had a raid from CallMeMsGalaxy who was also playing Overwatch over at twitch.tv/callmemsgalaxy! 

For last night's raid we dropped in on Joliet4 who was doing a short music stream over on twitch.tv/joliet4!

Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid appears to be in an unplayable state, as I tried to do few matches to get back into the flow of playing it... but the game itself kept crashing. I was playing it on my Xbox One S , I tried uninstalling it, reinstalling it and power cycling my console. Now to see if it was a hardware issue, I did play some Smite, and knocked out this week's challenges with three games as a Mayan god and 2 as a Guardian by using Cabrakan. I had no issues at all with that. I did see on a few forums that Power Rangers has had an increasing series of crashes posted on various versions of the game depending on various factors. The good news is that I did get both of Cabrakan's achievements in a single match so it was worth it.

SMITE Achievements

• TREMORS!: "Unlock the Smite Award "TREMORS!"

• Shield Smash: "Unlock the Smite Award "Shield Smash"!

So the question becomes, will I ever stream Power Rangers; Battle for the Grid again... we'll see, I'll try installing it on the Xbox Series S console and see if I have the same issues.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Difficult Challenge Combo #2, Difficulty Challenge Combo #3 and Biceps Shape Focus Combo. This was also day number 700 in a row of working out,

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.  

For tonight's stream we will be featuring Tom Clancy's The Division 2 with Iceman to finally check out the Keenly College content.

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

 

Those Fun Little Loyalty Missions In Mass Effect 2

Good Afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Mass Effect 2 covered a lot of ground as we began work on the Loyalty missions and restocking up on all the resources to make sure we can do as many upgrades as possible.  Also managed to get a few combat related achievements taken cared of , getting the Brawler achievement resulted in me getting killed, and I had a number of close calls as well during a few side quests. In fact I think I got them all finished, but I'm not 100% sure.

Jack's Loyalty Mission is always a hoot just for the fact that what she thinks happened isn't exactly true, and Jacob's Loyalty Mission is good for a Walking Dead: Telltale Series joke since the voice actor for Jacob's Father and Lee are the same person. Garrus' Loyalty mission is a bit of a pain in the ass because of the giant mechs, which we also encountered in a side mission. This resulted in me not having any heavy ammo and Grunt's Loyalty mission being something to deal with. We also recruited Tali and did her Loyalty mission, which is always great, particularly when it comes to having Shepard shouting down the Admiralty board.

Of course what makes the Loyalty missions great is that for the most part, if you go Renegade, you get the best possible scenes.  

Also yesterday was Commander Shepard's birthday, which was kind of cool for lore purposes.

Mass Effect 2 Achievements

• Master at Arms: Kill enemies with 5 different heavy weapons during the game
• Catharsis: Gain the loyalty of the biotic Convict
• Warp Specialist: Warp the barriers of 25 enemies
• Ghost Ship: Complete the investigation of a derelict alien vessel
• The Quarian: Successfully recruit the quarian
• Tactician: Hit 20 different targets with multiple biotic powers to combine the effects
• Brawler: Shoot and kill 20 enemies while they're knocked back by a punch
• Ghost of the Father: Gain the loyalty of the Cerberus Operative
• Treason: Gain the loyalty of the quarian
• Fade Away: Gain the loyalty of Archangel

Twitch Clip Links

• Achievement: Warp Specialist 
• Critical Mission Failure 
• Leave my crew out of your political BS! 
• It Wouldn't Bother Shepard 

For the raid we dropped in on YRGamerBunni who we randomly found on Twitch and playing the Legendary Edition of Mass Effect 2, over on twitch.tv/YRGamerBunni! I did see something a bit odd, since they were playing the PC version of the Legendary Edition, the aspect ration for dialog and cut-scenes kept switching on their stream from 16:9 to 4:3.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 workout featured the following exercises: Hook Combo #2, Front-Back Step Combo and Beginner Combo #1. Set a new personal best during Free Training on Hook Combo #2 set on No Mercy Difficulty.

It appears the WWE is all about unifying championships once again, as the ADHD managing of their own roster and storylines goes through the cycle of being too damn lazy to actually having distinct shows with no-cross over is rearing its ugly head again.

Taking a long shot to apply for a Virtual / Remote position at Comcast/Xfinity... I will not be surprised if I get shot down for the exact same reason I get shot down for every other job I've applied for over the past 5 years: 'no college degree'.  On the flip side, this unfortunately resulted in an increase of 'scam calls' as frauds pretending to be staffing agencies started peppering my phone this morning. In fact out of 5 calls received, only one had the company name come up on my caller ID.

For tonight's stream we'll be continuing Mass Effect 2, we'll probably lead off by looking for side quests before landing on Tuchanka to deal with Mordin and Grunt's Loyalty Missions. We might also do Lair of the Shadow Broker as well.

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

From A Wedding In Hell To Dropped Frames

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream was certainly plagued with some issues as we lost connection half way through... but oddly enough my internet did not go down at all. We did drop a lot of frames, but near as I tell, the issue may have been on Twitch's end, but Comcast Xfinity gave an indication something may have been wrong on my end. But I know there was scheduled maintenance at 1 AM last night so hopefully that resolved things for tonight.

Anyway, we finished up Ugly Americans Apocalypsegeddon, , and since I was playing so much of it off-stream to level up Callie to max status, it was a breeze with a few dangerous spots if I got a little too cocky. I did enjoy the story, everything being resolved in a 'sitcom like fashion', with a nice little epilogue. Now I was a little peeved because I couldn't find the last secret file to get the final weapon to earn a third achievement during the stream for the game... but it drops randomly, so re-running levels  until it pop up was the best solution as I knocked it out as well as a run of all the games' original 11 stages without using a special attack to get two more achievements. 

The remaining achievements for Ugly Americans Apocalypsegeddon both involve co-op play, one for doing a complete run of the original 11 stages with other players, and the other is getting 50 revives. I might be able to do that second one solo with the use of a second controller. On a side note, among all those who have played it, I'm ranked 540th overall, which is in the top 5% of 10,800 players. Also the game does have an actual episode that is unclockable, 'G.I. Twayne' which aired in season two.

The Gears of War Ultimate Edition half of the steam was really plagued by the drop frames and lost connection issue I mentioned earlier. Still Iceman and I got a lot done with Acts III and most of Act IV done, so next week we should be able to finish it out right while also looking for the COG tags. There were a few silly moments thankfully that were mostly issue free with the clips I segmented out. 

Still with the issues that hampered the stream, that actually does end up resulting in the schedule of VODs being ported over to my YouTube channel getting back to being seven days from initial broadcast.

 Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon

• Demons, The Bane Of My Existence: Locate and collect all of the Demon Babies.
• See You In Hell: Complete the game using any character.
• It's the Collector!: Collect all the projectiles.
• We Don't Need No Magic!: Complete all levels without using special attacks
  

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition Achievements

• Smell Good Too...: Reunited with Baird and Cole inside the Imulsion Factory
• Go Time, Show Time: Delta descended into the mines
• Honor-Bound: Recovered 22 COG tags
• Broken Fingers: Killed a Corpser
• Lethal Acoustics: Deployed the Sonic Resonator
• Raven Down: Delta found downed chopper
• Fry Up With a Side of Greens: Killed a Berserker in the Conservatory

Twitch Clip Links

1. Defeating Bethesda
2. Finishing off Desdemona
3. Sweet! 
4. It ran just past Iceman 
5. The Charm of Bender No Longer Applies To Baird 

For the raid we dropped in on Kalenal as they were working on their Blue Mage over on in Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal! 

Side note: My Xbox achievement streak is continued through today thanks to the fourth and fifth achievements I listed earlier for Ugly Americans Apocalypsegeddon! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Straight Combo #2, Sway back Combo and Hip Shape Focus Combo! I woke up late and did not do anything extra.

For tonight's stream we'll be doing some raids, fishing and maybe some blue mage stuff in Final Fantasy XIV! 

So we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Yo Ho Yo Ho A Pirates Life For Me

Good afternoon everyone,

Technically we did two streams last night... thanks to Comcast causing some issues at around 9 PM Eastern, where the upload speed was all over the place! Seriously the last time I seen my Upload speeds being that erratic were one year ago, and it took a letter to the FCC to get it sorted out! 

Anyway, the stream(s) featured Kingdom Hearts III as we covered the Caribbean part of the story, which ties in with Pirates of the Caribbean films, namely the third one which I have never seen. This introduce a big wide open world where a lot of sailing is involved, ship-to-ship combat, searching everywhere for chests and goodies. Since the PotC movies are live action, that meant Donald and Goofy got more realistic looks, particularly Donald whose feathers really looked incredible. 

Now the ship to ship combat aspect certainly took some getting use too in regards to how maneuver the Leviathan, figuring out max range of the canons and trying to build up the meter to unleash some special attacks. I think more effort was put into it than the the Gummi Ship portion of the game, but that's just my opinion on the matter.

Now, having never watched the Pirates of the Caribbean films, I can't say how much was used and if too much was worked into the game, but at at least the music wasn't as much of an ear-worm as it was in Kingdom Hearts II! There really isn't that much interaction with Sora, Donald and Goofy with the characters from the PotC films, but at least that was explained away with Sora, Donald and Goofy needing to make sure they were prepared before going to the final battle.

Managed to get the Blademaster achievement, which is for fully powering up a Keyblade, which was pretty cool. Only 6% of those who have played the Xbox version of KH3 has done that.

Next time we featured Kingdom Hearts III we have one more Disney tie-in world to visit, and the last set of Lucky Emblems to find,

For the raid we dropped in on PrincessPashley who was  doing a live remote stream over at twitch.tv/PrincessPashley!

KINGDOM HEARTS III Achievements

• Blademaster: Obtain a Keyblade that is fully powered up.
• Way of the Pirate: Adventure through The Caribbean and complete the story.

Twitch Clip Links

1. Is Ariel Dead In The Pirates Of The Caribbean Universe?
2. A Pirate Ship Is On A Pirate Ship! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured 31 minute workout with Hip Shape Focus Combo, Straight Combo #2 and Sway Back Combo for an estimated calorie burn of 468 kcal. As of today we're up to 34 out of 50 hours for the Hiro's Champion EX Achievement

Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise Stats For 2/6 to 2/12/2022

• Punches Thrown: 10,283
• Estimated Calorie Burn: 4332.59 kcal
  

Worked on just doing some dailies in Final Fantasy XIV, think I'll save some things for streaming purposes. Ended up doing The Final Day trial twice last night... which is a bit much for that particular fight, but the 2nd time was randomly selected because of the dailies.. Also got downed and resurrected four consecutive times during that 2nd... that was not a good experience at all! I do have my Gear Score up to 562 as a Bard. 

Saw that the Chrono Cross Remaster is up for pre-sale and its going to be a cheap one, think we'll grab that closer to its release date.

For tonight's stream we're going to do a full run of Life is Strange: Before the Storm Remastered, we're going to have a guide up to get all the collectables and to hopefully have an incident free experience with it unlike with Life is Strange: Remastered.

And on that note we'll see you later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 3/29/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Comcast continues to perform up to the standards I am currently paying for, as the string of nights with no issues continues.That said, knowing that Comcast owns NBC and Peacock, while also knowing they spent $1 Billion Dollars to get exclusive rights to the WWE Network raises an eyebrow when they are going out of their way to edit out content that doesn't meet their standards... which is stupid when once you consider half the stuff that already exists withing the Comcast owned libraries of movies and TV shows. Well just one more reason for me to cut off the cable service.

Last night's stream of Overwatch was mostly Mayhem matches, and big thanks to PandaSweet for being apart of things. We certainly ran into some people making odd match up decision choices through out the night in relation on who to focus on. Did pick up a play of the game as Moira early on, so that's always a good thing to have a scene stealing moment!

Played more Forza Horizon 4 off-stream last night as well, getting all the qualifiers out of the way, now I wonder how often do the seasons change with the game, if it's once a week, once a day or what. If it's once a week, we might just pair it up with Star Trek Online which has been a struggle with filling out Thursdays as of late.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was streamed, and I set new personal bests in terms of estimated calories burned and time spent working out. We also knocked out the Hiro's Buddy achievement, and we need to do about 22 more exercise sets using him to get his last character specific achievement. That said, I did struggle with a few motions leading to a higher than normal fitness age score which is also ugly to see, but there is no consistency to gauge what leads to scores being terrible.

Tonight we'll be back to Dragon Age Inquisition, resuming things in the Westward Approach. I did go out of my way to tackle some loose ends in the Emerald Graves off stream, but I know there is a dragon there that we'll save for doing on stream.

And on that note we'll see you later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 3/25/21

Good morning everybody,

Comcast's streak of delivering the service I pay monthly for (or rather pay two months in advance for) continues to hold steady, as we had no stream issues last night. Then again the memory of having a customer who went to FCC is probably still in their minds.

Anyway last night's stream was all about ESPN Major League Baseball on the PlayStation 2, as we played five games last night (two against the Montreal Expos and three against the Boston Red Sox), winning 4 and losing 1. The one loss came against the Expos, and we could have had another loss considering how the in-game version of Curt Schilling baffled the hell out of me. Also went out of my way to find Terry Mullholland who was on the Cleveland Indians roster, giving me a much better option for an emergency starter than Joey Eischen. If fact we traded Eischen for Mullholland. Tempted to see if I could add Mike Williams to my bullpen.

I did do some off-stream grinding in Dragon Age Inquisition, cleaning up some quests in areas we've already covered on stream. while also getting some war table things done. Mostly done this so that the next time with stream it we're not back tracking everywhere! 

Today's Fitness Boxing session was pretty solid on all fronts, a nice standard session to get us back on track from yesterdays short one. Had a few questionable misses related to ducking and weaving from the South Paw stance, not much I could do with that.

Anyway, we have a few new additions to my collections, Super Mario 3D World (& Bowser's Fury), & Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late[Cl-R] Collectors Edition for the Nintendo Switch, plus Record of Agarest War Zero - Limited Edition & The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection.for the PlayStation 3.

Tonight we have Star Trek Online scheduled, and the First Contact Day event has started, which is basically a bunch of daily activities to earn some in-game rewards, nothing major as we continue to wait for the next big installment of story content while also being amazed at how many bugs are in the game in existing content. 

And on that note we'll see you later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

 

Today's Notes 3/23/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream had no technical issues regarding my internet connection, which would have been funny considering I finally got a call from Comcast regarding all the issues I was having. The odd thing is I laid out every detail and they had no good answer to explain the poor over the phone customer service, the fact that @ComcastCares on Twitter was more responsive, and the fact they were going to charge me for issues that was their fault. Well that is one more thing to keep in mind if issues pop up again/

Anyway we tackled a lot in Dragon Age Inquisition last night, doing character stuff for Cassandra and Dorian, while also locking in the romance with Sera. We spent the majority of the night in the Emerald Graves, which probably was a mistake as I started running into enemies much higher in terms of level requirements to deal with, and I realized that Emerald Graves is meant to be dealt with later in the game. Still this means I should have an easier go at it tonight when I go to tackle other things.

Loaded up Animal Crossing New Horizons this morning for a bit, getting around the island and so forth. Tomorrow is Skye's Birthday so I have to remember to play it tomorrow morning before doing the journal entry or tomorrow afternoon before the stream. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was a standard 35 minutes, give or take, with a few questionable misses but not as many as there were yesterday. Still rather irked about that. Didn't do an extra set, but we are ahead of last week's pace because of the longer workers out the last three days.

I've been considering doing reaction videos for my YouTube channel, problem is while technically I count as a millennial, anything that would be considered for  'First Time Watching Reaction', I've already seen, because I'm closer to being Gen X in terms of what I've seen and read over the years. 

Anyway, we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 3/20/21

Good evening everybody,

Yup I overslept today... but hey, it's not like I had any serious plans for the afternoon anyway. Last night's stream saw no frame drops, so Comcast is staying on the ball, but getting in touch with Jerry from their Corporate Customer Service division is proven to be a damn trial in and of itself, because if they say to the FCC they spoke with me directly,, that will be a damn lie. Yes everything has been going great, but I want to make damn sure they know why I took the steps I did.

Anyway, we kicked off last night's stream with Gran Turismo 5, a racing game that featured all sorts of awesome vehicles, and I was surprised at how gorgeous that game still looks. Last time I played it was back in 2013, and it was a real joy. Now remembering how to corner and the fact that acceleration and break are not the triggers on the controller meant there was some interesting moments of me going off track.

We then jumped to X-Men the Arcade Game, doing a complete run using Dazzler, and I did start an online lobby, and near as I can tell it all still works. Granted no one stumbled into my game, so we couldn't see if that worked and what the latency would be like, but hey we had fun going through it.

Now I did say we were going to try Sonic The Hedgehog 2006... and while I remember beating this game way back in the day, I clearly don't have the patience to deal with the horrible camera angle and very loose controls. The fact that Sega rushed Sonic 06 into the development and basically merged it with another game they were working on in a desperate attempt to celebrate the Blue Blur's 15th anniversary was very much exposed by the fact that the games in the franchise that came out after it like Sonic Generation and Sonic Forces are far superior by not trying to do as much. Of course we did have a bit comedy with the fact that Sonic 06 is not listed on Twitch, which goes to show how Sega feels about it.

TNA Impact, the game that could be blame for driving Midway out of business was also featured last night, and for a game that was hyped to be like WWF No Mercy, I can safely say TNA Impact after all these years is nothing more than an arcade style wrestling game like the WWE SmackDown games. With a clunky control scheme and perhaps the stupidest gimmick match in wrestling history (Ultiamte X), it's a good game for a laugh and that's about it. That said, it does have a story mode... and maybe we'll suffer through that... who knows.

Marvel Vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes was also on the lineup, as part oft he Marvel vs Capcom Origins collection, and it was certainly a struggle to get through the arcade mode, thanks to the input reading the game does at various points. Still we got through it, with Ryu and Chun Li after trying various combinations, and there is something excited about getting through games like that. Maybe cause it was an arcade game first and thus every time you loss you had to put a quarter in to continue, so when you finally beat you are super pumped!

Lastly, we closed out with a little Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues, which was released about the time of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I remember not liking this one as much as the first Lego Indiana Jones game and never finished it, so maybe we'll do that in full at some point, question is do I lay the PS3 version or the Steam one.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session started late because I did over slept, bit we did do a 45 minute workout, which meant seeing and hearing how Hiro acts during the No Mercy mode. and his voice actor really didn't get into delivering his lines. Still we burned a lot of calories... and now it's time to gain those calories back with dinner!

Tonight we'll be starting up Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, the final game (as of this writing) in the series, so looking forward to seeing how the plot and details of what's going on is revealed!

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 3/19/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Star Trek Online was all over the place, with doing at least one thing for every character, so some folks were doing full missions, others short patrols or special task force operations. So it was rather blah... that said, there was issues with STO's servers last night, and I know it was on Cryptic's end because out side of one blip there were no noticeable frame drops during the stream... so Comcast had their shit together.

On a side note, the mission Destiny on the Klingon Defense Force side is bugged to hell to the point where every time we left Kahless' ship it said to continue from an earlier point. It did mean we could farm some melee kills as it related to dealing with one of the Klingon Recruit objectives... so that was a positive.

Tonight's stream will be focused on putting the PlayStation 3 we received recently through its paces for an extended period of time. We'll start with Gran Turismo 5, do some racing and such and probably bounce around to a few different games. The whole point is to see if it can handle heavy use, as thus far I've done a few minor things, getting some of the games I had digitally installed and so forth. Basically tonight is gonna be random. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 sessions was pretty good outside of performing right weaves from the orthodox stance, just couldn't really get that good bounce for that today. We did reach a new milestone with the Heavyweight Puncher Lv. 2 achievement, which involved reaching a total punch count of 130,500, with my exact total being 130,791 at the time of this writing.

My job set out word that anyone who got vaccinated for COVID-19 will have the option to return to work at the office, granted I haven't yet, but there is no real incentive for me to want to go back to the office as a) it's expensive to travel and b) I hate being around a large group of people (and for me anything more than 5 people is way to damn much. Plus I take public transit to get where I need to go...  and yeah, if you've ever been on a bus in New Jersey you know the mutants you can see on it. The only up side is that certain assignments would be easier to do at the office, but the down side is over powers that.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

 

Today's Notes 3/18/21

Good morning everybody,

So Comcast Update, I again tried calling the Corporate Rep that tried to reach me on Tuesday afternoon (outside of time times I told them that I could easily be reached) and again got their voice mail. thankfully yesterday's work day and last night's stream didn't have any issues of note.

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball saw six games being played, two wins over the Detroit Tigers, two wins and a loss against the Kansas City Royals and a win over the Montreal Expos. I joke that my Philadelphia Phillies are so far ahead of the Atlanta Braves in the National League East (and 18 game lead) that I could probably simulate the next month of the season and still have a decent lead. I think though that I would continue to play every game up till we clinch the Division, then simulate the remaining games in order to get to the playoffs. We'll see, because even at doing six games a week it'll take a while to even get to that point.

Also Last night I finally tested the disk drive of the PS3 off-stream we recently acquired, and it reads discs find, however it is a little snug in terms of inserting the disk and ejecting them. This was noted to me before I received it, but other than that it does work fine. I was reminded at how long it takes for things to be installed on it when trying out Gran Turismo 5 last night (and how unnatural the controls feel after years of playing kart racers). Also we did give Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe last night, doing an arcade ladder run with Scorpion. There might be some trophies that I could possibly get with some of the older games to boost my PSN score which is nice to know.

Over on the Ghostbusters Youtube channel, two episodes were added yesterday, The Scaring of the Green from the Real Ghostbusters series, and The Luck of the Irish from Extreme Ghostbusters. Both episodes revolve around Saint Patrick's Day, and kind of revolve around the same plot as the decedents of those who stole a pot of gold are pursued by a ghostly force (a Bog Hound in the RGB episode, a leprechaun in the XGB one). The funny thing is, by putting both episodes up yesterday, that means the episodes for both series are now out of order so we'll see if that gets fixed retroactively or not down the line. Also kind of a cool note, The Scaring of the Green first aired November 16, 1987.... and The Luck of the Irish first aired on November 3, 1997... real cool that these episodes aired nearly 10 years a part!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, kept focused on the task at hand, only had one miss. Because by the time I started my workout, there was no an opportunity to start working on doing Free Exercise's with Hiro as the trainer, but we'll get to that probably over the weekend.

Tonight we have Star Trek Online planned
as per usual for a Thursday night stream, and so we'll see how things go, as last night's stream of STO was plagued with issues that all traced back to Comcast.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

 

 

Today's Notes 3/17/21

Good morning everyone,

So Comcast update, on Monday I got an email from their corporate offices which asked me what times I can be reached directly so they could communicate verbally... and I was really detailed in my response, indicating what times for the entire week. So imagine my surprise when I was working yesterday afternoon, I get a call from them 15 minutes before I finished working and before I could easily take the call, I tried calling the rep back directly, got the voice mail. Called the main number directly, got hung up on twice and the third time had to leave a message. Tried calling the rep back directly twice more before the start of last night's stream... got the voice mail. Nice professionalism their Comcast... real nice to see they can't follow the instructions given to them.

Anyway last night's stream ran pretty smooth, a couple of minor instances of instability but not enough to disrupt anything. We covered a lot of ground in Dragon Age Inquisition in regards to doing everything I could find in Crestwood and doing a lot of stuff around Skyhold, which involved tot talking to just about everyone repeatedly. We also took down a second dragon, and got Sera's War Table mission done, and by the looks of things it's looking as if that's gonna be the romantic path our hero will be going down. Pun intended. 

We had a solid half hour work out with Fitness Boxing 2 today, and since I did not over sleep, nothing felt like I was pressing to over compensate.  We unlocked the Hiro's Trainee achievement which was to perform 10 daily workouts using Hiro as the instructor.  The question of what counts towards the 'Instructor' Best Friend achievement has popped into my head, as I'm guessing stretching counts towards it too. 

Tonight's stream has ESPN Major League Baseball scheduled as we continue the 2004 season of the Philadelphia Phillies, picking up in mid-June during the Interleague portion of the season. If memory serves me right, we are starting with either a game against the Twins to finish up that series or we're starting a series against the Tigers. One or the other. 

Also picked up another set of PS2/3 RCA connector cables and a second RCA-to-HDMI so this way I don't have to keep swapping the one I had back and forth between the PS2 and PS3, all I would have to do is just plug in the correct RCA-to-HDMI adapter into the Elgato Capture Card and USB slots depending on which console (PS2 or PS3) I intend to use. Just one less thing I have to do.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 3/16/21

Good morning everybody, 

Well last night's stream was not plagued by any internet connection issues, just a few minor blips that were only really noticeable by me, but there was barely any frame drops, so Comcast had their shit together last night. Now I'm waiting for a call from them regarding this manner, since they must reach out to me regarding this since I did take the extra step to complain to the FCC. So let's see where that takes us.

As for as for the stream itself goes, we got a lot done in Dragon Age Inquisition, finishing up everything we could do in the Forbidden Oasis and a couple of other areas before the story was progressed that saw our base at Haven being invaded by the real antagonist of the game, the Ancient One and his arm of Red Templars. This saw us relocate to our new fortress at Skyhold and opens up a shit ton more to do in terms war table operations, areas to explore and missions to wrap up.

Tonight's stream will see us continue Dragon Age Inquisition, and I think we'll be spending a lot of time in Skyhold, as there seems to be a lot of things to do there, even if I went all over the place last night, there are conversations to be had and places to revisit, in addition to all the stuff at the war table that needs to be done. 

Woke up late, as I did hear my alarm go off then I went back to sleep only to keep up after 10 AM, so today's workout was on the short side. I did do a little extra with the free training, so today's workout was longer than indicated via the screen shot. As of today we've earned 70% of all in-game achievement, and here are the new one. Janice's Best Friend which required to exercise using Janice as the Trainer 100 times, Hiro's New Student, which is to use Hiro as the instructor once, and Hiro's Best Sudent which was to receive a three-star rating using Hiro as the trainer. And of course for earning 70% of all achievement milestones, that was called Big Fit FIghter.

At the moment I do plan for Friday's stream to be focused on the PlayStation 3, I'll have to double check to see what games I would want to feature for just one night need to be directly installed first, because I know that was something that needed to be done with DC Universe vs Mortal Kombat and maybe TNA Impact, but I can't remember about things like Gran Turismo 5.

Anyway on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

 

Today's Notes 3/15/21

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Overwatch started off rough with an apparent weak upload signal / stream, now I wonder if it was because of the strong winds or if Comcast my ISP did not fully fix things on Saturday, this was further compounded in the last hour of the stream where latency in the game of Overwatch was spiking like mad. Since this corresponded with frame drops that were happening at the same time, I suspect again, it was my ISP that was failing to perform up to the standards I expected. That said, when things were smooth during the majority of the stream things were good, picking up three plays of the game, and getting in some games with Kalenal and PandaSweet is always awesome.

Staying on the subject of Comcast, the FCC sent me a notification that they have reached notified them about my complaint and that I should be hearing from Comcast about this matter. In fact I just got an email from Comcast's Executive Support regarding this matter.

Today we did a much longer Fitness Boxing 2 set to help make up for the the shorter sets during the weekend, Which meant we ended up having a new record set for estimated calories burned in a day. We got a few new achievements done today to. First was Heavyweight Puncher Lv. 1 which was to reach a total punch count of 126,000,  we wrapped up the Janice's Buddy achievement which was to perform 10 free exercises with Janice (we did 3 free ones today to finish it) and with that we switched to Hiro as our trainers, and instantly going for the Hiro Stylist and Hiro's Fashion Saboteur achievement which are to change Hiro's outfit and put him in a mismatched outfit, and we also got the Hiro Fashion Designer which was to put a matching outfit together... which oddly enough was just put him back in his default attire. 

We also unlocked the Weight Forward achievement which was to enter 10 days worth of weight data.
And with today's weight in, the scale indicated I weighted about 250 lbs! We lost 2 pounds from the last time we weighed in! Yay! 

Also just realized I need to do one more set with Jancie to finish up her achievements as well, which I think to do 100 exercise sets with a particular trainer.

Jim Cornette has been in the news recently, and look, people need to understand something about him, he's a master of getting a reaction, always has been. Give him just a bit of info to work with and he can play those who don't know any better like a fiddle. To take him down a peg, all one has to do is present the truth, i.e. how Eric Bischoff did in their Table For 3 episode. Here is how Bischoff did it, by catching Cornette in a lie with regard to when Smokey Mountain Wrestling working with WCW, where Cornette said Bischoff was the one who ended that, Bischoff pointed out using the actual order of events, that he had nothing to do with it because he didn't have any power in WCW until after the WCW/SMW partnership ended in early 1993, because Bischoff didn't get the executive producer job until the middle of the year following the firing of Bill Watts.  Cornette's responsive of 'well it was what he heard' in a manner so sheepish you'd think he was a Senator from Kentucky 

Tonight we have Dragon Age Inquisition scheduled as we'll focus on side-questing and doing as much as we can before advancing the story. Hopefully this stream will not have any issues that I can trace back to my Internet Service Provider.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes

Good afternoon everyone,

Well we had Comcast come out... again... as the degradation of my service basically forced it, and lead to me filing a complaint with the FCC. Now there was a reported outage in the area today, but because my service didn't go down fully, I was able to keep my appointment, and quite frankly I wasn't going to let them talk me out of it. The tech came and found issues with the line running to the modem, combine with two old drop lines that were still attached to the tap on the telephone pole (one was the original line to the house from when my father lived here, the second was from when I had issues in 2007-08.), and also for whatever reason the main cable line was secured to the electrical line, which can direct interference.

I will say this about Comcast techs, when they have came out here, they were on the ball, they didn't try to bullshit me in anyway. They understood what I was trying to convey, and they each found issues wrong that they went to address. Hell the guy who came here today actually explained different details about how Comcast uses a closed system and there should be no frequency issues but that an drop line still attached to the tap but not to the house could be cause a number of issues if someone used a ham-radio. Hell he even said I could improve the stability of my connecting by dropping the cable boxes which run off the main line.

That said I did reach out to Verizon to get a price quote on what they charge on a month to month basis, and it seems, cost wise that would be the way to go. 

Now of course we didn't have a stream last night because of the issues that popped up on Thursday night that carried over to Friday. I did do some off-stream gaming of Overwatch and teamed up with PandaSweet getting the wins needed for the Roadhog Paichimari skin. So while that was the plan for Sunday night, getting done last night helped take my mind off of the issues. Big thanks to PandaSweet for joining the fun as we ran a series of Mayhem matches.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was short, because of all the other hassles I had to deal with. IT was a really quick 22 minute workout, and the shorter the session the toughter it is for me to get into a good rhythm. Still we got the work in!

Tonight's stream, if all goes well, will features the wrap up of Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward, as I have three character endings (Luna, Quark and Phi's, which is the true ending) to get plus one bad ending to get. Depending on how long that takes, we may end up doing something extra, but I'm not completely sure.

And on that note we'll see you later (hopefully) over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 3/12/21

 

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Star Trek Online was particularly unstable, as the stream experienced a couple of resets, massive dropped frames and all sorts of other issues including massive lag and latency in game. From what I could tell, this seems to be a case of my ISP (Comcast) either throttling my upload and even download speeds. This was something I was noticing as far as download speeds during the afternoon for my day job, where loading of a webpage needed for my job would take unusually long to connect. I did call Comcast last night, they said to literally write down every instance it happens for a week. 

Well the only ones I can properly track are the streams because it would be impossible to track each instance that happens for when I'm working during the afternoons.Ah well, we did manage to get a lot of things done for nearly every one of my STO characters last night, some story progress here, an task for operation there. But the thing is when I tested playing Overwatch via the Switch last night after the stream, I had no issues... maybe it's on Twitch's end, I'm not completely sure, because when I do the auto-config in OBS, it always comes up with about the same recommendation 3000 KPBS 1080P 60 FPS.... and I set my settings for 2700 KPBS 720P 30 FPS.

Oh well, we'll document things and push onward as they said, as the plan for tonight is to wrap up Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward so that Saturday we can run the PS3 that arrived through its paces to see how it performs for an extended period of time.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was pretty solid, a bit of a higher Fitness Age score, but all in all, it felt good. Didn't do anything extra because I was testing various internet speed things to try and trace the source of the problems I had last night. We did reach a new milestone in Fitness Boxing 2 this morning, unlocking the Cruiserweight Puncher Lv.3 Achievement which involved having a total punch count of 121,500, with my exact total being 122,113.

And on that note we'll see you later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!