Raids, Leveling and Fishing

Good morning everyone,

The end of another week is here, woo-hoo! Anyway last night's stream was a lot more fun than even I was anticipating, because we were joined for a bit by Kalenal to help with power leveling Blue Mage and to get an understanding of the Ocean Fishing aspect of Final Fantasy XIV! Kalenal, of course, streams over at twitch.tv/kalenal! 

A big part of the stream last night did focus on the Pandemonium raids, doing all four in a single night, which worked out quite nicely in terms of getting the things I need to get the best possible gear I intend to go after. The raids themselves were mostly okay, thought I did struggle more in the Fourth Circle than I normally do. Thing that did surprise me was the wait times being a lot longer for the First and Second Circle.

Also hit the mark in Final Fantasy XIV that unlocked the Tantalus Attire for having an active account for 150 days. Now I'm not 100% sure, but I believe Tantalus was the main character of Final Fantasy IX, but having not played it I'm not sure, but the attire for FF14 does look similar in design from what I remember.

Apparently there is apparently another Final Fantasy XIV live letter scheduled for today, so I'll check those notes after the stream to give my thoughts on them with tomorrow's blog post!

Big thank you to FnDanteSavage for popping in with the Twitch Prime subscription last night! He is a gentleman and a scholar!

For the raid, we dropped in on DaemonsW0lf who was playing Hunt: Showdown over at twitch.tv/DaemonsW0lf!

Twitch Clip Links

1.  Oh wonderful....
2.  When a fate spawns when you're fishing
3.  A Little Level Boosting

Did some more Forza Horizon 4 off-stream achievement hunting last night, finally found a small stretch of road to get the Noisy Cartographer achievement, and finally did some co-op races as well... I may be terrible, but hell it got me another achievement! I will admit the achievement popped at 529 roads, but there are 531, so I really wonder where those two little strips of pavement are, but I'm not going to go hunting for them.

Forza Horizon 4 Achievements

• Test your Might: Complete The Trial.
• The Noisy Cartographer: Drive down every road in Britain.
• Jolly Cooperation: Complete 5 Horizon Life Co-op Races.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with Beginner Combo #2, Straight Combo #1 and Weaving Combo #2. Since I've been doing little extra sets on top of the daily, I think there is an outside chance I can complete the requirements for Hiro's Champion by Monday or Tuesday... keeping in my mind original guess to complete that was to be around the 12th of March.

Look, I liked Samuel L. Jackson's performance in Pulp Fiction, but there was a snowball's chance in hell of winning Best Supporting Oscar for it back in 1995, because I don't think his performance was better than Paul Scofield's performance in Quiz Show, who I believe should have won the Oscar.

Picked up In Darkness On Fire Book One: Flames of Alexandrite by Kate Flemming off of Amazon and it's a pretty good book. Since it's told from a first person perspective, you really get into the head of the main character Alexander in just how conflicted he is about his wants and desires. It's actually a pretty breezy read considering the subject matter.  

Also nabbed a few cheap things on the Xbox side of things, Haunted Halloween '86, #SincuaAttack, What Remains of Edith Finch and SSX. The first three games are for potential easily 100% completion purposes, but when it comes to SSX it's to see if I workaround related to the EA terms and conditions for online play related to NBA Jam: On Fire Edition works.

For tonight's stream we'll be continuing Persona 5 Royal, which is our long-term Friday night game! 

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

Quick Thoughts; Pulp Fiction

For this week's watch along over on my Discord Channel, we'd watch Pulp Fiction, which is probably the only film directed by Quentin Tarantino that I can say I enjoy from beginning to end that I can actually sit and re-watch. Not saying he makes bad movies, far from it, but Pulp Fiction hits the right beats with me that makes it very enjoyable.

The dialog is very sharp, and I can appreciate good writing and this movie has so many great lines that a major part of the official soundtrack for the film included lines from the film. I'll forever have the opinion that great writing will help an actor deliver a great performance, and Pulp Fiction is a prime example of it.

Now some people have some issues with Pulp Fiction because all the events are seen out of order, but that is a big part of what makes the movie great, because there is such a wide range of characters, that there was no way this film could work if seen in the natural order of events. Well in my opinion it wouldn't work as well... because the way characters are introduced and are not seen again would make things very disjointed and a lot of the callbacks and references made would lose meaning.

A lot of folks have the opinion that Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta or Bruce Willis give the best performances in Pulp Fiction, and a strong case can be made for all three, but I can't help but feel that Uma Thurman gets overlooked, because her scenes are primarily associated with Travolta, but in there scenes she's the one bringing the personalty to his laid back / chilled vibe. Plus she blows him out of the water in the Jack Rabbit Slim dance contest. 

With these quick thoughts said, next week's planned watch along is Under Siege starring Steven Seagal and Tommy Lee Jones!