Today's Notes 1/20/21 (Updated)

Good afternoon everybody,

Started work on doing my taxes today, and only just now noticed the hit I'm taking this year because of my day gig, there is often times I will be furloughed, so that resulted in a need to cover my own but, using New Jersey's unemployment to cover some weeks. And since some of those weeks were during the early COVID-19 relief through UI, that means whatever I would normally get this year in terms of a Tax Refund has been eaten up by the fact that the state of New Jersey didn't take 10% out to cover its taxes, which is funny considering how I was having 10% for the normal UI. I imagine that a lot of folks are going to be coming to same realization. Still have to wait for my 1099 from Twitch/Amazon.

UPDATE: Got my 1099 from Twitch/Amazon, and finished my taxes. Thankfully I've commissioned enough things to be made for my Twitch channel to balance everything out. So while I may not be getting a damn thing back, I don't owe anything! And that goes for both state and federal!

 

 

Last night's stream was really awesome as it was a triple co-stream with PowerThumbz (twitch.tv/powerthumbz) and FnDanteSavage (twitch.tv/fndantesavage) along with Iceman as we went through the first half of the new manhunt event in The Division 2, which saw us being massacred because Thumbz wanted to take out an elite patrol before we took a control point. It was a hilarious long stretch of time that took way longer than normal, but we got through it. Since we only did 50% of the manhunt last night, we're covered the other half of it on Thursday which means Star Trek Online this week will be moved to Friday... not that I have much to do in STO unless I want to start doing mission catch up streams with all my other characters. Anyway, in addition to the Division 2 stuff with the guys, I also did some Final Fantasy XV Comrades and managed to tackle a few things that I felt I was a bit under powered for and made progress in the first time in a long while. 

Had a solid Fitness Boxing 2 session today, with this being the 40th day since the switch from the original game, resulting in the achievement of Stalwart Stamper Lv. 3 being unlocked, which is done primarily of doing the Daily Exercises to get the corresponding stamp on the calendar. We've also unlocked the achievement called Hurricane Hitter which is to throw 60,000 perfect punches, which is not phrased correctly, it's to have 60,000 perfect motions, because it's counting punches, ducks, blocks and steps, since my actual punch count is 55,114 as of the time I'm writing this. Also did a bit a Animal Crossing New Horizons and Skye was considering leaving the island, and I made sure to say 'no don't go!', trust me Skye, Audie, Agnes, Blanch and Antonio are the ones I'm never letting leave!

Tonight we got ESPN Major League Baseball on tap, and since I know already there is no work for me for tonight (which makes taxes stuff even more pleasant to think about), we'll start early and go through as many games as we can. I know I have one game against the Cardinals to carry over from last week, so if I can get through the next two series as well (which are road games against the Diamondback and Giants) we'll be about where I was expecting to be if I saved my game two weeks ago! 

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

Today's Notes 1/19/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Saints Row The The Third Remastered saw a big focus on doing 'activities' that count towards the progression of taking over Steelport. Much like with how I played Saints Row IV Relected and Saints Row Gat out of Hell, I do put a big focus of capturing territory before advancing the main missions, plus it there are several achievements tied towards doing the activities in the game. Speaking of which we did unlock three achievements last night, Bo-Duke-En which was to perform 50 quick vehicle hijacks (running towards a vehicle in motion and pressing wide to dive into it like The Duke Boys in the Dukes of Hazard TV show); Tank You Very Much, which was to completed all instances of Tank Mayhem; and Tune In, Drop Off, which was to Completed all instances of Trafficking.

Arriving in the mail today was brand new copies of nearly 20 year old games for the Playstation 2, Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, which was a 2006 fighting game compilation that collects the Street Fighter Alpha series (Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, and Street Fighter Alpha 3) plus the the console-exclusive Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold and Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix. While I have played home version of Alpha 1 and 2 before, and the arcade version of Alpha 3 (in the 30th Anniversary collection), I have never played Alpha 2 Gold or Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix. Plus I understand there are two other games hidden on the disc, so it should be interesting. Also my copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 along with another memory card for the PS2... what you don't think I'm going to delete old save data now do you? 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session felt pretty good, a few questionable misses but not enough to cause my Fitness Age to be scored in the mid 20s. New achievement with Super Lightweight Puncher Lv. 3 which was to reach a total punch count of 54,000 Hits, with my exact total being 54,006. Also started to chance the 'free training' achievements for Lin which is just to do an exercise set in addition to the daily workout. Which means at some point I'll start using the other in-game trainers to chase there related achievements as well. 

Tonight over on Twitch, we'll be returning to the Division 2 with the next manhunt starting today! We'll be teaming up with Icemany7667, FNDanteSavage and PowerThumbz, which also means a double or triple co-stream with the later two. Dante's twitch channel is twitch.tv/fndantesavage and Thumbz can be found at twitch.tv/powerthumbz) and since I already got word that my job won't interfere tonight, we'll be getting started at about 9 PM EST.

And on that bombshell we'll see ya later this evening over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 1/18/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was a lot of fun, as it was straight up just Mayhem matches the entire way, got my first McCree play of the game of the year with a quad kill using Dead Eyes in an early match. Big thanks to PandaSweet for being apart of the fun the entire night! 

As I was looking for some Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 games to add to a list of things to stream at some point, I saw Persona 3 and 4 for the PS2 were avaliable. Yup adding those to my collection. I would like to find the Persona games for the PS1 but those are super rare near as I can tell. Besides Persona 4 is probably the most well know game in the series that isn't Persona 5 since the characters from Persona 4 have had a spin off, it was re-released twice and was involved with BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle.

We did a bonus stream today of Fitness Boxing 2, Animal Crossing New Horizons and Super Mario Bros 35. Today's stream was a little weird as it seems like there was an bitrate drops that forced the stream to be reconnected twice, and thus for this morning there are three VODs instead of one. We did a 45+ minute workout (not including stretching) that saw my Fitness Age drop back down to 21 since nothing I did involved having to move my feet. Over in Animal Crossing New Horizons, it was Sherb's birthday, so we dropped off a spice rack for him... and we had a 5th place finished in Super Mario Bros 35.

For tonight's stream, we'll be getting back to Saints Row The Third, I think we'll do a big focus on taking care of activities from around the map before doing any main story missions, since some things will end up being easier if we have places where back up Saints can easily lend a hand from.

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

Today's Notes 1/17/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Zero Escape 999 last 7.5 hours and I'm wondering did I run my mouth to the point two whole hours were added in comparison to the previous three Saturdays? It totally seems that way as not much was seemingly added to the story as we went for and achieved the 'safe' ending, where we learned Akane/June is Zero and the real villain if Ace. The last question is what is Santa's connection to everyone and I think it's down to him having a connection with Akane/June. Since it was the fourth time going through the story, things certainly got more Mystery Science Theater 3000 with my commentary and reactions to things as some stuff I ended up noticing that deserved being pointing out.

Of course with such a long stream it meant that I would raid the kitchen a couple of times, I do try not to each on stream and when I do, I do try not to eat anything that requires me to be careful to avoid any drips, but sometimes you just want to chow down on like some slices of apple pie or a hot pocket! And let me say that the pie was awesome! Hey there is a reason why I weighed 290 pounds back in July of last year. I like to eat!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session was another rough one as I had some things register as misses because somehow the left joy-con got out of sync with the Switch dock, combined that with having to do step forward step back movements and it was just a mesh. The game did acknowledged I crossed the 50,000 punch barrier which was pretty cool. 

Something that was certainly a running theme last night was my constant reference to fan fiction and shipping. I haven't hide the fact that I've done a lot of both, because it's a great way of expanding on canon and letting one's imagination run wild. Why I kept bringing it up (other than the fact that Zero Escape 999 has given me at least two ideas that I might end up writing) is that on Twitter yesterday some tin foil hat wearing goofballs tried to say fan fiction and shipping was toxic...and a lot of those saying it were people who were published and professional authors. Well I'm betting those idiots wrote their fair share of fan fiction, hell many of those idiots basically have gotten paid to write fan fiction.

Tonight we'll begin a new week with Overwatch, and since I've completed the wins necessary for the new Hanzo skin I'll be playing more for fun and pride more than anything. Maybe we'll get Total Mayhem this week so we can just go ham on everything. We'll get tonight's stream started at about 7 PM EST!

Best of the Week of January 10, 2021

 Here are the best moments from the games featured on my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of January 10, 2021. The games featured were Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Music, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Super Mario Bros 35, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, Saints Row The Third Remastered and Zero Escape Nine Hours Nine Doors Nine Lives! 

Today's Notes 1/16/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night we kicked off the next big game on this year's tour, Saints Row: The Third Remastered. Yes we've played the original version that was ported to Steam over the last few years, so this is certainly different since it's the Xbox One remaster that came out last year, shortly after all the Covid-19 stuff went down. Now let me say that while 99.99999999% in the game looks great, the the one thing that looks awkward are the colors for creating the version of 'The Boss' that I've always used. Some of the realistic textures just look a bit weird in some regard. Also ran into a couple of small bugs, one resulted in a mission being restarted and another needed an NPC to pushed into position. Also one could say that the Remastered version is more difficult than the version I've played on Steam because it doesn't have the Bloodsucker option included. Still it'll be fun seeing how the more realistic version of the events in Saints Row: The Third look as I progress through the story and make Steelport mine again.

Today's Fitness Boxing session was a bit rough as the side step and front-back step combos meant I was having to move my feet, and thus my timing was thrown way over, resulting in a horrible Fitness Age score of 26. Clearly the more misses you have effects the age score. Still I average 21 most days anyway but it was discouraging to see what for me is a bad score. That said, mostly everything else was on point for me today. Also popped into Animal Crossing New Horizons, and that glitch where one of the residents doesn't spawn anywhere on the island reared it's ugly head again, as I couldn't find Pietro anywhere on my island, and yes I did check the shops and museum and the houses of other residents

For tonight's stream we'll be heading back to Zero Escape: 999 and this time we are looking for the 'safe' ending because so far I have found the endings that resulted in every one getting killed. I think I have an idea of what to do to get it based on the first three play throughs I did and looking at the flow chart. Because once we get the 'safe' ending, that means next week we'll get to go for the true ending to finish the game!

And on that note we'll see you later at about 7 PM EST over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! 

Today's Notes 1/15/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Let's begin with talking about last night's stream of Star Trek Online, as I've mentioned quite a bit, the lack of actual content in STO becomes very noticeable when you run out of story missions to do and are pushed into the realm of doing nothing by Task Force Operation grinding for marks for the reputation system. Because so many players have put in the time to get their ships as powerful as possible, the TFOs end up being very tedious because they end up being incredible short... and since most of them take place in space, they end up being very repetitive. So we did a couple of Red Alerts since there is an event tied to it (do one alert every day for 10 days to get a experimental ship upgrade), and also did the endeavor stuff which was to do specific tasks... and then realized there are some 'story quests' I did not do because they were 'tutorials' so that lead to me wandering around Q'onos and discovering some NPCs ended up getting voice lines... and also finding the old Empire Defense areas, which were basically hunting grounds, taking on task forces of enemy vessels. It made me remember the old Exploration areas the Federation had which were just turned into Duty Officer Assignment hubs, but if they were brought back it would give players more things to do than just grind endlessly for marks.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session felt very light as the combination of the four exercises selected by the game only resulted in a combination of 919 movements (880 of which were punches). The reason for the total difference is one exercises involved sway backs, which counts as more of a movement and not a punch. Anyway we did get the Super Lightweight Puncher Lv. 1 Achievement today, which was to reach a total punch count of 48,000 HITs.

Twitch was 'kind' enough to send out a recap of 2020, where I broadcasted 1,728 hours, picked up 185 followers, PandasSweet redeemed the most channel points, CurseLit was the most used emote, and my top three 'categories' were Twitch Sings, Overwatch and Star Trek Online, to the shock of no one because those three had days of the week dedicated to them! If anything this was a real kick in the teeth regarding Twitch Sings because since it got purged, the graphic which I'm including in this blog doesn't have Twitch Sings' box art. What is funny is that because I had to change my weekday stream start times to 9:30 PM EST, it meant I actually lost viewership totals from 2019, because people who would watch in the 7 & 8 PM Hours never came around to watch in the adjusted time slot. Ah well... hopefully we can regain that momentum.

My set of 2 CAT-8 Ethernet Cables arrived today, and if the specs I read in comparing them to other versions, these should help stabilize connections even more in terms of data transfer rates from my PC / Xbox One to and from my modem. Not complete sure what I'll be doing for tonigh's stream but you know I'll be up to something. We'll get the stream started at about 9:30 PM EST because I do have work this evening. Here's hoping people realize that when someone is wanting to interview them on local issues that traitorous piece of shit Donald Trump is not involved.

Anyway, see ya later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!