Today's Notes 3/4/21

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball saw six games being played featuring my 2004 Philadelphia Phillies, first was a four-game sweep of the Atlanta Braves which did unfortunately involved Tomas Perez getting injured. Instead of bringing up someone from the minors, I found Jay Bell on the free-agent market, which is actually an upgrade in terms of having a utility infielder that actually is good at three positions. The final two games a loss and a win against the Chicago White Sox to begin the inter-league portion of the season. Because it takes about an hour for each game, there was no way I was gonna get through a seventh game last night night. Still we basically covered a week of the season, so that's good.

Finally finished a fan-fic based on elements of Zero Escape: The Nonary Games last night, and it's posted in the usual places where I would post such things. It's a good thing I did wait in regards to finishing it because details that I learned from last Saturday's stream of Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Rewards proved helpful in adding references and spoilers to what was basically a five-page ship-fest.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was actually short, clocking in at about 30 minutes minus the stretching, because there was not any lower-body workouts or stretching involved. I did do a little extra to not only put progress in on the free-exercise achievement for Janice, plus it does bother me when I see the estimated calorie burn count for the daily session to be so low. I must be developing an ego when it comes to that.

Popped into Animal Crossing New Horizon's this morning, and it turns out Ozzie's replacement is going to be Boris, which means I'll have two cranky residents on my island, with Hopper being the one already there.

Tonight's stream will feature Star Trek Online and we'll be bouncing from character to character doing various things, and we will finish what we started last week involving my Discovery-era character that was interrupted because of the game's server issues. Hopefully that will not be a problem this week.

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

Today's Notes 3/3/21

 Good morning everybody, 

Last night's stream of Dragon Age Inquisition certainly ran longer than what's expected from one of my streams as of late on a weeknight, but I chalk this up to a few things: one I actually ran into battles where I was completely under-powered, namely when it came to dealing with the Rifts. Now this is either because at a certain point, the difficult spikes because of Main Quests or I somehow wandered into spots that were meant for later in the game, but since I'm still in the Hinterlands I'm curious to how things scale in this game. That said, we did clear out a lot of things, and ended up opening up other areas meant for later on. So all in all a fun night.

Tonight's stream will focus on ESPN Major League Baseball, and I believe my 2004 Philadelphia Phillies will be opening with a 4-game set against the Atlanta Braves, and if we push it we might be able to include the 2-game set against the Chicago White Sox, which will start the Interleague part of the season.

This week on the Official Ghostbusters YouTube channel, they added the Extreme Ghostbusters episode Fear Itself, and it is an episode that does two things, one it gives Garrett some redemption considering his 'old friends' as seen in the previous episode, while also giving him, Eduardo, Kylie and Roland some extra character depth as it dives into the fears. This episode does get a little weird because outside of Garrett, no one really battle's their fear as they trade off on battling each other's fears, Kylie going after Zombie Eduardo for example. Still it's a fun, creepy story.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session felt a bit off, mostly because sway-backs from the south-paw stance proved to be a problem, so to compensate in addition to the daily exercise, I did one free-exercise setto make up for what was lost. So the screen shot of today's stats only counts what was done for the daily, not the extra. Besides what makes the extra worth doing is the achievement to go with it... plus i had the extra time to do it, which made it even more justified. That's the rough part about working mid-days, but you got to do what you got to do.

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

 

Today's Notes 3/2/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night we started up Dragon Age Inquisition on the Xbox One, and I have to say I do like the character creator and how it was just detailed enough to give me options to create the Inquisitor Evelyn the way I wanted to with spur of the moment decisions. The biggest lacking detail is of course hair coloring options, but that's been an issue with me regarding BioWare games for a while. As far as the game play goes, much like with Mass Effect it was very easy to get caught up doing side-quests, and I was quickly reminded at how large the scope of the land is when one has to walk everywhere. The combat system, much like with Dragon Age Origins and Star Wars KOTOR I and II with its real time strategy is something I'm not a fan of, so my goal is to basically level up as fast as possible to basically brute force my way through everything.

Of course we will be continuing Dragon Age Inquisition tonight, and I will of course name tonight's stream after a line from The Inquisition song from Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I. Speaking of which if I could have figured out a female variant of the name Torquemada I would've named my character that! 

I really need to sit down to fitness the fan fic I started regarding Zero Escape 999, granted I already have the intro and set-up finished, just need to outline the rest.

I went to commission a new art piece from DaemonsWolf (www.darkwolfcreative.com) and they have started work on what will be the next start screen for my Twitch channel which will feature characters from Kingdom Hearts, Hades and Zero Escape Virtues Last Rewards. I've already seen the early draft of it, and I love the placement of everyone. Can't wait to see the finished results!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session felt very off, as I didn't quite get my legs under myself the way I like when it came to doing dodges and blocks, don't get me wrong I worked up a good sweat, and even did an extra set, but this totally felt like an off-day overall when. Did get a new milestone achievement with Light Heavyweight Puncher Lv. 3, which was to have a total punch count of 108,000, with my exact total being 108,430.

Popped into Animal Crossing New Horizons this morning as well, and while I have seen my island residents looking for certain items, I have not once, prior to today seen one ask for a certain insect to be caught, in this cause Agnus wasn't a Tiger Butterfly While easily accomplished, it does serve as a reminder that sometimes jumping into Animal Crossing can easily take up more time than one would expect. 

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

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Today's Notes 3/1/21

Good afternoon everybody,

You know when surprising things happen it always means it's a good day? Well I got a $25 Amazon Gift Card from my day job, apparently there was some contest going on that I wasn't aware of, so... yay! 

Anyway last night's stream of Overwatch was nothing but Mayhem matches, we got on such a good roll that we ended up winning 9 out of the last 10 matches played! And when you factor in, these were Mayhem matches, winning can be very difficult, and we had a fairly good mix of attack and defense objectives. Big thanks to PandaSweet and Kalenal for joining in on the fun!

A lot of folks were curious about where I Raynhardt skin I've been using for Reinhardt as of late, because apparently they were not aware of the Blizzard Anniversary bundle, which will be around till September of this year. It is account wide, so even if you get the Bundle on PC, you will have the skin available on other platforms.

Staying on Overwatch, as part of the Monday bonus stream, I did feature the Nintendo Switch version of of Overwatch, winning two matches and using Moira and Lucio. There are some big differences with the console versions of the game as some things that are left click with a mouse on the PC version are right trigger with a game controller. I do wonder how Overwatch plays when the Switch is not docked.

Anyway, Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session was obviously done on stream being a fairly long work out, with over 2000 punches thrown. We reached a new achievement goal with the Supreme Stamper Lv. 1 achievement which was to acquire 80 stamps or basically do 80 daily exercise sessions. 

We also featured Super Mario Bros 35, which closes down on March 31, and I had some... not so good runs, as my timing with some jumps were way off, and I ended up plummeting to my death. Still as filler goes, Mario 35 proved to be a nice little game to have around for extra streams!

Tonight more than likely we'll be starting up Dragon Age Inquisition, playing the Xbox One version... and I think for each stream I do of the game I'm going to use lines from History of The World Part I, in particularly the lyrics from The Inquisition.

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

Today's Notes 2/28/21

Good afternoon everybody,

It's the start of a new week, and the end of the month of February here in 2021, and I like to think so far this year has been better than last year, at least professionally speaking.

Anyway, last night's stream of Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward was a lot of fun, as we got the endings for K and Alice, with a lot of plot development for the later, not to mention the revelation that K was Sigma... or Sigma was K... or some sort of nonsense along those lines. Big thanks for the re-subs and the raids that happened last night as well, made things extra special. That said, there was at least one awkward moment for comedic purposes thanks to Japan being Japan with regard to dialog involving Alice and cucumber. Yeah, safe to say that came out of no where, and was probably VLR's version of 999's Devil woman gag for Lotus.

Speaking of Zero Escape: 999, I'm kicking around an idea for a fan fic based on some obvious things regarding it, and considering how fucking weird the Zero Escape timeline is, one can safely say anything is possible.

Had a long Fitness Boxing 2 workout session today, and it seems that there was an update to put 'Hell Mode' exercises up first when doing longer workouts, or at least it seems that way to me.  We reached a new milestone achievement with Light Heavyweight Puncher Lv. 2, which was to have a total punch  count of 104,000, with my exact total being 105,109 total punches thrown. No noticeable change in my weight since the last time I stepped on a scale, but as long as I'm not gaining that's a good thing. 

Still not sure what's going to be the next major game I'm going to be diving into, I have been giving some strong consideration to a few games on both the Switch and Xbox One, but haven't made up my mind yet. But we'll be starting something new for Monday's stream.

Tonight's stream will focus on Overwatch, and since the Lunar New Year event ended last week, there's not really a pressure to get wins needed to unlock stuff. Of course will try to win, but there is no need to stress to much about people being out of position... even though I naturally will of course wonder what the fuck some people are doing! 

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

 

Highlights for the week of 2/21/21

Here are highlights from my twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of February 21, 2021, which included Overwatch, 1979 Revolution Black Friday, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Music, Super Mario Bros 35, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, Hades, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Smite, Paladins, Power Rangers: Battle For The Grid and Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward! 

Today's Notes 2/27/21

Good evening everybody,

Last night's stream started with Hades and who would've thought that I would reach final boss twice...  defeat him and then realize I have to beat him twice in a row! Yeah it was a hell of a good night, and I can see where the grinding and maxing out every one of Zagreus' base stats (via the mirror in his room) will come in handy as well as the 'God Mode' where you take less damage each time you die. Looks like I'll be keeping Hades in mind as an option for some nights for a long time, because I discovered that the game does have qualifications for a 'true ending' which is to beat it 10 times, and since not every play-through is the same because you don't know what boons you're going to get, mastering every single aspect seems like the smart way to do things!

We also loaded up Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, finishing classic mode with Cloud before doing a few PVP matches using Min-Min, it took me a while to remember how to play Smash, and while I didn't win any of the matches agaisnt other players, I got my fair-share of knocks outs and had a few good moments.

oday's FItness Boxing 2 session was not the usual one for a Saturday, since I did a workout with Hell Mode yesterday morning, today's was a standard exercise set plus a little extra as I began work on Janice's Free Exercise achievement. I do have to say the thing that gave me the most trouble today was doing right-weaves from the orthodox stance, as I felt I wasn't getting a good enough rotation with my hips. Also having to do a right straight punch into a right-weave is fucking evil.

Tonight's stream will be focused on Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward, as I believe we'll be starting with one character ending (K's if I remember right) and then going down the path of the one set of chromatic doors we never opened before at the beginning. So we can expect to see Zero Jr quite a bit tonight I think! 

Over on the Official Ghostbusters YouTube channel, the Real Ghostbusters episode Slimer Come Home premiered this week, and it probably has one the saddest moments when it comes to cartoons, when Slimer runs away from home, which in and of itself is a tough seen to watch, but then you lay on top of it a sad sounding ballad (Remember Home from the Real Ghsotbusters soundtrack) and well, too this day, it brings tears to my eyes a bit. That's when you know something is good, you can watch something and know how it goes, if it can still draw emotion from you, it proves it still holds up.

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