Today's Notes 2/18/21

Good morning everybody,

Well we got the new computer set up to make sure everything is working, and so far so good, we did a full stream last night, which ran smother than before. I don't have many direct programs installed on it, only the bare stuff used on a routine basis (OBS, Libre Office, VLC, Discord, Steam, Origin, etc). With only a 1 TB SSD, I'm considering everything. Besides, most of the games featured on stream are running off of my PS2, Xbox One S and Nintendo Switch. 

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball didn't start until after 8 PM EST, which meant we only got four games in, winning 3 out of the 4, sweeping the Mets in a 2-game set, and splitting the first two games in a four game series against the Braves. What was unique about last night's stream was that I realize I can set the aspect ratio for how it's captured and broadcasted to 4:3, granted I still see the game on my main monitor as 16:9, but having the that option really helps in making sure older games don't look blurry and stretched out for the viewers.

It's snowing outside again... but thankfully starting on Saturday / Sunday, the weather starts to pick up. Really worried about my friends down in Texas who have had either no power or rolling blackouts since the start of the week. Please stay safe down there. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was a little on the short side, being about 24 minutes, 32 if I count the stretching. This was mostly do to me considering where I should be standing as the new rigis about where I would be to throw left hooks and the last thing I'd want is to hit the side of it. Might have to move a few things around to give me the room I need so I can continue to do special Fitness Boxing streams on Mondays, since I think moving back to the opposite side (Where ya'll could see shelving behind me) might be the best course of action. But we'll test that later on.

Tonight's stream will feature Star Trek Online will be like last week, a random hodgepodge of things featuring all of my characters. Will have to make audio adjustments on the fly because of the new PC. I did play a quick STF last night, and needless to say the RX 580 makes a huge difference in how the game looked. Granted it looked gorgeous on a GT 1030. Stream should start at about 6 PM EST if the weather doesn't screw with things.

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

Today's Notes 2/17/21

Good morning everyone,

Well as you probably saw, last night's stream thankfully ran without incident outside one minor hiccup that I can't quite track down... but at lot of my concerns will be alleviated when my new rig arrives, and according to the tracking of the package it should arrive sometime today, and with my luck it'll be right when I'm working. 

Anyway, last night's stream of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix saw u s finishing the game, and even if there was no issues on Monday night, there was no chance of finishing it then because it did take five hours to get through the final few areas of the game, because I happened to go off the beaten path, and needed to re-do a few battles more than once. The jarring difference between how the game looks normally and the final cut scenes being of a far superior quality did lead to some nightmare fuel in particular with Mickey Mouse. That said, even as thorough as I was being in getting various things done, we did miss out on two video segments, and I'm not sure if they are tied to difficulty settings or getting certain in game objectives accomplished. 

This morning's Fitness Boxing 2 Session felt good, as we got a good groove going and the Fitness Age score was back down to where I normally see it. Reached a new milestone in Fitness Boxing 2 this morning, clearing the Hypersonic Hitter achievement which was to perform 100,00 perfect exercises (punches, weaves, steps, ducks, blocks). I do need to do two more 'free exercises' (aka non-daily exercises) using Lin to unlocked it's related achievement as well. The reason why it takes so long is because I normally don't do a non-daily exercise set unless I feel I didn't get a good workout out in with the daily.... and that's whenever it feels like the daily short changed me!

Popped into Animal Crossing New Horizons this morning, nothing major on the island other I really should spread out all the festival things that were acquired on Monday afternoon. Maybe I should cut down some of the trees or move some of the houses around.

Tonight's scheduled stream is to feature ESPN Major League Baseball, picking up in late May with my Philadelphia Phillies taking on division rivals the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves. Now the stream will be using the current PC because I really wouldn't be able to set it up the new one when it arrives and to get everything installed between when I finish work and when I intend to start the stream. Way I figure, it wouldn't be set up until after the stream so that Windows 10 updates can be done overnight. Obviously the big factor will be when the new computer arrives.

(UPDATED 11:10 AM)

The new computer arrived

And on that note, barring anything seriously going wrong, we'll see you later today over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 2/16/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Well last night certainly was a nightmare scenario, as a power flicker in my neighborhood due to cold and icy weather was the start of several problems, one the stream last night was interrupted at about 3 Hours 30 Minutes, so this was about 9:30 PM It wasn't a complete outage of power, it's the lights dimmed then came back, the internet was knocked out for a few minutes. Things came back up and we resumed as one would do, then at about 10 PM EST everything went to hell, everything just went haywire to the point nothing was responding, couldn't even pull up task manager to see what was going on. Had no choice but to do a hard power down, which is something I hate to do. Things got worse when my PC would instantly shut down upon pressing the power button, it did it a second time, and on the third try it did power back up, but with a warning indicating one of the fans was not functioning.... but just holding my hands need the vent ports I could feel the fans moving. 

Needless to say this forced an emergency look into getting a new rig, because the last time I had anything like these issues were in 2011 and 2018. 2011, a power outage basically KO'ed it permantly and in 2018, that one was suffering from sudden hardware malfunctions. At the moment I'm writing this I'm running every diagnostic tool Windows 10 has to double check everything, and also in the process of backing up anything I already didn't have on an external hard drive, basically the entire afternoon is lost, so an unwanted day off from work, but if all tests out right I hopefully will be streaming this evening... we shall see if that goes well.

So these issues aside, last night's stream of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix was going along very smoothly, as we closed out the in-game stories for The Coliseum, Agrabah, Halloween Town, 100 Acre Wood, Atlantica and The Pride Lands... and when all the issues started happening, thing were then going to be focused on Space Paranoids.Sadly the technically issues has resulted in lost footage, as I didn't even put together a highlight reel for my Facebook page to chronicle last night's events yet. Once every test is completed, we'll start pushing the hardware a little to see what it can handle at this point. If nothing catastrophic happens, things should be smooth, but even better when the new rig arrives.

Did do some blatant level grinding in Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix after I got my current PC powered up last night to where I could contact my job to let them know what was happening. Managed to find that one spot in the Pride Lands where numerous enemies appear, and it seems like a great spot of knocking out levels... which I found it sooner as I probably would've of boosted myself even further than I managed to do while I was checking the hard drive for disk errors till 4 in the morning.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 felt, even though it's back to back days of the Fitness Age score being 23... wonder if there was a patch update where they re-calculated how to score that, because normally I'm at a 21, and I know I was particular on point today. Did reach a new milsestone achievement called Super Middlewight Puncher Lv. 1, which was to have a total of 88,000 total punches thrown, with my exact total being 88,377.

And on that note we'll see you (hopefully) at about 6 PM EST for Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

Today's Notes 2/15/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Yup slept in today, because why not... but I've been up since 12:30 PM EST, part of why I was up late was because I was working on a new commissioned fan fiction project, kind of a unique cross-over. If you know where I post such things, you'll know where to find it when it's finished.

Anyway last night's stream of Overwatch was productive in that we got the nine wins needed for this week's Lunar New Year Rewards, a good portion of them came via the Capture The Flag Blitz mode. Earned one play of the game as Moira in a match where I had to spend more time playing defense than I would've liked because there was no other healers on the team. Let's be straight up, when it comes to Capture The Flag, the must needed heroes on a team are Lucio, Moira & Symmetra... because Lucio can speed boost anyone who has the flag back to base, Moira can flex from heal to damage, and Symmetra can set teleporters up from the re-spawn to the base, cutting down on travel time and set turrets up to make things a night mare either defensively or offensively for the other team.

Since it is Monday, we did a Bonus stream today of Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm and Exercise, it went about 47 minutes (56 when one counts the stretching), and for whatever reason throwing straights were a bit of a problem today, I expected some issues to come from side stepping, but it always irks me when it comes from a punch, particularly when I'm streaming the session and I can see that the punch was clearly thrown!

Popped into Animal Crossing New Horizons, and finally saw what the Festival Event was, as it's a strong reference to a Mardi Gras like celebration, where all the island residents are dancing, there are feather for you to catch, and if you turn them into the special visitor to the island (Pave) you'll be rewarded with different items related to the Festival Event. It was pretty cool, and Pave's dialog was certainly a blast to read. Now of course I have to say Hopper was the best dancer out of my island residents, then again, anyone short and chubby is a good dancer (which of course means I dance as good as I sing, which means I'm awesome! LOL!)

Also did a run of Super Mario Bros 35, which lasted about 12 minutes, and managed to pull off a 3rd place finish. We might end up dedicating a full night to it to get to level 100 before the Nintendo closes the game down next month. We'll see how things shake out for that.

Tonight we'll be back to Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, as we are in the later stages of the game. We'll be picking up at The Coliseum and going after the Hades Cup, then we got things to do in Agrabah, Halloween Town, The Pride Lands, Space Paranoids, Hallow Bastion, Twilight Town and then finally the World That Never Was. Most of these are direct boss battle encounters, so things go right, we fight finish the game tonight. We'll see how that goes.

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

Today's Notes 2/14/21

Good afternoon everybody,

It's Valentine's Day... and you know I heard a prediction from this lady that encountered an alien at a Holiday Inn that the world was gonna end on Valentine's Day back in the year 2016... which proves the trouble with aliens, that you just can't trust them when they get their fact's wrong. Occasionally, you meet a nice one, like Starman or E.T., but most of the time they turn out to be a big lizard.

Anyway last night's stream of Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward ended up running seven hours in length because we got two Game Over endings, one To Be Continued Ending and one character ending, in this case the one for Dio, which reveals he's part of a cult that is looking to save humanity in some ass-backwards way involving everyone being the clone of the same person. The big tie in the 999 was also revealed with Clover informing Sigma (and by proxy the player if they never played 999) the details of the previous Nonary Games she was apart of... and revealing that Santa and June/Akane were on the run from the law as far as she knew. 

Watched the Real Ghostbusters episode Killerwatt yesterday, and it really is a stark contrast to Ghosts R Us, as the tone is much more darker as the ghosts are presented as more of a threat. The possessed items (power drills, overs, refrigerators, power generators) all have unique designs but the biggest nightmare fuel is the possessed Ecto-1 which I just realized how fucking creepy that thing looks after all these years. Something else I noticed and had to look up was the fact that James Avery (aka Shredder from TMNT 87 and Uncle Phil from Fresh-Prince Of Bel-Air) was the voice of Killerwatt, which is really noticeable when the Ghostbusters are facing him within the Power Plant. 

Today Fitness Boxing 2 Session was a solid 32 minutes (40 if I count the stretching), although my timing on left weaves was terrible, couldn't quite get into the groove on them and it raised my Fitness Age score for the day to 24. Again you see the results here daily, where I'm averaging a 21 Fitness Age score, so only when things go really bad during a workout session does that score change. 

Also, popped into Animal Crossing New Horizons and saw that all my island residents sent gifts of bouquets and chocolate to my in game character, which was awesome... however there was no opportunity to stock up on those items to give them to the island residents in return. Yes I could've re-gifted everything, but it's weird that Nook's Cranny didn't have those items in stock. Makes me question what's the deal with the Festival Day which we'll see tomorrow.

With it being Sunday, that means tonight's stream will be dedicated to Overwatch, and we'll be chasing after nine wins to get the next Lunar New Year event skin, which I think is for McCree. So hopefully we'll have good luck and get it done quick!

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

Highlights for the Week of February 7, 2021

Here are the best moments of the games featured on my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of February 7, 2021. The games featured were Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Music, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, Paladins, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online & Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward! 

Today's Notes 2/13/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Yup I slept in, didn't get up till about 1:30 PM.... had a nice tuna sandwich and salad for 'breakfast', because why not.

Anyway last night's stream of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix saw a lot getting done in terms of advancement of the story, as we made our second visits to everything from Twilight Town up to Port Royal, which means achievements for finishing the worlds related to Mulan, Beauty &The Beast, and Pirates of the Caribbean were unlocked. Obviously the biggest and best moment of the night was the aftermath of Goofy's apparent death and playing as Sora running along a canyon fighting along side Squall, Cloud, Tifa and Yuffie before slaughtering 1000 enemies still holds up as one the most bad-ass moments in any video game I've played. Now while I like a lot of the added cut-scenes that add extra context to the story, the placement of them leave a bit to be desired, because I have no memory of such a large break in the action in some sections. Also the realization that I have to use the Drive forms to get various abilities that should be from just leveling up or reaching story points is complete bull shit lol.

So let me tough on the impeachment trial which as of this moment exposed two real big obvious truths, one the Republicans have no balls and won't stick their principals when it comes to defending the constitution are are willing to risk even more violence and Trump running for office again because they were complicit in enabling him to organize an assault on the Capital back on January 6th, and the Democrats dropped the fucking ball by not calling for witness testimony from those willing to speak about what they know and saw regarding Trump's actions, showing their inability to follow-thru.In fact as I'm writing this, the Senate did acquitted Trump 57-43.... and the 43 Senators all of whom are Republicans should be ashamed of themselves and for the fact they have just put this nation in peril. May all 43 of them burn in hell for all of eternity. If you are a Trump Support, fuck you and I hope you burn in hell too.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was about 38 minutes (closer to 46 minutes if one includes 8 minutes of stretching), and was a real leg burner as it did include a Hell Mode set. Unlocked a new achievement "Middleweight Puncher Lv. 3" which was to reach a total punch count of 84,000 HITs aka punches thrown that are not consider misses.  This does not include things like weaves, ducks, steps and blocks. My current exact total is 84,510 punches thrown. On a side note, it seems the game itself does not like to use 'So What' by Pink, as it has only been used in a session 5 times, while "Alone" by Marshmello and"Can't Hold Us" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have been used 21 times.

Late tonight, we'll be getting back to Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward, as I think we've done all we could with the Magenta door path last week, so we'll need to jump to the first door choice to pick on of the other two to see if that gets us anywhere. So we'll be seeing a lot of dialog, new puzzles and such for tonight's stream! 

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