Today's Notes 11/11/20

Good Afternoon Everybody...

Last night's stream of Mass Effect probably bored the hell out of most people expecting me to do a lot more of the big plot planets... but all we did was went to pick up Liara, and then focused on side-questing around the galaxy. I've played this game enough times on PC to know the best approach is to take the long way around before getting to Feros or Noveria, because you'll be properly leveled up to have most if not all of Shepard and the gang's abilities maxed out. Since this is a clean start on the Xbox 360 version, I pretty much want every advantage I can get... particularly since I'm manually putting in the upgrade points for Shepard.. That said, some may have been surprised at how I basically nixed the idea of having Shepard romance Liara.... well lets just say I'm still bitter about Liara's 'Thane is basically dead already' line from Mass Effect 3 after romancing her in the first game and then Thane in the second. So I'm thinking we'll be going Shepard / Kaiden this go round with a twist when it comes to who lives and who dies on Virmire.

This morning's Fitness Boxing session was alright, solid 45 minuet workout, kept it on cardio and actually ended up with a solid sweat going, either because its very muggy or the heater kicked in and I didn't noticed. Either way, I felt no pain in my left knee which was good.

 There was another Windows 10 update, and I wonder what it broke this time in terms of various settings that takes way too long to program. I get it, it's for security precautions and to put out new features, but does it really need to reset my preferred set up every single time?

So remember how this week I was supposed to have Jury Duty on Monday (11/9) then on Saturday I find out it was pushed back to Thursday (11/12) which meant I had to scramble to make sure my job knew which days I would have and would not be available (due to transportation to and from the local court house) ? I went over to https://www.njd.uscourts.gov this morning and logged into the e-Juror page to see my current status which reads: "Your jury service for this term has ended. You are no longer required to report as previously instructed and need not check for any further instructions. We thank you for serving as a juror in the United States District Court." And here's the best part, it also says "The database was last updated on 09-Nov-20 04.25.11 PM".... Now take a wild guess at how ticked off I am after seeing that...

On a side note, what the fuck is up with various Trump Die Hards around the country, are they delusional or just plain underdeveloped mentally? 

I'm not totally sure what we're doing with tonight's stream will be, but we'll be doing something over on twitch.tv/fredcasden that's for sure! 

Have a great day!

Today's Notes 11/10/20

 Good afternoon everybody...

You ever have the feeling of when you got to bed you don't exactly fall asleep right away, and thus you lay in bed for a couple of hours only to then fall asleep... thus ruining whatever you had plan for the morning? Yeah that happened to me last night... and so I didn't formally wake up until 11:30 AM. So for today's Fitness Boxing session I switched it to Cardio only, solid workout, not as intense as a Strength and Cardio routine, but hey it get the day started.

Last night, we went through the Southpaw Regional Wrestling and Empire of Tomorrow DLC for WWE 2K20... and let me again stress the point that the in-match objectives are just idiotic and actually ruin the charm of these alternative universes. This is why I'm really reluctant of wanting to do the Four Horsewomen content on stream, because that is nothing but matches with certain objectives to be done because they are 'recreations of actual events'.... and while this gimmick was cute back with the Legends of WrestleMania game which was all about re-creating matches, this has really played itself out and should be not be including in the next installment in the WWE 2K series. Something that became painfully obvious was how the developers basically ended up not caring about the final product as most of the character models in the Empire of Tomorrow package were extremely generic looking.  

Tonight's stream more likely will be a continuation of Mass Effect which we started up this past Saturday, probably bopping around the galaxy and side-questions... maybe pick up Liara as well. We'll see for certain.The stream will start at 9:30 PM EST, if I can start earlier due to lack of work (which ironically I hope is not the case) I will.

In other news, my 'The Gang Saves Democracy" t-shirt arrived today, and say what you want about Amazon, but they are pretty damn accurate when it comes to saying an item will arrive on a certain day... as long as it's not your Prime Delivery Day, then it'll get pushed back to the next day (or so it seems based on some of my recent orders).

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

Today's Notes 11/9/20

Good afternoon everybody...

Well as usual we got the day started late, but we did get in a solid 50 minute Fitness Boxing session, focusing on strength and cardio, which meant only 4 sets instead of 5, but it was a more intense workout. Really trying to put effort into moving back and forth from a standing position seems to take some pressure off my left knee as opposed to the slight bounce I normal do.

 Big thanks to one of my regulars ShadowStrikeR24 for letting me know about the upcoming remaster of Sam and Max: Save the World. It's a big surprise that came out of nowhere, but considering the original Telltale series was done in a 4:3 aspect ration, having an updated version is appreciated. I got a slight chuckle seeing that the publisher and developer is Skunkape Games.... as Skunkape is an antagonist in Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse.

Last night's Overwatch stream was a lot of fun, with the entire stream dedicated to Mayhem matches... which surprised even me. Normally at about 8 PM EST, the modes in Arcade mode rotate... now I started the stream at 7 PM EST, Mayhem was available from the start so to see it still there at 8 PM was a pleasant surprised. That said, it is amazing how stupid some people can get in Mayhem, particularly those who just want a match to end, so they either switch to something that isn't helpful or they quite the match.

Tonight's stream will be at 9:30 PM and will focus on the Southpaw Regional Wrestling and Empire of Tomorrow DLC... which means again trying to deal with the idiotic in-match objectives with awful controls. The only bright side is that these two DLC packs focus more on the Women of the WWE and seems to involve the player using more than just one character at a time.

I just now realize that I probably will have to sit down at some point and make a new twitch channel trailer, as the current one features footage most from the first half of 2020. That's gonna be a rough evening, as I'll have to go through months of clips to edit things down to just a couple of seconds.

Anyway, hope you all have a great day!

Today's Notes 11/8/20

Good afternoon everyone...

We got Sunday off to a good start as we did a Fitness Boxing stream, where I had a near perfect session. Thankfully that involved not have to step forward, step back or step side to side. Still totally felt good, and I figured why not extend this stream a bit.... so we tossed in some Animal Crossing New Horizons and Super Mario Bros 35... and all in all, this stream lasted two hours. Not much in the way of viewership for it, but still, I do like to make sure we do one stream that features Fitness Boxing per week, so this covers that.

Yesterday being N7 Day will go down as being memorable... Donald Trump was declared the LOSER of the 2020 Presidential Election, meaning Joe Biden was the WINNER... marking the first time since 1992 that a sitting President lost an re-election.big. Think about that, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all earned 2nd terms as President. It says a lot of how sick and tired real Americans became of Trump... because let's be honest, anyone who voted for him, is not a real American, and their actions and attitudes continue to reflect that fact.

My first experience playing Mass Effect on a console was interesting, as it appears to give the player more of a handicap than one would anticipate. I'm wondering why as someone who selected the soldier skill set that I'm unable to use all four of Shepards base weapons, because on the PC version, everything could be used fairly evenly. Other differences is that a few locked doors and boxes involve a quick time event as opposed to getting things through a series of rings. Driving the MAKO is a tad harder with a controller than with the WASD keys on a keyboard.... and drawing / holstering weapons being two separate buttons makes no damn sense at all. Still it was fun and we'll continue to work our way through Mass Effect in the weeks to come.

And now for a rant.... On my desk I have a summons for Jury Service which I was supposed to deal with tomorrow.... but yesterday morning, I get a call and an email saying my date has been reschedule for Thursday the 12. Who the fuck as the US District Court thinks that anyone can just change their schedule to accommodate them?! That's why these summons are sent out, so people can plan a fucking head! Being told at basically the last minuet that the day was being switched means I am potentially endanger of losing more hours of work than anticipated. Whoever made that call needs to lose their fucking jobs.Combined that with the fact this sudden change was made relayed to me when their offices are closed, meaning I cannot call to voice my complaints! This is an outrage to say the least!

Anyway I will be streaming later today with Sunday Night Overwatch, the Halloween Event is done so we'll be mostly doing Quick Plays and Random Arcade stuff over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! See ya then!

Best of the Week 11/1-7/20

Here at the best moments from my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of November 1 to 7, 2020, which featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing, WWE 2K20 Final Fantasy XV: Comrades, Full Throttle, Star Trek Online, Twitch Sings and Mass Effect! 

The line up for this upcoming week will featured Overwatch,Fitness Boxing, WWE 2K20, Mass Effect, Star Trek Online and Twitch Sings... maybe something else as well depending on how I'm feeling on any particular day!

Today's Notes 11/7/20

 Good Morning Everybody...

While I've not gone to sleep yet from yesterday morning.... so in an effort to wear myself down I loaded up Fitness Boxing.... and to my surprise, even though it was a little after 2 AM when I did, it counts for today's session.... so yay, workout already done lol... I big take away from this realization is that I can make sure I get a daily workout in at any time to keep my streak going

Last night's stream that featured Twitch Sings was intended to go longer than it did because I wanted to do a little standard gaming, but the Windows 10 Update that totally fucked with my established settings, made audio monitoring through OBS impossible. Now the stream started at about 7:35 PM and we ended the stream before 11 PM, kind of the usual amount of time for weekday... but the goodnews is I figured out the problem. Any audio sources in OBS that was being monitored (such as via an Elgato Capture Card) needed to be deleted and re-created for it to work. So everything works, and we'll be ready for today's N7 stream my first time playing Mass Effect on console.

So which news outlet have I had on my TV since I've been keeping up to date with this stuff and losing sleep over it? Well it's been CNN.... because between it, MSNBC and Fox News... it is the most level-headed... and in the middle of the night Fox News seems to just run re-runs and infomercials. MSNBC is so.... fucking weird. That said at 3:30 AM (as of the time I write this), Joe Biden's lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia is widening. Not sure exactly what Donald Trump is waiting on because at this point he has no shot at winning, particularly when one notices that Nevada and Arizona are increasingly out of reach as well)

I have logged in some matches for the new ranked Season of Overwatch, probably will just do the qualifiers because I always ended up being a tank or support, and if I'm stuck doing that I might as well just play Quick Play matches... which of course is what we do on Sunday Nights over on twitch.tv/fredcasden (haha)... still it does amaze me how some people refuse to play defense, or to play aggressively. or stick with bad DPS match ups. 

Anyway let me wrap this up, we'll see every this afternoon for N7 Day!

Today's Notes 11/6/2020

Good Afternoon Everybody....

I did not go to bed until 5 AM because like a good chunk of America, or at least people here in the Philadelphia area, I was keeping an eye on CNN / MSNBC for updates on Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada... I did not wake up until 11:30 AM... and the first thing I saw, was a message from Kalenal (twitch.tv/kalenal) of a tweet that said 'The Penn Is Mightier'... and I knew what that meant. Keeping in mind I voted for Jo Jorgenson and the fact that I live in New Jersey, I'm fucking thrilled that Joe Biden caught up to and passed Donald Trump, along with the fact that every vote is being counted... and they are still not finished counting. If you want proof, more than ever that every vote matters, this is the election year that proves that fact.

This has also lead to a major spark of interest in the show It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, a show that I certainly enjoyed for the first 8 seasons. Or should I saw an interest in memes surrounding the show, such as Flip-adelphia, In These Trying Times, and of course 'The Gang...' in the later, it's followed by 'The Gang Saves Democracy' and other similar titles of would be episodes . I certainly did not waste time, as I went on Amazon to order myself a t-shirt with that saying on it (direct link will be included below) because you know it's true.

Now most people have had concerns because the Democrats did not win control of Senate, well I have a theory on that... it's because this election is more about getting Trump out of office and restoring a sense of calm, normalcy and professionalism. I'm fine with that to an extent, the real question is will Mitch 'The Bitch' McConnell actually work with Joe Biden to get things going forward.

So with all that said, I shorten my Fitness Boxing routine today due to when I woke up, which meant doing a Strength & Cardio work out that was more in line with the recommended time-settings as opposed to my standard or 45 minuets. It certainly was a more compacted workout for sure.

Last Night's Star Trek Online stream was business as usual, as we went through the first three episodes of the Gamma Quadrant arc and did a couple of Task Force Ops as well. The voice acting of the DS9 Alumni still remains stellar, and the moment of Kira slapping the taste out of Odo's mouth for endangering Bajor just never gets old. Of course the stream did start off with technical problems as the recent Windows 10 update did something that screwed with how OBS handles media sources. Hopefully I can figure out how to repair what was broken so that I can properly monitor all audio again.

 Tonight I'll be doing a Twitch Sings stream, because tomorrow is November 7, which is of course N7 Day, and we'll be starting up a run of the original Mass Effect using the Xbox One. It's going to be a challenge for sure because I won't have access to all my key-binds that makes the PC version obviously better because you don't have bring up the weapons wheel to switch gear or to direct the companions. I think I'll start that play-through on a reduced difficulty just to wrap my head around how the console handles it.

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