Today's Notes 1/14/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Let's talk about last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball... or rather last week's stream of it, where we had that three game set against the Diamondbacks... I didn't save the game last week, so imagine my surprise this week when I know the stream should be a 3-game set against the Cardinals... but I'm facing the Diamondbacks. Yeah... I didn't realize it until I looked at my clips to see the home runs I gave up to Luis Gonzalez. So last night, I had to replay the D-Backs series, winning 2 out of 3, and also start the series against the Cardinals, splitting the first two games, and I was too tired to go for the third game (sixth overall of the night). That said, probably the best moment of the night was the grand slam I clobbered as Jim Thome in a game I ended up losing 7-6 (because I was down 7-2 at the time).

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session did involve lower body exercises, burning 461 calories, over a 30 minute workout when one doesn't count stretching. This was the 34th day in row following the switch from the first game. Also unlocked the Great Score Achievement which was to have a score of 16,000 or more with Intermediate Combo #2 on the low setting. I already have it's high setting cousin of Ultra Score. Also popped into Animal Crossing New Horizons this afternoon, and there were a few things of note, one being Sherb apparently ate every apple on the island and other being that Skye looks awesome with the 'Adventure Dress' which is basically an Alice in Wonderland outfit. 

With it being Thursday that mean's Star Trek Online is on the agenda, and the real question is... what exactly will I be doing during it as I have gone through all the story content with my Cardassian in the Klingon Empire (including the Cold War, Lost Dominion and Specters story arcs). It is a Red Alert weekend so we could just do that and just bullshit the entire time, or try and do specific task force operations because randomizing that often results in seeing the same handful over and over again. This is where Star Trek Online's weakness as an MMO is greatly exposed in terms of not having enough diverse content that doesn't feel samey. Yes there are space and ground warzones, but those good lucky finding enough people to even form a team to try and complete things on Defera to deal with the Borg! This is why I miss the the big exploration areas and the random mission generators and the missions players used to make using the Foundry.

My copy of RWBY Fairy Tales of Remnant arrived today, and it is is certainly a nice little hardback book, and since we know that some of the Fair Tales within the context of the show are 'true', it's a nice piece of extended lore. And I really got to sit down and watch all of RWBY from the start and the newer stuff to get myself back up to speed.

And on that note, we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden at about 9:30 PM EST!

Today's Notes 1/13/21

Good afternoon everybody, 

For last night's stream, we did an extra night of Overwatch, going after the new Hanzo skin as part of the Kanezaka Challenge, which features a new map in the game... which I will never see because I don't play the the free-for-all death match modes. Still we got the new skin for Hanzo which meant we did get nine wins last night. Also since Comcast actually fixed things that were fault for not performing routine exterior maintenance on their wires and boxes, last night was the first time ever I was able to stream at 3 Mbps, and while I'll dial it down a bit, it was a huge difference believe. 

As a result of things being fixed with my upload speeds and things being stabilized went ahead and upload to my facebook page (facebook.com/fredcasdengaming)  the highlight reel of not just last night's stream but also the Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 stream from Monday night that we forced through... the footage is ugly as sin but hey, it's there in the playlist for completion purposes.

Today's Fitness Boxing session lasted a half hour, due to no lower body focused exercises being involved, so I used that as a reason to step on the scale today, and if each little mark represents to pounds, then I weight 257 pounds near as I can tell.since the line was right between the marks of 256 and 258. It's lightest I've weight in probably 10 years. So yay me! 

Also did a quick trip to my island in Animal Crossing New Horizons today, everyone was out and about so no weirdness of any kind caught my eye when chatting up with everyone. I do think the DIY rotation of things the residents want to teach the players needs to have more variety to avoid being repeated, since a good portion of what those DIY recipes end up being things made from stuff on the island.

 Got a new book in the mail today, RWBY Before the Dawn, which sees the further adventures of team CFVY that I look forward to casually reading in the coming days. Also got a set of CAT6 Ethernet cables, to upgrade some wired connected here in my office.

Tonight's stream will start at around 9:30 PM EST as we return to ESPN Major League Baseball and the 2004 season, we'll be continuing a home stand we started last we, as the St Louis Cardinals comes to town to face my Philadelphia Phillies.

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

 

 

Today's Notes 1/12/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream may have been complete garbage video quality wise, but we did finish Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, and I'm unsure, but I think the final boss of 'Perfect' Mira was rather easy. Was disappointed that Bardock didn't show up for the final fight to join in with my character of Isey and Goku in the beat down, it would've been cool. Couldn't really do a highlight reel as most of the footage ended up pixelated... hell I was lucky the clip of me ending Mira was a good as it was. Also Goku's character model is disturbing as hell to look at.

That said, after the stream I was up till 5 AM with Comcast customer service, explaining everything again, and they sent out a tech that came to my home a little after noon EST... and he notice right away that critters (birds, squirrels, etc) tore up the line real bad on the telephone pole, that just about everything needs replacing while pointing out Comcast doesn't do any replacing of parts until after someone like me complains, and he cleaned up the work that was done by previous techs that came out years ago that left things a bundled mess. Did a test stream and everything looks solid. There is one more thing that needs replacing on the telephone pole, but that requires more people, but he did a great job getting me back up and running.

Today's Fitness Boxing session was solid, lot of a lower body exercise and I actually found a good rhythm with front back steps which is very rare for my chunky butt. It was a good solid paced workout from start to finish, to the point my Fitness Age was back to a 21. Did have some issues with the left joy con not registering at instants... which is always a treat to get frustrated with.

Not sure what I'm doing for tonight's stream, but I'll be up to something or other as you know me I'll figure something out! See ya at about 9:30 PM EST over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

 

Today's Notes 1/11/21

Good afternoon everyone,

Well if you've saw what happened during last night's Overwatch stream you'd may have notice we had a ton of issues as my upload speed with my Internet Service Provider (Comcast / Xfinity) was in the fucking toilet where 70% of frames were lost. I was going to have tech come out, but they called me back and did some changes remotely that seemed to have fixed things. To be on the safe side I have lowered my output through OBS to be 2/3s of what it normally was, which means I'll be streaming at standard definition. Hopefully tonight's stream of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 will be smooth sailing.

But here's the thing... I had no issues playing Overwatch or any online game during all of this! Just my upload speeds have been garbage!

Before Comcast / Xfinity called me back, I did do a morning stream with greatly reduced settings (resulting in a stream at 360P) and the worse video quality I've presented since 2017. We got in a good Fitness Boxing 2 workout, that lasted a solid hour, and before I got breakfast I stepped on a scale, and weighed in at 257 pounds! The weight loss continues! We followed that up with a bit of Animal Crossing New Horizons, Flick was on the island, so got him some butterflies, made the rounds with all my residents and the usual nonsense before closing the morning stream out with Super Mario Bros 35, finishing in the top 5. 

As I'm typing this just go word from work that I do have a shift tonight so we'll get the stream started at 9:30 PM EST over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! So we'll see ya later

Highlights from the week of January 3, 2021

Here are highlights for my Twitch channel (twitch.tv/fredcasden) covering the week of January 3, 2021, which featured Overwatch, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Fitness Boxing 2, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Super Mario Bros 35, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online and Zero Escape 999! 

Today's Notes 1/10/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Zero Escape 999 saw me going through doors 4, 3 and 2 and it resulted in getting the 'We All Die By A Yellow Submarine' achievement which saw someone killing all the characters. I am wondering who is the killer is though, such as was there a rouge person on the ship we didn't know about... or did someone going nuts. Of course all you need is the bracelets to get off the boat anyway, so who went crazy then? So many questions that I wonder will be answered in the next two Saturdays since I figured I'll need those two days to get the remaining endings. That said I did like all the lore we got with Seven being a cop and his ties with Lotus who's kids were involved in a prior nonary game, which was really cool.

Off-stream, I did a bunch of grinding in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, boosting my level to 70 so I should be over-powered to get through the Buu arc and possibly the early part of anything related to early parts related to Dragon Ball Super. I am wondering if the duplicate versions of character (such as Goku, Vegeta) count towards the 'trainer' part, because it seemed like it does. I know if we take the same person into battle twice I know it works that, but taking normal Vegeta and say... SSGSS Vegeta together, does it work that way? Near as I can tell it may, but I'm not sure.

Today marked 30 days from the start of using Fitness Boxing 2, as well as 30 days of doing the daily workouts. Fitness age is hovering at 23 lately, and way I figure if you get 'Ok' punches, it counts against the Fitness Age in terms of timing things perfectly.... so yeah, timing was clearly off today a bit lol. We did reach new achievements. First was 'Miracle Score' which was to get 52,000 or more points with Advanced Combo #2 on its High Setting, next was Stalwart Stamper Lv. 2 for acquire 30 stamps (which is tied to the daily workout0, and lastly was Perfect Stretcher which was do the pre and post Stretching routines 60 times (or 30 times each). 

Did a bit a Animal Crossing New Horizon's today as well, and I came across a visitor on my island, a Kangaroo that actually had a little kangaroo in their pouch. So does this mean the little one grow up? I doubt it, but it is funny to think about in terms of the in-game characters evolving over time. 

With it being Sunday, tonight's stream will be all about Overwatch as you know, the question will be will it be the big focus be on Quick Play matches or will we be doing Arcade matches? I may be straight out done with Ranked matches because fuck me, people don't want to try to win. Still we'll get started at 7 PM EST.

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

Today's Notes 1/9/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 went about 5 hours from the time I started, and there is something about that game that has drawn a littler attention to my Twitch channel as it has been doing above average in terms of viewership for me. Which isn't saying much obviously considering my normal stats on a nightly basis, but still it does show the ever lasting popularity of the Dragon Ball franchise. In terms of progress, we acquired three of the five time eggs last night (only need the ones for Guru and Buu) and reached the 1/2 way point of the main story (which is basically the start of the Buu arc). My current character level is 62, which seems to have me on par or just below par of stuff that might be towards the end of the game, seeing as how the toughest fight I had last night was the one to help Frieza achieve his golden form and a few things involving Android 17 and the 'ahem' correct history of thing.

Had a sorta rough workout with Fitness Boxing 2 today, with some of the combinations involved with the Advance Combo not clicking in my head. There are just sequences for movements that just don't feel natural yet. Plus my hated of step forward-back combos continues.  We did unlock the Lightweight Puncher Lv. 1 achievement which was to reach a total punch count of 40,000 HITS, which does match my total punch total for Fitness Boxing 2 of 40,565.

Tonight we'll be going back to Zero Escape 999, as we'll be going after yet another ending, and going through doors 4, 3 and 2 which are the only ones I haven't gone through in the previous two streams. I have to say it was great seeing Flint_Locke (twitch.tv/flint_locke) playing it last night... just too bad I was working so I couldn't have the audio on, but it seems she got the idea of what I was saying regarding how heavily Zero Escape explains things. As DaemonsWolf (twitch.tv/daemonsw0lf) points out "The poison. The poison for Kuzco, the poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's poison. That poison?"

Oh it was so awesome to see Twitter finally throw Donald Trump off of it's platform last night and seeing as how he's been banned from Facebook and Instagram, seeing him go on about building his own social media platform was hilarious. And guess what, anyone that goes to a Trump social media platform can instantly be called an insurgent and danger to democracy because as we saw this week, that's what his supporters are.  

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