Today's Notes 3/9/21

 Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Dragon Age Inquisition went a lot longer than anticipated because I actually went into the portion of the game where you basically decide between allying with the Mages or the Templars, which in the context of how both are portrayed is an easy decision, since the Mages are basically victims of circumstance.... at least based on the fact I didn't do the Dragon's Keep thing at the start of the game to input decisions from Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age II since I played the first on PC and never played the second. Still, we ended up recruiting a bunch of other characters, which means the making sure everyone is properly equipped with the best gear is gonna be a headache and a half considering how clunky the menu system is in DA:I. 

But that said we'll be continuing things tonight, granted it's going to be more focused on exploring one of the many open areas of the game world. So there will be little to no plot advancement as we roam around looking for items, loot and leveling up.

Saw an interview of Maria Kanellis defending the WWE's Divas Era... and once again she sticks her own foot in her mouth. Since that was the era when I was fully invested in watching WWE TV for fan creative purposes, I saw what was going on... and what she she doesn't understand is that just because that era had Mickie James, Victoria and Beth Phoenix, it also had the dead weight like Maria herself, Candice Michelle, Layla El and Michelle McCool, performers who basically justified the WWE not doing anything serious with the women division for the better part of a decade. There is a fucking reason why virtually no female wrestler anywhere says they were inspired by anything from that point in time while also saying they want to make everyone forget about that period of wrestling history. Because 95% of it sucked.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session only went about 30 minutes (38 if I include the time for stretching) and yeah, certainly feel the difference between doing three days of 45+ minute workouts and doing a shorter one. Hell didn't even break 1000 punches for the day, granted today's session did involve a lot of blocking, weaving, ducking and swaying so it evens out in that regard.

Dropped into Animal Crossing New Horizons this morning as well and had a peculiar interaction with Audie, in that she lost her pull-up bar... which if the size of items in the game is any indication, is something that is close to seven feet tall. Granted I had the item in my inventory because I picked it up from Nook's Cranny a few days ago... but the question is how did Audie lose her own in the first place?

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

 

 

Today's Notes 3/8/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was pretty solid, plenty of wins and losses as per usual, as we split things between mostly being a tank and support and the start of the stream, then focusing on playing damage role. Picked up four plays of the game with Reinhardt, Ashe, McCree and Torbjorn, so had a good night in terms of having huge moments. Big thanks to PandaSweet for joining in on the fun!

That said, we did have one instance where I got overly frustrated with smurfs. For those that don't know, Smurfs are people with egos so large they create secondary accounts (aka buying Overwatch twice) so that they can match up against lower-tiered and more casual players so that they can basically beat up on players no dedicating hundreds of hours to playing ranked matches. Smurfing is cheating because you are avoiding playing at your skill level and it's to negate Match Making porcess.

We'll be streaming Dragon Age Inquisition later today, and I gave real consideration to dedicating tonight to finishing up Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, but if I figure things correctly, if we do Zero Escape: VLR on Friday, we don't risk anything if it ends up taking longer than expected to finish, considering we have two character endings, one bad ending and the true ending to go through to wrap everything up, plus on more major puzzle room as well. So tonight being what it was supposed to be with Dragon Age makes sense.

We did do a bonus stream as per usual for a Monday, but it was only featuring Fitness Boxing 2, and we did a little extra so it ended up being a 55-minute work out session overall, with the daily only being like 47 minutes. We did reach a new milestone with the Cruiserweight Puncher Level 2 achievement, which was to reach a total punch count of 117,000. I forgot to look at my overall total punch count, but still, it's a lot!

Watched Robin Hood: Men In Tights last night, man what a funny movie that still holds up very well. Richard Lewis is just a joy to watch, and the dialog is just so smartly written... which is the case with all Mel Brooks movies. 

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

Today's Notes 3/7/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Zero Escape Virtue's Last Rewards was real productive in getting things advanced towards the ending, as found the path that leads to the true ending and unlocked the information needed not only to deal with the anti-matter bombs that lead to the true ending but to also resolve the issues regarding Quark and Luna's endings as well. For all intents and purposes we should be able to wrap up Zero Escape Virtue's Last Rewards at the end of this week. We might end up moving it to Friday night because there may night be enough content left to max out a full 4-5 hour long stream, and for archive purposes I don't want to bog it down by pairing it with something else.

For tonight's stream, well it's Sunday night which means Overwatch is on the agenda. There isn't any in-game events happening this week, which means we can just focus on playing the game and not worry about pressing for wins. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was another long one, which mean no progression was made in terms of doing 'extra exercises' to count towards doing Free Exercises with Janice. Still the workout itself was over 45 minutes and that's not counting the time spent towards stretching. I am considering for Monday's extra stream to have the daily work out be shorter to maybe do some extra exercises... but I'm up in the air on that. More than likely it'll be a longer style session.

Since I stream on Twitch, obviously the whole 'Boycott Amazon' issue has got my attention... but let me ask you something, why would I, as someone who has been able to earn additional income from streaming on Twitch, want to Boycott Amazon in support of people in Alabama who voted for Tommy Tuberville, a man who has proven to be anti-Trans and has a platform so out-dated it would make the corpse of Ronald Reagan go 'get with the times'.  Let me remind people that my day job involves Market Research, and a lot of that involved interviewing people for political polls, and many of which were focused on the state of Alabama. The only reason Tuberville got elected to the United States Senate is because of the hicks in Alabama liked him as Football Coach, and that's a fucking fact.

It appears Comcast, my internet service provider is having issues this afternoon... which is always frustrating to see just a few hours from the start of a stream. 

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

Highlights for the week of February 28, 2021

 Here are the best moments from my streams over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden for the week of February 28, 2021! This week we featured Overwatch (both on PC and Nintendo Switch), Dragon Age Inquisition, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm and Music, Super Mario Bros 35, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, Hades and Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward!

Today's Notes 3/6/21

Good evening everybody,

What is it about Saturdays that make me want to sleep in till 2 PM? Maybe it's because I know I don't have anything pressing to do in the afternoon so I don't feel like getting out of bed. Yeah that has to be it.

Anyway last night's stream ended up featuring Hades once again, and guess what? We made it through completely for the first time! Yes I have god mode enable, yes I was lucky with getting some of the best boons and power-ups possible at the right time. Yes everything ended up being down right perfect, but damn it, we made it through! Because of that I am counting Hades as a game 'beaten' since the point is to get Zagreus out of the underworld to see his mother Persephone. Yes there is more to be done as far as the story goes because the fact is this story is a Greek tragedy in many ways, and if we managed to get through Hades 9 more times on stream, we'll change the 'beaten' date to reflect that.

Tonight's stream will see us going back to Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward as we'll be jumping back to an early AB-game decision point to select betray. Way I figure we'll probably need this week and next week to finish the game based on the number of paths left to go down and how heavy this game gets regarding details on what's really going.

For today's Fitness Boxing 2 session, we had a long 47 minute workout today (55 minutes when you count the stretching). We reached a new milestone by unlocking the Cruiser-weight Puncher Lv. 1 achievement which required to have a total punch count of 112,500, with my exact total being 113,621 punches thrown. I didn't do anything extra today because of the daily workout being one my longer sessions for the week.

Managed to get the Serene Painting in Animal Crossing New Horizons, and I really wish Jolly Redd's Treasure Boat had a more routine schedule so I could get all the art pieces faster.

This week's Real Ghostbusters Episode 'Troll Bridge' sees a troll wander away from his pack to become a party animal because Time Square in the 80s was a hot spot to be. The designs for the various trolls seen in the episode all have unique designs, as does the leader's huge monster-truck style vehicle. A minor detail of note, is that the police officer on horseback leading the NYPD's efforts against the trolls is a woman, which I believe is one of the very few times in the Real Ghostbusters series where an authority figure is female.  

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

 

 

Today's Notes 3/5/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Star Trek Online certainly was one that exposed a lot of flaws with STO in terms of content, particularly when it comes to non-episodic content, in that the Task Force Operations and Patrols are very easily things to lose interest in which makes the grinding needed for Reputaitons all the more tedious. It's why I still haven't done everything needed for my Gamma Recruit from a few years ago and have not gone all in with my Klingon recruit this year. 

That said we did have fun, but we did ran into a fuck ton of bugs in the mission "The Measure of Morality (Part 1)", in which Seven of Nine is supposed to be apart of the four person team that includes the player, a bridge officer, Burnham (From Discovery), but for whatever reason Seven does not spawn in, thus making the mission much more difficult than it needed to be even on a normal difficult setting. It certainly lead to a lot of unnecessary re-spawning. On the positive side, I did learn the mission did have an optional battle against a shape-shifter depending on the choices made regarding Noye.

Today I weight in at about 252 lbs... well my scale was fluttering between the hash-marks for 250 and 252, but I went with the higher figure just in case. Funny thing is, I was told by a family member who went to the doctor's a few times recently that one of their digital scales said they weight one amount, but then when they went to a different doctor, another digital scale said they weight nearly twenty pound more. This was like within a week's time frame, which just tells me that some medical practices need to make sure their scales are properly zeroing out and balanced.

Which brings me to this mornings Fitness Boxing 2 session, which was another short session based on the exercises involved, which meant I had an easy excuse to do a little extra. All in all a good workout to get the day going, even if I did have a brain-fart and spaced on one easy combo. Hey it happens from time to time. 

Not completely sure what I'll be streaming tonight, obviously I could do Hades or do something else just to change things up a bit. We'll see what I come up with.

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

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!