Today's Notes 4/17/21

 Good morning everybody, 

Well we were up early once again, as PSE&G came out to remove the old gas pipe, having to leave the elbow that connected it to the outside because the only way that can be removed is if they basically dig up the street and part of my yard. But they sealed it so no water leakage should occur.

Last night's stream featured MLB The Show 21, where we played a few games, did a couple of Home Run derbies, unlocked several achievements, started Road to the Show where I made the shortest, fattest dude possible... looks like a mini Bartolo Colon. The two-way player nonsense is something I'm not keen on, even if I have a better understand of the hitting mechanics in the game. Still we had fun with it.

We added three things to my collections, Dead of Alive 5: Ultimate and Vanquish for the PlayStation 3, and Chrono Cross for the PlayStation One. Those who have seen my collection know I had Chrono Cross already, but the version I picked up is the Greatest Hits version that had the Square Enix logo print on it, instead of the SquareSoft logo which was on the original release. As I mention, if you know where to look on Amazon you can find some cheap older games that will eventually become harder to find. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was 1 hour 5 minutes, but only 41 minutes were for the daily work out, the reason for the extra time is of course on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays I try to do longer sessions, and today ended up being my longest duration for exercising to date. Granted these extra sessions often are around the 1 hour 5 minute mark, so it comes down to just a matter of seconds. In regards to the Sophie's Best Friend achievement, we're up to 74 points, needing 26 more to complete it. Also stepped on the scale and I gained a little to be up around 251-252.

(Note: Twitter was down, so I could not retrieve the screen shot of today's results at the time  this was posted)

Tonight's stream will be focused on ESPN Major League Baseball for the PlayStation 2, as I'll probably simulate several games, and if our lead in the NL East begins to shrink we'll then take it more seriously, this way we can get to the end of the season quicker.

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

Today's Notes 4/16/21

 Good morning everybody,

Well last night I certainly did not play Star Trek Online, and the reason was, I didn't feel like just doing another stream of just doing Task Force Operations and doing needless grinding.

So instead, we went back... way back.... to 2001 with another Star Trek game, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force for the PlayStation 2. The last time I played it, prior to last night, was September 10, 2008, and keeping in mind I did have a PlayStation 3 at that point, it certainly wasn't capable of playing PS2 games. Now this game is one where you can choose your character to be male or female, and there are subtle differences depending on gender, such as you come across O'Dell in different locations, and some dialog is phrased differently from other NPCs. Now Voyager: Elite Force was originally a PC game ported to the PS2, and thus some (well a lot) of tweaking with the controls is needed as turning and looking up and down can be either too slow or too loose.... which makesGod Mode (when paused hold L1+L2+R1+R2+R3 then press select, you will hear the game say Impressive, when paused, you will see text indicating if its on or off) and almost necessity due to how enemies can and will rush you even on normal difficulty... keeping in mind I have 12+years of rust when t comes to Elite Force.

That all said, because there are a number of puzzles and trying to remember where to go and how to get from point A to point B involved, so we only made it past The Borg cube stage, which leaves 3 stages left. Which would be a good time to mention the following, the load times are frequent, as nearly every section of the game has to be loaded, granted the game runs smoothly, but you will become familiar with the loading screen. Even with god mod on, you can still die from fall damage and stepping into an environmental hazard, and there are several mission critical failures that can happen if you are not careful.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, as I felt pretty god throughout it, missing only one block, and you know how my frustrations when it comes to doing block combos. We're still a long ways away from moving on from Sophie, as we get 3 points per day, and at the moment we're at 69, and so we need 31 more points to wrap up her last related achievement before moving on to the next trainer. Also of note: not as many calories burned this week as compared to last week, but the difference was only like a couple hundred, give or take.

Moving on, after last night's stream I loaded up MLB The Show 21 to give it a test run, and I can safely say the music got real old real fucking quick, so I turned that off within 5 minutes. Control wise, pitching isn't that much different from ESPN Baseball for the PS2 (which we'll be playing tomorrow night), but hitting it a pain in the ass, as it's that zone style / aim type hitting which kind of makes the game not fun to deal with because it forces you to use the strike zone camera (from behind home plate) which is something I hate! Still, I did get a bunch of achievements last night. And we'll be playing this for tonight's stream!

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

Today's Notes 4/15/21

Good morning everybody,

It's Tax Day, well it is under normal circumstances, but because of how FUBAR things with the IRS has been with last minute changes to the tax code and them now having to go back and adjust the returns for everyone who filed before the latest stimulus package bill, Tax season got extended.

Anyway last night we started off The Division, and because of how schedules and stuff work out, the first chunk of the stream I was on my own, struggling but doing alright... but then my buddies PowerThumbz and Iceman joined... and we discovered a rather unique bug, in that while I as a lower level player will scale up to match them in terms of dealing damage, my armor and health does not properly scale. This was a bug discovered within The Division back in 2018, and Ubisoft never fixed it, so I spent the second chunk of the stream getting downed in like 1 or 2 hits, which made for great comedy. Now on the other hand, for Thumbz and Iceman, they were practically immortal... except when it came to one wall on the mission to same Benitez, they were too close to it when it exploded... again great comedy. 

MLB The Show 21 for the Xbox One / Series consoles is available for early download and installation, which I took care of last night, so Friday night's stream will be dedicated to it. And with ESPN Baseball moving to Saturday's that means we'll be doing back to back with baseball this week!

Played a little Forza Horizon 4 off stream, and I noticed that I'm progressing pretty nicely towards some achievements in that, I figure if I focus on races for certain paths I can unlock them pretty quickly.

In my search for older games to add to my collection, the following were added to my collection, all of which are PlayStation (PSOne) era games, NHL Face Off, PGA Tour '96 and WWF WrestleMania The Arcade Game... all of which in their classic long box style cases. With them came WCW/NWO Thunder a game I already had, however this is a much cleaner copy with the jewel case being intact.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, if a little awkward, as I  couldn't quite get the rotation I wanted when doing South Paw right hand upper cuts. I was able to stay in sequence to get ducking and weaving motions down, and the results indicate I did very well, I just don't feel like I was at my best. Ah well, tomorrow's another day.

It's Thursday which means we'll be playing Star Trek Online tonight, and probably means this will the shortest stream of the week.

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

My High School Cross Country Times

Recently I found the 'Record Boards', that were used to post my race times for when I was on the Pennsauken Tech Cross Country Team in my Junior and Senior years. Hell you may have seen me wearing the t-shirt I kept from my senior year of High School from time to time on my Twitch streams (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) Races were done at places like Cooper River Park. Gloucester Community College, Paul IV High School, Medford Technical High School. 

You may ask why don't I have records for my Freshman or Sophmore years, well its because I didn't join the Cross Country team until my Junior year (out of spite... but that's a long story), and I missed the first race of that season.  Also a big reason for the difference in times between my Junior and Senior years was because I was conned into enlisting in the Army Reserves via the delayed entry program, and for the summer of 2000 I was at Ft. Jackson in South Carolina going through boot camp for the United States Army.

 

Junior Year (1999)

1. Versus Pennsauken High, Edgewood High & Gloucester Tech - 36:04

2. Versus Bishop Eustace & Woodrow Wilson  - 35:22

3. Versus  Clayton High & Gloucester Tech - 39:29

4. Versus Medford  - 37:00*

5. Versus Camden High, Cherry Hill West and Gloucester Tech  - 32:00*

6. Open Race - 31: 00*

*board damage can't see full time

Senior Year (2000)

1. Versus Paul VI - 24:62

2. Versus Gloucester Tech - 24:17

3. Versus Woodrow Wilson & Camden High - 24:30

4. Versus Camden Catholic & Bishop Eustace - 23:54

5. New Jersey State Tournament - 28:13

6. Versus Gloucester Tech - 24:40

7. Versus Gloucester Tech, Medford Tech & West Hampton Tech - 27:27

Today's Notes 4/14/21

 Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Dragon Age Inquisition saw us finishing the main game, and it only took 97.5 hours to do so, granted about 85 hours were done on stream because of the scope and searching for various items to complete side-quests as well as the War Table meant I had to take care of various things off stream. Granted this meant some Inner Circle stuff was done off stream as well. Still with everything focused on the last few main line quests, I made sure to go down the path that saw us getting the surprisingly rare achievement On Burning Wings, which is done by not letting Morrigan drink from the well of sorrows. Overall I've enjoyed Dragon Age Inquisition a lot more than I did Dragon Age Origins in terms of game play and story pacing to allow me to get all but two achievements.

The only two achievements I did not get for the base game were Harald and Inquisitor which involve beating the game on Hard and Nightmare difficulties. Maybe someday when I'm glutton for punishment I'll attempt those.

Following last night's stream I found some things in a cabinet that I thought were thrown out long ago, so as I was sorting through I ended up watching Back to School, rather... and since I've watched that movie so much when it aired on the like of Comedy Central, it threw me off not to hear some of the poorly done dubbing of some lines. Also made a few attempts on the Uprising Bulletproof archive mission in Overwatch.... and it always falls apart at the end when one tries to be the hero and dive behind an OR-15 when there is a Bastion there as well. Like we come close, but no cigar.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session went really well, practically perfect as we had no misses, but at the same time, there were a handful of punches that were poorly timed. Still steady progress is at the least steady. Because I woke up a tad late, I did not include anything extra into today's session.

Tonight we'll be returning to the world of Tom Clancy as I'll be starting up The Division, nearly one year after starting The Division 2, so think of it as a prequel I've never seen. More than likely we'll be joined by the likes of Iceman and PowerThumbz at some points as well!

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

Today's Notes 4/13/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Dragon Age Inquisition was basically all about doing every side quest I had open that didn't involve finding plants or rocks, as we covered the last bit of Cullen and Josephine's Inner Circle Quests and everything in the Hissing Wastes. This lead to five achievements being unlocked which are listed below.

• Pathfinder - Discover a campsite and establish at least one Inquisition camp in 10 wilderness areas.
• Demonslayer - Defeat 1,000 demons in single-player mode.
• Dragons' Bane - Slay 10 high dragons in single-player mode.
• Keymaster - Enter the heart of the Solasan temple.
• Decorator - Purchase any new decoration element for Skyhold.

With that said, this all sets up tonight's stream where there are three main story quests left to cover, and four achievements to along with them, with luck we'll finish Dragon Age Inquisition today! 

Following last night's stream I messed around a little with Pac-Man 99, which is the latest classic video game turned battle royal, and as a replacement for Super Mario 35, it's okay, even if figuring out how to get the controls to switch to where I can use the analog stick instead of the d-pad to move was a pain in the ass.

Also jumped into Overwatch (PC Version) last night to try my hand in getting the 2021 Archive Achievements, succeeding in two of them, 

• Sympathy Gains  -  Complete the Sympathy Gains Archives challenge mission. 
• Thunderstorm - Complete the Thunderstorm Archives challenge mission. 

For Sympathy Gains, I used Dva, while the rest of the team was Ana, McCree and Reaper. Ana's anti heal was really useful in preventing the enemies from healing each time one was taken down, plus when used right McCree and Reapers ults can clear out a bunch. The reason I used Dva is because her defense matrix can eat a lot of damage from the Heavy Assault enemies that are encounter. For Thunderstorm,  I again was Dva, while the rest of the team was Baptiste, Roadhog and Orissa. This involved taking out time and taking out enemies at a distance, because if they got close they would do a lot of extra damage. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session lasted about 30 minutes, plus I did a little extra because I had the extra time to do so. My few misses were due more to carelessness on my part, or rather me being absent minded about the sequence I should've been performing. Still it was a good way to start the day.

And on this note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden for more Dragon Age Inquisition!

Today's Notes 4/12/21

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was a lot of fun, as we went through the Archive Events missions repeatedly, so it made for a fun relaxing night. I did try the new variants of them, and came close to getting them accomplished but had some bad luck. Still it was a great night. Also picked up two plays of the game as Dva, which does make me wonder as to why only Uprising gives Plays of the Game while Retribution and Storm Warning don't. Big thanks to PandaSweet for joining in on the fun and silliness. 

Following the stream I continued going through stuff to throw things out, and emptied two drawers full of socks. There was no need for me to have 40 pairs of socks. Also went through a closet and got a punch of small shirts tossed, and broke up an already broken chair. So progress is slowly being made in getting things removed to give myself room down here.

Made up my mind that on Wednesday we'll start up Tom Clancy's The Division, and more than likely we'll be joined by Iceman and probably PowerThumbz as well. 

Speaking of PowerThumbz, he does have an eBay store that has some nice collectables, you can check what he has for sale at: https://www.ebay.com/str/dwarvenscavenger

This week's extra Fitness Boxing 2 stream was really good, setting new personal bests in punches thrown and estimated calories burned. Today's session saw three variants of stepping exercises, which is just hilarious that on back to back Monday's those sets were performed. 

Tonight's stream will be focused on Dragon Age Inquisition, as we'll do some side quests before heading to the Hissing Wastes which is is the last major open area to explore. With luck we can knock out several achievements over the course of tonight's stream!

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