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