Highlights from the week of 3/14/21

 Here are highlights from my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of March 14, 2021, where we featured Overwatch, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Music, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, Gran Turismo 5, X-Men The Arcade Game, TNA Impact, Sonic The Hedgehog (2006), Marvel vs Capcom Clash of the Superheroes, Lego Indiana Jones 2 The Adventure Continues and Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma! 

Today's Notes 3/20/21

Good evening everybody,

Yup I overslept today... but hey, it's not like I had any serious plans for the afternoon anyway. Last night's stream saw no frame drops, so Comcast is staying on the ball, but getting in touch with Jerry from their Corporate Customer Service division is proven to be a damn trial in and of itself, because if they say to the FCC they spoke with me directly,, that will be a damn lie. Yes everything has been going great, but I want to make damn sure they know why I took the steps I did.

Anyway, we kicked off last night's stream with Gran Turismo 5, a racing game that featured all sorts of awesome vehicles, and I was surprised at how gorgeous that game still looks. Last time I played it was back in 2013, and it was a real joy. Now remembering how to corner and the fact that acceleration and break are not the triggers on the controller meant there was some interesting moments of me going off track.

We then jumped to X-Men the Arcade Game, doing a complete run using Dazzler, and I did start an online lobby, and near as I can tell it all still works. Granted no one stumbled into my game, so we couldn't see if that worked and what the latency would be like, but hey we had fun going through it.

Now I did say we were going to try Sonic The Hedgehog 2006... and while I remember beating this game way back in the day, I clearly don't have the patience to deal with the horrible camera angle and very loose controls. The fact that Sega rushed Sonic 06 into the development and basically merged it with another game they were working on in a desperate attempt to celebrate the Blue Blur's 15th anniversary was very much exposed by the fact that the games in the franchise that came out after it like Sonic Generation and Sonic Forces are far superior by not trying to do as much. Of course we did have a bit comedy with the fact that Sonic 06 is not listed on Twitch, which goes to show how Sega feels about it.

TNA Impact, the game that could be blame for driving Midway out of business was also featured last night, and for a game that was hyped to be like WWF No Mercy, I can safely say TNA Impact after all these years is nothing more than an arcade style wrestling game like the WWE SmackDown games. With a clunky control scheme and perhaps the stupidest gimmick match in wrestling history (Ultiamte X), it's a good game for a laugh and that's about it. That said, it does have a story mode... and maybe we'll suffer through that... who knows.

Marvel Vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes was also on the lineup, as part oft he Marvel vs Capcom Origins collection, and it was certainly a struggle to get through the arcade mode, thanks to the input reading the game does at various points. Still we got through it, with Ryu and Chun Li after trying various combinations, and there is something excited about getting through games like that. Maybe cause it was an arcade game first and thus every time you loss you had to put a quarter in to continue, so when you finally beat you are super pumped!

Lastly, we closed out with a little Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues, which was released about the time of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I remember not liking this one as much as the first Lego Indiana Jones game and never finished it, so maybe we'll do that in full at some point, question is do I lay the PS3 version or the Steam one.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session started late because I did over slept, bit we did do a 45 minute workout, which meant seeing and hearing how Hiro acts during the No Mercy mode. and his voice actor really didn't get into delivering his lines. Still we burned a lot of calories... and now it's time to gain those calories back with dinner!

Tonight we'll be starting up Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, the final game (as of this writing) in the series, so looking forward to seeing how the plot and details of what's going on is revealed!

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

Today's Notes 3/19/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Star Trek Online was all over the place, with doing at least one thing for every character, so some folks were doing full missions, others short patrols or special task force operations. So it was rather blah... that said, there was issues with STO's servers last night, and I know it was on Cryptic's end because out side of one blip there were no noticeable frame drops during the stream... so Comcast had their shit together.

On a side note, the mission Destiny on the Klingon Defense Force side is bugged to hell to the point where every time we left Kahless' ship it said to continue from an earlier point. It did mean we could farm some melee kills as it related to dealing with one of the Klingon Recruit objectives... so that was a positive.

Tonight's stream will be focused on putting the PlayStation 3 we received recently through its paces for an extended period of time. We'll start with Gran Turismo 5, do some racing and such and probably bounce around to a few different games. The whole point is to see if it can handle heavy use, as thus far I've done a few minor things, getting some of the games I had digitally installed and so forth. Basically tonight is gonna be random. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 sessions was pretty good outside of performing right weaves from the orthodox stance, just couldn't really get that good bounce for that today. We did reach a new milestone with the Heavyweight Puncher Lv. 2 achievement, which involved reaching a total punch count of 130,500, with my exact total being 130,791 at the time of this writing.

My job set out word that anyone who got vaccinated for COVID-19 will have the option to return to work at the office, granted I haven't yet, but there is no real incentive for me to want to go back to the office as a) it's expensive to travel and b) I hate being around a large group of people (and for me anything more than 5 people is way to damn much. Plus I take public transit to get where I need to go...  and yeah, if you've ever been on a bus in New Jersey you know the mutants you can see on it. The only up side is that certain assignments would be easier to do at the office, but the down side is over powers that.

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

 

Today's Notes 3/18/21

Good morning everybody,

So Comcast Update, I again tried calling the Corporate Rep that tried to reach me on Tuesday afternoon (outside of time times I told them that I could easily be reached) and again got their voice mail. thankfully yesterday's work day and last night's stream didn't have any issues of note.

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball saw six games being played, two wins over the Detroit Tigers, two wins and a loss against the Kansas City Royals and a win over the Montreal Expos. I joke that my Philadelphia Phillies are so far ahead of the Atlanta Braves in the National League East (and 18 game lead) that I could probably simulate the next month of the season and still have a decent lead. I think though that I would continue to play every game up till we clinch the Division, then simulate the remaining games in order to get to the playoffs. We'll see, because even at doing six games a week it'll take a while to even get to that point.

Also Last night I finally tested the disk drive of the PS3 off-stream we recently acquired, and it reads discs find, however it is a little snug in terms of inserting the disk and ejecting them. This was noted to me before I received it, but other than that it does work fine. I was reminded at how long it takes for things to be installed on it when trying out Gran Turismo 5 last night (and how unnatural the controls feel after years of playing kart racers). Also we did give Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe last night, doing an arcade ladder run with Scorpion. There might be some trophies that I could possibly get with some of the older games to boost my PSN score which is nice to know.

Over on the Ghostbusters Youtube channel, two episodes were added yesterday, The Scaring of the Green from the Real Ghostbusters series, and The Luck of the Irish from Extreme Ghostbusters. Both episodes revolve around Saint Patrick's Day, and kind of revolve around the same plot as the decedents of those who stole a pot of gold are pursued by a ghostly force (a Bog Hound in the RGB episode, a leprechaun in the XGB one). The funny thing is, by putting both episodes up yesterday, that means the episodes for both series are now out of order so we'll see if that gets fixed retroactively or not down the line. Also kind of a cool note, The Scaring of the Green first aired November 16, 1987.... and The Luck of the Irish first aired on November 3, 1997... real cool that these episodes aired nearly 10 years a part!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, kept focused on the task at hand, only had one miss. Because by the time I started my workout, there was no an opportunity to start working on doing Free Exercise's with Hiro as the trainer, but we'll get to that probably over the weekend.

Tonight we have Star Trek Online planned
as per usual for a Thursday night stream, and so we'll see how things go, as last night's stream of STO was plagued with issues that all traced back to Comcast.

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

 

 

Today's Notes 3/17/21

Good morning everyone,

So Comcast update, on Monday I got an email from their corporate offices which asked me what times I can be reached directly so they could communicate verbally... and I was really detailed in my response, indicating what times for the entire week. So imagine my surprise when I was working yesterday afternoon, I get a call from them 15 minutes before I finished working and before I could easily take the call, I tried calling the rep back directly, got the voice mail. Called the main number directly, got hung up on twice and the third time had to leave a message. Tried calling the rep back directly twice more before the start of last night's stream... got the voice mail. Nice professionalism their Comcast... real nice to see they can't follow the instructions given to them.

Anyway last night's stream ran pretty smooth, a couple of minor instances of instability but not enough to disrupt anything. We covered a lot of ground in Dragon Age Inquisition in regards to doing everything I could find in Crestwood and doing a lot of stuff around Skyhold, which involved tot talking to just about everyone repeatedly. We also took down a second dragon, and got Sera's War Table mission done, and by the looks of things it's looking as if that's gonna be the romantic path our hero will be going down. Pun intended. 

We had a solid half hour work out with Fitness Boxing 2 today, and since I did not over sleep, nothing felt like I was pressing to over compensate.  We unlocked the Hiro's Trainee achievement which was to perform 10 daily workouts using Hiro as the instructor.  The question of what counts towards the 'Instructor' Best Friend achievement has popped into my head, as I'm guessing stretching counts towards it too. 

Tonight's stream has ESPN Major League Baseball scheduled as we continue the 2004 season of the Philadelphia Phillies, picking up in mid-June during the Interleague portion of the season. If memory serves me right, we are starting with either a game against the Twins to finish up that series or we're starting a series against the Tigers. One or the other. 

Also picked up another set of PS2/3 RCA connector cables and a second RCA-to-HDMI so this way I don't have to keep swapping the one I had back and forth between the PS2 and PS3, all I would have to do is just plug in the correct RCA-to-HDMI adapter into the Elgato Capture Card and USB slots depending on which console (PS2 or PS3) I intend to use. Just one less thing I have to do.

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

Today's Notes 3/16/21

Good morning everybody, 

Well last night's stream was not plagued by any internet connection issues, just a few minor blips that were only really noticeable by me, but there was barely any frame drops, so Comcast had their shit together last night. Now I'm waiting for a call from them regarding this manner, since they must reach out to me regarding this since I did take the extra step to complain to the FCC. So let's see where that takes us.

As for as for the stream itself goes, we got a lot done in Dragon Age Inquisition, finishing up everything we could do in the Forbidden Oasis and a couple of other areas before the story was progressed that saw our base at Haven being invaded by the real antagonist of the game, the Ancient One and his arm of Red Templars. This saw us relocate to our new fortress at Skyhold and opens up a shit ton more to do in terms war table operations, areas to explore and missions to wrap up.

Tonight's stream will see us continue Dragon Age Inquisition, and I think we'll be spending a lot of time in Skyhold, as there seems to be a lot of things to do there, even if I went all over the place last night, there are conversations to be had and places to revisit, in addition to all the stuff at the war table that needs to be done. 

Woke up late, as I did hear my alarm go off then I went back to sleep only to keep up after 10 AM, so today's workout was on the short side. I did do a little extra with the free training, so today's workout was longer than indicated via the screen shot. As of today we've earned 70% of all in-game achievement, and here are the new one. Janice's Best Friend which required to exercise using Janice as the Trainer 100 times, Hiro's New Student, which is to use Hiro as the instructor once, and Hiro's Best Sudent which was to receive a three-star rating using Hiro as the trainer. And of course for earning 70% of all achievement milestones, that was called Big Fit FIghter.

At the moment I do plan for Friday's stream to be focused on the PlayStation 3, I'll have to double check to see what games I would want to feature for just one night need to be directly installed first, because I know that was something that needed to be done with DC Universe vs Mortal Kombat and maybe TNA Impact, but I can't remember about things like Gran Turismo 5.

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

 

Today's Notes 3/15/21

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Overwatch started off rough with an apparent weak upload signal / stream, now I wonder if it was because of the strong winds or if Comcast my ISP did not fully fix things on Saturday, this was further compounded in the last hour of the stream where latency in the game of Overwatch was spiking like mad. Since this corresponded with frame drops that were happening at the same time, I suspect again, it was my ISP that was failing to perform up to the standards I expected. That said, when things were smooth during the majority of the stream things were good, picking up three plays of the game, and getting in some games with Kalenal and PandaSweet is always awesome.

Staying on the subject of Comcast, the FCC sent me a notification that they have reached notified them about my complaint and that I should be hearing from Comcast about this matter. In fact I just got an email from Comcast's Executive Support regarding this matter.

Today we did a much longer Fitness Boxing 2 set to help make up for the the shorter sets during the weekend, Which meant we ended up having a new record set for estimated calories burned in a day. We got a few new achievements done today to. First was Heavyweight Puncher Lv. 1 which was to reach a total punch count of 126,000,  we wrapped up the Janice's Buddy achievement which was to perform 10 free exercises with Janice (we did 3 free ones today to finish it) and with that we switched to Hiro as our trainers, and instantly going for the Hiro Stylist and Hiro's Fashion Saboteur achievement which are to change Hiro's outfit and put him in a mismatched outfit, and we also got the Hiro Fashion Designer which was to put a matching outfit together... which oddly enough was just put him back in his default attire. 

We also unlocked the Weight Forward achievement which was to enter 10 days worth of weight data.
And with today's weight in, the scale indicated I weighted about 250 lbs! We lost 2 pounds from the last time we weighed in! Yay! 

Also just realized I need to do one more set with Jancie to finish up her achievements as well, which I think to do 100 exercise sets with a particular trainer.

Jim Cornette has been in the news recently, and look, people need to understand something about him, he's a master of getting a reaction, always has been. Give him just a bit of info to work with and he can play those who don't know any better like a fiddle. To take him down a peg, all one has to do is present the truth, i.e. how Eric Bischoff did in their Table For 3 episode. Here is how Bischoff did it, by catching Cornette in a lie with regard to when Smokey Mountain Wrestling working with WCW, where Cornette said Bischoff was the one who ended that, Bischoff pointed out using the actual order of events, that he had nothing to do with it because he didn't have any power in WCW until after the WCW/SMW partnership ended in early 1993, because Bischoff didn't get the executive producer job until the middle of the year following the firing of Bill Watts.  Cornette's responsive of 'well it was what he heard' in a manner so sheepish you'd think he was a Senator from Kentucky 

Tonight we have Dragon Age Inquisition scheduled as we'll focus on side-questing and doing as much as we can before advancing the story. Hopefully this stream will not have any issues that I can trace back to my Internet Service Provider.

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