Today's Notes 3/25/21

Good morning everybody,

Comcast's streak of delivering the service I pay monthly for (or rather pay two months in advance for) continues to hold steady, as we had no stream issues last night. Then again the memory of having a customer who went to FCC is probably still in their minds.

Anyway last night's stream was all about ESPN Major League Baseball on the PlayStation 2, as we played five games last night (two against the Montreal Expos and three against the Boston Red Sox), winning 4 and losing 1. The one loss came against the Expos, and we could have had another loss considering how the in-game version of Curt Schilling baffled the hell out of me. Also went out of my way to find Terry Mullholland who was on the Cleveland Indians roster, giving me a much better option for an emergency starter than Joey Eischen. If fact we traded Eischen for Mullholland. Tempted to see if I could add Mike Williams to my bullpen.

I did do some off-stream grinding in Dragon Age Inquisition, cleaning up some quests in areas we've already covered on stream. while also getting some war table things done. Mostly done this so that the next time with stream it we're not back tracking everywhere! 

Today's Fitness Boxing session was pretty solid on all fronts, a nice standard session to get us back on track from yesterdays short one. Had a few questionable misses related to ducking and weaving from the South Paw stance, not much I could do with that.

Anyway, we have a few new additions to my collections, Super Mario 3D World (& Bowser's Fury), & Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late[Cl-R] Collectors Edition for the Nintendo Switch, plus Record of Agarest War Zero - Limited Edition & The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection.for the PlayStation 3.

Tonight we have Star Trek Online scheduled, and the First Contact Day event has started, which is basically a bunch of daily activities to earn some in-game rewards, nothing major as we continue to wait for the next big installment of story content while also being amazed at how many bugs are in the game in existing content. 

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

 

Today's Notes 3/24/21

Good morning everybody,

You ever order something, and then for an unknown reason, the delivery organization (UPS / FedEx) either delivers to a drop-off point you didn't tell them to (such as what UPS has done to NidoranDuran) or suddenly asks for direct signature (such as what FedEx did with me) yesterday. Normally this is the result of the company one is ordering from being too cautious. Anyway, gonna try leaving the door tag that was left for me signed so they can just leave my delivery.

Anyway last night's stream of Dragon Age Inquisition was focused on what side quests I could finish along before going to the next major area, the Western Approach. We tackled a dragon and covered maybe 3/4s of everything that was reachable before having to go to the War Table to open up the remaining areas. Will probably put in some off stream time with it to tackle war table stuff.

The Official Ghostbusters channel added the Extreme Ghostbusters episode Te Infernal Machine, and if there was an episode that exposed Alfonso Ribeiro's lack of voice acting range, it's this one, as he has some very bad deliveries of Roland's dialog throughout the episode.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was kept under 30 minutes as it was more of a get up out of bed and get loose kind of set today. It's Wednesday so basically today's session reflected that. Still I was mostly on point, and had one questionable miss off of a left jab that made me go 'huh' with extreme annoyance.

Loaded up Animal Crossing New Horizons this morning as well, because it's Skye's birthday, and I do enjoy seeing the little party sets up that take place for each resident. 

Tonight's stream will be focused on ESPN Major League Baseball, as we'll be resuming the series against the Montreal Expos and I think we'll also be taking on the Boston Red Sox tonight.

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

Today's Notes 3/23/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream had no technical issues regarding my internet connection, which would have been funny considering I finally got a call from Comcast regarding all the issues I was having. The odd thing is I laid out every detail and they had no good answer to explain the poor over the phone customer service, the fact that @ComcastCares on Twitter was more responsive, and the fact they were going to charge me for issues that was their fault. Well that is one more thing to keep in mind if issues pop up again/

Anyway we tackled a lot in Dragon Age Inquisition last night, doing character stuff for Cassandra and Dorian, while also locking in the romance with Sera. We spent the majority of the night in the Emerald Graves, which probably was a mistake as I started running into enemies much higher in terms of level requirements to deal with, and I realized that Emerald Graves is meant to be dealt with later in the game. Still this means I should have an easier go at it tonight when I go to tackle other things.

Loaded up Animal Crossing New Horizons this morning for a bit, getting around the island and so forth. Tomorrow is Skye's Birthday so I have to remember to play it tomorrow morning before doing the journal entry or tomorrow afternoon before the stream. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was a standard 35 minutes, give or take, with a few questionable misses but not as many as there were yesterday. Still rather irked about that. Didn't do an extra set, but we are ahead of last week's pace because of the longer workers out the last three days.

I've been considering doing reaction videos for my YouTube channel, problem is while technically I count as a millennial, anything that would be considered for  'First Time Watching Reaction', I've already seen, because I'm closer to being Gen X in terms of what I've seen and read over the years. 

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

Today's Notes 3/22/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was one of those nights where nothing seemed to flow to well in terms of match ups, with either horrible selections from damage-role players or just people over thinking what they should do. But we did have a lot of fun, big thanks to PandaSweet for joining in on the fun! Even picked up three plays of the game last night.

With the expansion in terms of options of what types of games I can feature on my twitch channel, the need to use a wireless controller for some consoles has popped up, and so I finally caved and got a rechargeable battery / stand for the Xbox One controller. With the strong possibility that later in the year or early next year we'll add the Series X or S to the roster, the need for a wireless controller does indeed grow.

Staying on that subject, we've added a few things to the collection with three new factory sealed Playstation 3 games, Persona 5, 007 Legends  and Records of Agarest War 2. The later of which is part of a trilogy and I'm looking for the other two games in the series at this time. In addition, two new Switch games, Overcooked 2 which was recommended by PandaSweet last night, as well as ARMS, which was the first year Switch game release that actually showed that boxing aerobic games were possible for the console

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session was.... bad, not because it was stream, it was bad because I missed way more motions than I'm use to seeing, as I was particularly bad from the South Paw stance which almost never is the case. Sway Backs was a major problem. Still we reached a new milestone with the Heavyweight Puncher Lv. 3 achievement which is to have a total punch count of 135,000 with my exact total being 136,317. Since this was a streamed session we did three extra workouts as well so I have set new personal bests in Estimate Calorie Burns and  Exercise Duration. 

Tonight we'll return to Dragon Age Inquisition, and I will admit (again) that since last Tuesday, I've been doing some off-stream game-play with it, advancing a lot of dialog by accident and doing war table stuff. Safe to say though that probably the first thing we'll do with tonight's stream is probably lock in the Inquisitor's relationship with Sera... I do wish I didn't advance dialog as much as I did off stream, as the prank sequence was a lot of fun. 

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

Today's Notes 3/21/21

Good evening everyone,

No I did not over sleep today, actually I got distracted with a few things and nearly forgot to do my daily notes.

Last night we started up Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, and I can safely say this game certainly takes the elements know from the SAW franchise that were implied in various ways in the first two games and just goes over the top with them, with deadly traps and scenarios. ZTD does see the return of Junpei, Akanae, Sigma and Phi, but they are all secondary characters, and the flow chart and progression of the story certainly is more random because it's split between three groups of people. So we focused on one group last night and I think we'll keep that pattern for the next few Saturdays/

Now since we now have PlayStation 3, finding content to feature using it becomes a challenge, because my existing PS3 library either has stuff I've featured on other platforms or are games that I know I can't get much out of for a stream. So looking into the library of PS3, seeing what I can get cheap because retailers still have their inventory that they are looking to move we started adding things... probably the luckiest find so far is Lego Dimensons, finding the 'starter set', which is not just the game but the basic Lego set that came with it... and I have this dumb idea that maybe if I can find the add on sets, we can do streams where I'm putting the gimmicks together then play out the actual levels. Part of why I think this will work is that I have two web cams and I could set one to angle down at the top of my desk as I assemble stuff.... which would expose the fact that I'm not really good using my hands with stuff,  which is something I always tell people when they say to me, 'you can upgrade your computer yourself'.

I do love the fact that now in terms of what I stream has become more varied in terms of the platforms I can use, there is something really awesome about having the options to say lets do something super new, or lets go back to a prior gaming generation. Now if I could only remember to run my mouth and don't get super focused on what's in front of me, I could build some momentum.

Today marked 100 days of doing Fitness Boxing 2 (258 days since we started using the first Fitness Boxing) and thus with today's session we reached the Supreme Stamper Lv. 3 milestone, which was to perform the daily routine 100 times.  Today's session lasted 47 minutes (55 with stretching) and things were going well, didn't have any misses until late in the session, and even then at least a couple were questionable. 

Tonight's stream will be focused on Overwatch as we do every Sunday, we'll do some Quick Play matches, and if Mayhem is in the Arcade mode today, we'll do that too!

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

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!