Today's Notes 11/11/20

Good Afternoon Everybody...

Last night's stream of Mass Effect probably bored the hell out of most people expecting me to do a lot more of the big plot planets... but all we did was went to pick up Liara, and then focused on side-questing around the galaxy. I've played this game enough times on PC to know the best approach is to take the long way around before getting to Feros or Noveria, because you'll be properly leveled up to have most if not all of Shepard and the gang's abilities maxed out. Since this is a clean start on the Xbox 360 version, I pretty much want every advantage I can get... particularly since I'm manually putting in the upgrade points for Shepard.. That said, some may have been surprised at how I basically nixed the idea of having Shepard romance Liara.... well lets just say I'm still bitter about Liara's 'Thane is basically dead already' line from Mass Effect 3 after romancing her in the first game and then Thane in the second. So I'm thinking we'll be going Shepard / Kaiden this go round with a twist when it comes to who lives and who dies on Virmire.

This morning's Fitness Boxing session was alright, solid 45 minuet workout, kept it on cardio and actually ended up with a solid sweat going, either because its very muggy or the heater kicked in and I didn't noticed. Either way, I felt no pain in my left knee which was good.

 There was another Windows 10 update, and I wonder what it broke this time in terms of various settings that takes way too long to program. I get it, it's for security precautions and to put out new features, but does it really need to reset my preferred set up every single time?

So remember how this week I was supposed to have Jury Duty on Monday (11/9) then on Saturday I find out it was pushed back to Thursday (11/12) which meant I had to scramble to make sure my job knew which days I would have and would not be available (due to transportation to and from the local court house) ? I went over to https://www.njd.uscourts.gov this morning and logged into the e-Juror page to see my current status which reads: "Your jury service for this term has ended. You are no longer required to report as previously instructed and need not check for any further instructions. We thank you for serving as a juror in the United States District Court." And here's the best part, it also says "The database was last updated on 09-Nov-20 04.25.11 PM".... Now take a wild guess at how ticked off I am after seeing that...

On a side note, what the fuck is up with various Trump Die Hards around the country, are they delusional or just plain underdeveloped mentally? 

I'm not totally sure what we're doing with tonight's stream will be, but we'll be doing something over on twitch.tv/fredcasden that's for sure! 

Have a great day!

Today's Notes 11/7/20

 Good Morning Everybody...

While I've not gone to sleep yet from yesterday morning.... so in an effort to wear myself down I loaded up Fitness Boxing.... and to my surprise, even though it was a little after 2 AM when I did, it counts for today's session.... so yay, workout already done lol... I big take away from this realization is that I can make sure I get a daily workout in at any time to keep my streak going

Last night's stream that featured Twitch Sings was intended to go longer than it did because I wanted to do a little standard gaming, but the Windows 10 Update that totally fucked with my established settings, made audio monitoring through OBS impossible. Now the stream started at about 7:35 PM and we ended the stream before 11 PM, kind of the usual amount of time for weekday... but the goodnews is I figured out the problem. Any audio sources in OBS that was being monitored (such as via an Elgato Capture Card) needed to be deleted and re-created for it to work. So everything works, and we'll be ready for today's N7 stream my first time playing Mass Effect on console.

So which news outlet have I had on my TV since I've been keeping up to date with this stuff and losing sleep over it? Well it's been CNN.... because between it, MSNBC and Fox News... it is the most level-headed... and in the middle of the night Fox News seems to just run re-runs and infomercials. MSNBC is so.... fucking weird. That said at 3:30 AM (as of the time I write this), Joe Biden's lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia is widening. Not sure exactly what Donald Trump is waiting on because at this point he has no shot at winning, particularly when one notices that Nevada and Arizona are increasingly out of reach as well)

I have logged in some matches for the new ranked Season of Overwatch, probably will just do the qualifiers because I always ended up being a tank or support, and if I'm stuck doing that I might as well just play Quick Play matches... which of course is what we do on Sunday Nights over on twitch.tv/fredcasden (haha)... still it does amaze me how some people refuse to play defense, or to play aggressively. or stick with bad DPS match ups. 

Anyway let me wrap this up, we'll see every this afternoon for N7 Day!

Today's Notes 11/6/2020

Good Afternoon Everybody....

I did not go to bed until 5 AM because like a good chunk of America, or at least people here in the Philadelphia area, I was keeping an eye on CNN / MSNBC for updates on Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada... I did not wake up until 11:30 AM... and the first thing I saw, was a message from Kalenal (twitch.tv/kalenal) of a tweet that said 'The Penn Is Mightier'... and I knew what that meant. Keeping in mind I voted for Jo Jorgenson and the fact that I live in New Jersey, I'm fucking thrilled that Joe Biden caught up to and passed Donald Trump, along with the fact that every vote is being counted... and they are still not finished counting. If you want proof, more than ever that every vote matters, this is the election year that proves that fact.

This has also lead to a major spark of interest in the show It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, a show that I certainly enjoyed for the first 8 seasons. Or should I saw an interest in memes surrounding the show, such as Flip-adelphia, In These Trying Times, and of course 'The Gang...' in the later, it's followed by 'The Gang Saves Democracy' and other similar titles of would be episodes . I certainly did not waste time, as I went on Amazon to order myself a t-shirt with that saying on it (direct link will be included below) because you know it's true.

Now most people have had concerns because the Democrats did not win control of Senate, well I have a theory on that... it's because this election is more about getting Trump out of office and restoring a sense of calm, normalcy and professionalism. I'm fine with that to an extent, the real question is will Mitch 'The Bitch' McConnell actually work with Joe Biden to get things going forward.

So with all that said, I shorten my Fitness Boxing routine today due to when I woke up, which meant doing a Strength & Cardio work out that was more in line with the recommended time-settings as opposed to my standard or 45 minuets. It certainly was a more compacted workout for sure.

Last Night's Star Trek Online stream was business as usual, as we went through the first three episodes of the Gamma Quadrant arc and did a couple of Task Force Ops as well. The voice acting of the DS9 Alumni still remains stellar, and the moment of Kira slapping the taste out of Odo's mouth for endangering Bajor just never gets old. Of course the stream did start off with technical problems as the recent Windows 10 update did something that screwed with how OBS handles media sources. Hopefully I can figure out how to repair what was broken so that I can properly monitor all audio again.

 Tonight I'll be doing a Twitch Sings stream, because tomorrow is November 7, which is of course N7 Day, and we'll be starting up a run of the original Mass Effect using the Xbox One. It's going to be a challenge for sure because I won't have access to all my key-binds that makes the PC version obviously better because you don't have bring up the weapons wheel to switch gear or to direct the companions. I think I'll start that play-through on a reduced difficulty just to wrap my head around how the console handles it.

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