Today's Notes 1/17/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Zero Escape 999 last 7.5 hours and I'm wondering did I run my mouth to the point two whole hours were added in comparison to the previous three Saturdays? It totally seems that way as not much was seemingly added to the story as we went for and achieved the 'safe' ending, where we learned Akane/June is Zero and the real villain if Ace. The last question is what is Santa's connection to everyone and I think it's down to him having a connection with Akane/June. Since it was the fourth time going through the story, things certainly got more Mystery Science Theater 3000 with my commentary and reactions to things as some stuff I ended up noticing that deserved being pointing out.

Of course with such a long stream it meant that I would raid the kitchen a couple of times, I do try not to each on stream and when I do, I do try not to eat anything that requires me to be careful to avoid any drips, but sometimes you just want to chow down on like some slices of apple pie or a hot pocket! And let me say that the pie was awesome! Hey there is a reason why I weighed 290 pounds back in July of last year. I like to eat!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session was another rough one as I had some things register as misses because somehow the left joy-con got out of sync with the Switch dock, combined that with having to do step forward step back movements and it was just a mesh. The game did acknowledged I crossed the 50,000 punch barrier which was pretty cool. 

Something that was certainly a running theme last night was my constant reference to fan fiction and shipping. I haven't hide the fact that I've done a lot of both, because it's a great way of expanding on canon and letting one's imagination run wild. Why I kept bringing it up (other than the fact that Zero Escape 999 has given me at least two ideas that I might end up writing) is that on Twitter yesterday some tin foil hat wearing goofballs tried to say fan fiction and shipping was toxic...and a lot of those saying it were people who were published and professional authors. Well I'm betting those idiots wrote their fair share of fan fiction, hell many of those idiots basically have gotten paid to write fan fiction.

Tonight we'll begin a new week with Overwatch, and since I've completed the wins necessary for the new Hanzo skin I'll be playing more for fun and pride more than anything. Maybe we'll get Total Mayhem this week so we can just go ham on everything. We'll get tonight's stream started at about 7 PM EST!

Best of the Week of January 10, 2021

 Here are the best moments from the games featured on my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of January 10, 2021. The games featured were Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Music, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Super Mario Bros 35, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, Saints Row The Third Remastered and Zero Escape Nine Hours Nine Doors Nine Lives! 

Today's Notes 1/16/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night we kicked off the next big game on this year's tour, Saints Row: The Third Remastered. Yes we've played the original version that was ported to Steam over the last few years, so this is certainly different since it's the Xbox One remaster that came out last year, shortly after all the Covid-19 stuff went down. Now let me say that while 99.99999999% in the game looks great, the the one thing that looks awkward are the colors for creating the version of 'The Boss' that I've always used. Some of the realistic textures just look a bit weird in some regard. Also ran into a couple of small bugs, one resulted in a mission being restarted and another needed an NPC to pushed into position. Also one could say that the Remastered version is more difficult than the version I've played on Steam because it doesn't have the Bloodsucker option included. Still it'll be fun seeing how the more realistic version of the events in Saints Row: The Third look as I progress through the story and make Steelport mine again.

Today's Fitness Boxing session was a bit rough as the side step and front-back step combos meant I was having to move my feet, and thus my timing was thrown way over, resulting in a horrible Fitness Age score of 26. Clearly the more misses you have effects the age score. Still I average 21 most days anyway but it was discouraging to see what for me is a bad score. That said, mostly everything else was on point for me today. Also popped into Animal Crossing New Horizons, and that glitch where one of the residents doesn't spawn anywhere on the island reared it's ugly head again, as I couldn't find Pietro anywhere on my island, and yes I did check the shops and museum and the houses of other residents

For tonight's stream we'll be heading back to Zero Escape: 999 and this time we are looking for the 'safe' ending because so far I have found the endings that resulted in every one getting killed. I think I have an idea of what to do to get it based on the first three play throughs I did and looking at the flow chart. Because once we get the 'safe' ending, that means next week we'll get to go for the true ending to finish the game!

And on that note we'll see you later at about 7 PM EST over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! 

Today's Notes 1/15/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Let's begin with talking about last night's stream of Star Trek Online, as I've mentioned quite a bit, the lack of actual content in STO becomes very noticeable when you run out of story missions to do and are pushed into the realm of doing nothing by Task Force Operation grinding for marks for the reputation system. Because so many players have put in the time to get their ships as powerful as possible, the TFOs end up being very tedious because they end up being incredible short... and since most of them take place in space, they end up being very repetitive. So we did a couple of Red Alerts since there is an event tied to it (do one alert every day for 10 days to get a experimental ship upgrade), and also did the endeavor stuff which was to do specific tasks... and then realized there are some 'story quests' I did not do because they were 'tutorials' so that lead to me wandering around Q'onos and discovering some NPCs ended up getting voice lines... and also finding the old Empire Defense areas, which were basically hunting grounds, taking on task forces of enemy vessels. It made me remember the old Exploration areas the Federation had which were just turned into Duty Officer Assignment hubs, but if they were brought back it would give players more things to do than just grind endlessly for marks.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session felt very light as the combination of the four exercises selected by the game only resulted in a combination of 919 movements (880 of which were punches). The reason for the total difference is one exercises involved sway backs, which counts as more of a movement and not a punch. Anyway we did get the Super Lightweight Puncher Lv. 1 Achievement today, which was to reach a total punch count of 48,000 HITs.

Twitch was 'kind' enough to send out a recap of 2020, where I broadcasted 1,728 hours, picked up 185 followers, PandasSweet redeemed the most channel points, CurseLit was the most used emote, and my top three 'categories' were Twitch Sings, Overwatch and Star Trek Online, to the shock of no one because those three had days of the week dedicated to them! If anything this was a real kick in the teeth regarding Twitch Sings because since it got purged, the graphic which I'm including in this blog doesn't have Twitch Sings' box art. What is funny is that because I had to change my weekday stream start times to 9:30 PM EST, it meant I actually lost viewership totals from 2019, because people who would watch in the 7 & 8 PM Hours never came around to watch in the adjusted time slot. Ah well... hopefully we can regain that momentum.

My set of 2 CAT-8 Ethernet Cables arrived today, and if the specs I read in comparing them to other versions, these should help stabilize connections even more in terms of data transfer rates from my PC / Xbox One to and from my modem. Not complete sure what I'll be doing for tonigh's stream but you know I'll be up to something. We'll get the stream started at about 9:30 PM EST because I do have work this evening. Here's hoping people realize that when someone is wanting to interview them on local issues that traitorous piece of shit Donald Trump is not involved.

Anyway, see ya later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

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