Today's Notes 2/10/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream ended up being a double header, because of the time zone difference between myself and a few others combined with when I finished working. So we lead off with Paladins, getting in matches as Ash, Ying, Tyra and Skye... and I certainly had some great moments during that, the one thing that stands out about that game is the how garbage a lot of the PC players can be. Yes I used to play Paladins a lot on PC, but much like with Overwatch, if you play a character that is a healer, like Jenos, your priority should be on helping support the front line, not flanking and being no where near to help on the objective!

The main event of the night was doing manhunt things with PowerThumbz, FnDanteSavage and Iceman in the Division 2, and we got 3/5ths of it done, with having to reach a boss floor in the summit taking the most amount of time. If it wasn't for that we probably could've gotten everything else for the manhunt down. That said, instead of being in DC, the main focus was in New York, so there was a lot more enemies in close proximity for us to deal with! More than likely when we team up again on Thursday, that is going to be another double-header night for me,.

The developers of Star Trek Online continue to make incredibly stupid decisions, as they are working on limiting player choice. For the sake of the Role Play aspect of the game, a lot of players would create characters that either stayed in the past (if they were Agents of Yesterday or Discovery era Starfleet Officers), or stay unaligned (if they were Romulan Republic or Dominion), because cause what the RP of MMORPG stands for... Role Play! But someone on the dev team didn't like that people were doing that, and so they are stripping things that made that possible away, namely access to the DOFF system, which in itself is an exploit the developers put in place at the expense of actual game play content! As I said, it's an incredibly stupid decision.

Had a solid Fitness Boxing 2 session this morning, even though hip shape focus combos are just torture on calves, since it's jab-duck-jab-duck-jab-body jab.... so think up down up down-up-down. Did pass two achievement milestones, one being middleweight puncher lv. 2 which was to reach a total punch count of 80,500, (my current total of punches thrown is 81,293) and the other being Supersonic Hitter which was to perform 90,000 perfect motions. 

Tonight stream will see the continuation of ESPN Major League Baseball on the Playstation 2, as my Philadelphia Phillies will be at home taking on the Los Angeles Dodgers, and maybe even the San Diego Padres. For those wondering where in the calendar we are, about May 18, 2004. Since we'll most likely start at 6 PM EST (give or take) we should be able to knock out both series, or at least the entire Dodgers  series and maybe start up the series against the Padres.

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

Today's Notes 2/9/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix certainly covered a lot of ground, as we went through the first visits to Port Royal, Agrabah, Halloween Town and the Pride Lands while also touching on the first couple of side-quests for Atlantica and 100 Acre Wood. I said it before, but KH2 has such a superior game play experience to the original game it's not even funny, when one considers that the core mechanics of combat are the same. That said I am wishing I had the availability to dodge roll instead of hoping to parry attacks to turn some situations around, because part of how I got through the first game and even Re:Chain of Memories was rolling out of the way. On a side note: the placement of some of the puzzle pieces leaves a lot to be desired as there doesn't seem to be multiple ways to reach certain locations.

Tonight we'll be returning to The Division 2 and 9 PM EST for the next manhunt adventure with Iceman, PowerThumbz and I think also FnDanteSavage, but since I work in the afternoon from 12 PM to 5 PM EST, more than likely I'm going to lead off with something else before hand. Not sure exactly what yet, but we'll have a lot of fun that's for sure..

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was a little rough, although shorter than yesterday, I had some issues getting loose from the orthodox stance and missed quite a few things I was perfect with yesterday, namely with forward-backward steps. Still it's always a good way to start the day, and today was the 60th day of Fitness Boxing 2, so we got that going for us.

Turns out this years Super Bowl lost a lot of viewers in comparison to previous years, but lets face it, people have found other things to do, and the appeal of football was more than overdue to start seeing a decline in viewership... and some one is going to be of the theory that it's because of what the coaches look like, as if that really matters. The reason why sports lose viewers is because the quality of what is being presented is steadily declining. Gone are the days of big hits, big plays, grind it out grit that made football exciting... now it's so water down that it actually looks like a war re-enactment ceremony, where guys get mad for not following the script.

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

Today's Notes 2/8/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was quite productive in terms of getting the nine wins needed to unlock the Terracotta Medic skin for Baptiste. While it is clearly based on the Terracotta Army, it's not exactly something I'd throw on Baptiste, not that I use him much to begin with. Also had two plays of the game, one as Reinhardt and the other as D.va, and since both were in Total Mayhem matches, safe to say they hard to achieve. Big thanks to PandaSweet for joining in on the fun last night, as we made sure she got the Terracotta Medic unlocked as well. 

So the big take away from last night's Super Bowl is probably the streaker... and the usual 'woe is us' style of broadcasting that takes place in response to it. They ask 'why is something like this happening during a Super Bowl', well let's look at the facts, it's the Super Bowl, stupid people are going to do stupid things... the NFL has catered heavily to stupid people by going out of their way to have as many people in attendance as possible under current COVID guidelines, the NFL was basically asking for something to happen... and considering how the Chiefs of Kansas City got their asses kicked by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, leading to Tom Brady getting his 7th Super Bowl Ring... the NFL got what they deserved when it comes to the streaker.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, as I moved a couple of things around to give me some extra room behind myself, so front back steams are easier to do. Surprisingly it also helped a bit with lateral movements when I move from side to side. Now of course we were streaming it, as we normally do once a week on Mondays, and that leads me to what the next topic.

I was going to play Animal Crossing New Horizons as well, as the normal thing we do on the extra streams, but the Nintendo Switch froze and locked up. So of course that ended the stream because I had to fix that, and to do that you press and hold the power on button from 15 seconds, you should hear an audible sound from the Switch, almost like a pop, and then it should reset itself. At least that's what I did after looking up how to fix it! 

Tonight we'll be back to Kingdom hearts II Final Mix, we'll be picking up right after the Disney Castle / Timeless River segment, which means we're either heading to the world of Pirates of the Caribbean or the Little Mermaid next, I'm not sure which is the right order to do things in. But if I remember right, The Little Mermaid bit is basically a rhythm game... so you know that's gonna be a pain in the ass

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

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Today's Notes 2/7/21

Good afternoon everyone,

Yup I slept in again, got up about 12:30 PM... and I have zero interest in the Super Bowl, because we all know the team that scores the most points will win. I mean it's pretty obvious that will be the result. Besides The Lunar New Year event has started for Overwatch, which means in addition to the loot box stuff, there are weekly rewards for getting 9 wins each week for each of the next three weeks for skins for Baptiste, McCree and Reaper. So got to chase them victories down! 

Last night's stream of Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward was interesting as I got To Be Continues in the Director's Room with the path being Magenta/Ally/Green/Ally which needs a password to continue which I don't think I came across, also another To Be Continued on the path of Magenta/Ally/Blue/Betray) leading to a locked path involving K and Phi being at risk of being killed because the third bracelet needed for them to proceed (Dio's) was smashed up. I did get two really bad endings one being on the path of Magenta/Ally/Green/Betray which saw Tenmyouji taking Quark through the #9 door, and also on the path of Magenta/Ally/Blue/Ally, which saw K leave through the #9 door. That said I made sure to get all the gold secret files so far, so I think I'm on pace to getting every achievement for the game but we still got a ways to go!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session was alright, I felt my timing was a bit off, as I had a few misses but nothing to bad, but when you compare the results for yesterday and today, it certain doesn't look good. Did an extra Free Exercise set to go along with everything else I did to get a little extra in which was good.

Did enjoy watching The Real Ghostbusters episode Ghosts R Us, which sees three ghosts escape from the containment unit thanks to Slimer's mid-night snacking. The spooks look to put the Ghostbusters out of business by staging a few fake cases where two of them 'catch' the third, before attempting to lay a trap to take them out permanently Couple of quick thoughts on it, one being that this is one of the few episodes where the ghosts have a lot of notable dialog so we basically see things from their perspective, the second being, the official Ghostbusters YouTube channel labels this as 'the pilot episode', but it's not. It may have been the first full episode to air, but the pilot was a 'music video' that was shopped around showing the concept of a Ghostbusters cartoon. One last note, this episode saw the debut of Ecto-2 which was actually destroyed in the episode's climax, but also tosses in the first of many continuity issues regarding how big the interior of Ecto-1 is.

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

Highlights for the Week of 1/31/21

Here are highlights of all the games featured on my twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of January 31, 2021, which were Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Music, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Super Mario Bros 35, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, Paladins and Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward!

Today's Notes 2/6/21

Good afternoon everyone,

Yes I slept in today, since working in the afternoons, has kind of thrown off what I've become use to over the past 10 months. 

Anyway, first, last night's stream of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix was plagued with some dropped frames issues, and using the Twitch Test Tool, it seems that there are major issues with me using the New York or either West Virginia ingest servers, so I'll run that test again before tonight's stream and try something with a higher score... which probably would be using the Denver ingest server based on scores I saw last night. Another factor may have been my computer doing some automatic maintenance... since I noticed when I was checking this out after the stream, for some reason that started at 5:48 PM EST, when I have such things set for 5 AM EST. 

In terms of what we got done in Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix last night we covered everything from part one of The Land of Dragons (Mulan) all the way up to the Disney Castle / Timeless River sections, so basically about 1/4th of the game. The combat mechanics and camera work so much better in KH2FM when compared to KH1FM it's not even funny. I do kind of question the order of Sora's abilities being unlocked, because being able to pull in Health, Item, Magic and Currency Orbs would make things easier against some of the more pain in the ass enemies.

Was practically perfect during today's Fitness Boxing 2 session, with 1376 out of 1384 exercise reps performed being perfect, the remaining 8 saw my timing just being a bit off. Very rare where I had a day where I don't have a single miss. Also because yesterday I was pressed for time, we did get a new in-game achievement, Super Welterweight Puncher Lv. 3, which was to reach a total punch count of 73,500. At the moment, the total punches I've through Fitness Boxing 2 is 75,722 (note: this is not counting ducks, weaves, steps or blocks) 

Because of an a change done by the IRS to see if folks earned less or more than the year prior to provide an income credit on tax returns, I had to re-file my taxes today. Since I made more in 2020 than 2021, I get no credit. Needless to say that was a surprise thing to deal with, first time I've ever seen something like that happen. 

Tonight's stream with see the focus return to Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward, as I think we'll be dropping back into the conversation with the cockney accented robot, We'll probably get that started around 7 PM since I want to have dinner before then. 

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

Today's Notes 2/5/21

Good morning everybody,

Well last night's stream was not what was expected now wasn't it? Nope it started off at about 6 PM with the the expected Star Trek Online plans, going through the two newest missions on my main characters. Rather surprising there wasn't more unique dialog with regard to a Federation officer being on the trip to Gre'thor, but overall, since I went through the missions last week, I had a much easier time doing some parts this week... outside of getting one-shotted by the Fek'ihri dreadnaught. Not many things in Star Trek Online can take you with one hit, but apparent that beast of a ship can!

Now since there was no focus with Star Trek Online, when Iceman asked if I was going to join in on more Division 2 stuff, I had no problems switching over. We were expecting PowerThumbz to join in, but he had issues so it was me and Iceman knocking out watch levels and Resident Evil related challenges while just wandering around DC doing stuff. It was the usual madness that is associated with that game combined with the insanity of enemies getting back up!

We also snuck in some Paladins last night, doing two matches for Siege, Onslaught and Team Deathmatch, using my usual favorites of Ash, Inara, Tyra and Ying, and we won a few matches. The biggest issue that Paladins has continues to be people leaving early in a match, particular from the PC side (since Paladins is a cross-platform game). Unlike Overwatch, which in everything by ranked matches, has a backfill option to keep things fairly event, Paladins does not feature this, instead having the AI take over. That said the new character of Yagorath can fuck right off, it can't be moved with Ashe's charge or bounce back attacks, and it's ultimate is can't be escaped unless everyone is firing on it. Pair it with two healers and the fucking thing is damn near unkillable! 

Speaking of Overwatch, I just had enough in-game gold to get all the new items for the Lunar New Year event which started yesterday. I really dig the skins for Ashe and Echo, while PanadaSweet loves the skins for Bastion and Orisa. On a side note I really think Moira's new Lion Roars Victory poses should have been an emote instead.

Kind of big news that went under the radar, as it was announced this week that starting this Saturday, episodes of The Real Ghostbusters will be added weekly to the offical Ghostbusters YouTube channel, and starting on Wednesday of this upcoming week, they'll be doing the same with Extreme Ghostbusters! That is awesome!

Since I woke up a bit late today, today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was a bit more intense in terms of wondering will I have a enough time to shower, have lunch and write this blog afterward. Now I could've shorten the duration of the time I spent exercising, but I do like it being set about 30 minutes for the exercising with 5 to 8 minutes for stretching so I don't have to mess with the settings too much.

Tonight's stream will see us going back to Kingdom Hearts 2, as we're picking up right after out first visit to Hallow Bastion, I'll need to look up which area I should go to first because there is a logical order things take place in. Stream will start at about 6 PM EST, because as soon as I'm done writing this and having lunch, I'm starting work !

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