Today's Notes 3/17/21

Good morning everyone,

So Comcast update, on Monday I got an email from their corporate offices which asked me what times I can be reached directly so they could communicate verbally... and I was really detailed in my response, indicating what times for the entire week. So imagine my surprise when I was working yesterday afternoon, I get a call from them 15 minutes before I finished working and before I could easily take the call, I tried calling the rep back directly, got the voice mail. Called the main number directly, got hung up on twice and the third time had to leave a message. Tried calling the rep back directly twice more before the start of last night's stream... got the voice mail. Nice professionalism their Comcast... real nice to see they can't follow the instructions given to them.

Anyway last night's stream ran pretty smooth, a couple of minor instances of instability but not enough to disrupt anything. We covered a lot of ground in Dragon Age Inquisition in regards to doing everything I could find in Crestwood and doing a lot of stuff around Skyhold, which involved tot talking to just about everyone repeatedly. We also took down a second dragon, and got Sera's War Table mission done, and by the looks of things it's looking as if that's gonna be the romantic path our hero will be going down. Pun intended. 

We had a solid half hour work out with Fitness Boxing 2 today, and since I did not over sleep, nothing felt like I was pressing to over compensate.  We unlocked the Hiro's Trainee achievement which was to perform 10 daily workouts using Hiro as the instructor.  The question of what counts towards the 'Instructor' Best Friend achievement has popped into my head, as I'm guessing stretching counts towards it too. 

Tonight's stream has ESPN Major League Baseball scheduled as we continue the 2004 season of the Philadelphia Phillies, picking up in mid-June during the Interleague portion of the season. If memory serves me right, we are starting with either a game against the Twins to finish up that series or we're starting a series against the Tigers. One or the other. 

Also picked up another set of PS2/3 RCA connector cables and a second RCA-to-HDMI so this way I don't have to keep swapping the one I had back and forth between the PS2 and PS3, all I would have to do is just plug in the correct RCA-to-HDMI adapter into the Elgato Capture Card and USB slots depending on which console (PS2 or PS3) I intend to use. Just one less thing I have to do.

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

Today's Notes 3/16/21

Good morning everybody, 

Well last night's stream was not plagued by any internet connection issues, just a few minor blips that were only really noticeable by me, but there was barely any frame drops, so Comcast had their shit together last night. Now I'm waiting for a call from them regarding this manner, since they must reach out to me regarding this since I did take the extra step to complain to the FCC. So let's see where that takes us.

As for as for the stream itself goes, we got a lot done in Dragon Age Inquisition, finishing up everything we could do in the Forbidden Oasis and a couple of other areas before the story was progressed that saw our base at Haven being invaded by the real antagonist of the game, the Ancient One and his arm of Red Templars. This saw us relocate to our new fortress at Skyhold and opens up a shit ton more to do in terms war table operations, areas to explore and missions to wrap up.

Tonight's stream will see us continue Dragon Age Inquisition, and I think we'll be spending a lot of time in Skyhold, as there seems to be a lot of things to do there, even if I went all over the place last night, there are conversations to be had and places to revisit, in addition to all the stuff at the war table that needs to be done. 

Woke up late, as I did hear my alarm go off then I went back to sleep only to keep up after 10 AM, so today's workout was on the short side. I did do a little extra with the free training, so today's workout was longer than indicated via the screen shot. As of today we've earned 70% of all in-game achievement, and here are the new one. Janice's Best Friend which required to exercise using Janice as the Trainer 100 times, Hiro's New Student, which is to use Hiro as the instructor once, and Hiro's Best Sudent which was to receive a three-star rating using Hiro as the trainer. And of course for earning 70% of all achievement milestones, that was called Big Fit FIghter.

At the moment I do plan for Friday's stream to be focused on the PlayStation 3, I'll have to double check to see what games I would want to feature for just one night need to be directly installed first, because I know that was something that needed to be done with DC Universe vs Mortal Kombat and maybe TNA Impact, but I can't remember about things like Gran Turismo 5.

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

 

Today's Notes 3/15/21

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Overwatch started off rough with an apparent weak upload signal / stream, now I wonder if it was because of the strong winds or if Comcast my ISP did not fully fix things on Saturday, this was further compounded in the last hour of the stream where latency in the game of Overwatch was spiking like mad. Since this corresponded with frame drops that were happening at the same time, I suspect again, it was my ISP that was failing to perform up to the standards I expected. That said, when things were smooth during the majority of the stream things were good, picking up three plays of the game, and getting in some games with Kalenal and PandaSweet is always awesome.

Staying on the subject of Comcast, the FCC sent me a notification that they have reached notified them about my complaint and that I should be hearing from Comcast about this matter. In fact I just got an email from Comcast's Executive Support regarding this matter.

Today we did a much longer Fitness Boxing 2 set to help make up for the the shorter sets during the weekend, Which meant we ended up having a new record set for estimated calories burned in a day. We got a few new achievements done today to. First was Heavyweight Puncher Lv. 1 which was to reach a total punch count of 126,000,  we wrapped up the Janice's Buddy achievement which was to perform 10 free exercises with Janice (we did 3 free ones today to finish it) and with that we switched to Hiro as our trainers, and instantly going for the Hiro Stylist and Hiro's Fashion Saboteur achievement which are to change Hiro's outfit and put him in a mismatched outfit, and we also got the Hiro Fashion Designer which was to put a matching outfit together... which oddly enough was just put him back in his default attire. 

We also unlocked the Weight Forward achievement which was to enter 10 days worth of weight data.
And with today's weight in, the scale indicated I weighted about 250 lbs! We lost 2 pounds from the last time we weighed in! Yay! 

Also just realized I need to do one more set with Jancie to finish up her achievements as well, which I think to do 100 exercise sets with a particular trainer.

Jim Cornette has been in the news recently, and look, people need to understand something about him, he's a master of getting a reaction, always has been. Give him just a bit of info to work with and he can play those who don't know any better like a fiddle. To take him down a peg, all one has to do is present the truth, i.e. how Eric Bischoff did in their Table For 3 episode. Here is how Bischoff did it, by catching Cornette in a lie with regard to when Smokey Mountain Wrestling working with WCW, where Cornette said Bischoff was the one who ended that, Bischoff pointed out using the actual order of events, that he had nothing to do with it because he didn't have any power in WCW until after the WCW/SMW partnership ended in early 1993, because Bischoff didn't get the executive producer job until the middle of the year following the firing of Bill Watts.  Cornette's responsive of 'well it was what he heard' in a manner so sheepish you'd think he was a Senator from Kentucky 

Tonight we have Dragon Age Inquisition scheduled as we'll focus on side-questing and doing as much as we can before advancing the story. Hopefully this stream will not have any issues that I can trace back to my Internet Service Provider.

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

Today's Notes 3/14/21

 Good afternoon everybody...

Or should i say good evening... because I it's nearly 5 PM when I'm writing this, and yeah I know it's Dailight sayings time, which is easily one of the most bullshit things we all have to deal with which doesn't make sense. There is no point to it ! 

Anyway last night we wrapped up Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward, and I'm surprised that took 7 hours (which included two rest room breaks / kitchen raids), and damn did that game break out every possible Quantum mechanic and Time Travel theory for it's justification of the plot and explanation of why certain things were happening. That said, the conclusion was pleasing enough even if to 100% complete it one would have had to noticed the final flow chart destination that appears in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

The reason I'm pointing that out is because I read up a little on Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, which is the third game in the series, and apparently the way things are done and referenced in that game was a result of apparently not too many people realizing final flow chart destination in VLR. Anyway we'll be starting up ZTD on Saturday evening.

It's the middle of March and I hear Ice Cream Trucks... Mister Frosty For The Win!

Because of Daylight Savings Time I woke up way later than I intended, I was shooting to wake up about 1 PM, 1:30 PM at the latest.... but with hours now pushed forward, I didn't get up till 2:30 PM... which under standard time means I did wake up when I intended... but... fuck it.... today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session was about 30 minutes, and was pretty solid, and since I didn't have to rush and scramble to make sure I got it in while waiting for Comcast techs to arrive I was able to fully focus on the work out. But because of DST, I did not do anything extra... still tomorrow's Monday and we since I do try to stream the Monday sessions on Twitch, we could do try and do extras... depending on how the daily workout kicks my butt!

Tonight's stream will be focused on Overwatch, and since we already earned the Pachimari skin for Roadhog, there is no pressure to win matches... even though we will always try to win matches!

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

Highlights for the week of 3/7/21

 

 Here are highlights from my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of March 7, 2021, which featured Overwatch, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Music, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online and Zero Escape Virtue's Last Rewards!

Today's Notes

Good afternoon everyone,

Well we had Comcast come out... again... as the degradation of my service basically forced it, and lead to me filing a complaint with the FCC. Now there was a reported outage in the area today, but because my service didn't go down fully, I was able to keep my appointment, and quite frankly I wasn't going to let them talk me out of it. The tech came and found issues with the line running to the modem, combine with two old drop lines that were still attached to the tap on the telephone pole (one was the original line to the house from when my father lived here, the second was from when I had issues in 2007-08.), and also for whatever reason the main cable line was secured to the electrical line, which can direct interference.

I will say this about Comcast techs, when they have came out here, they were on the ball, they didn't try to bullshit me in anyway. They understood what I was trying to convey, and they each found issues wrong that they went to address. Hell the guy who came here today actually explained different details about how Comcast uses a closed system and there should be no frequency issues but that an drop line still attached to the tap but not to the house could be cause a number of issues if someone used a ham-radio. Hell he even said I could improve the stability of my connecting by dropping the cable boxes which run off the main line.

That said I did reach out to Verizon to get a price quote on what they charge on a month to month basis, and it seems, cost wise that would be the way to go. 

Now of course we didn't have a stream last night because of the issues that popped up on Thursday night that carried over to Friday. I did do some off-stream gaming of Overwatch and teamed up with PandaSweet getting the wins needed for the Roadhog Paichimari skin. So while that was the plan for Sunday night, getting done last night helped take my mind off of the issues. Big thanks to PandaSweet for joining the fun as we ran a series of Mayhem matches.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was short, because of all the other hassles I had to deal with. IT was a really quick 22 minute workout, and the shorter the session the toughter it is for me to get into a good rhythm. Still we got the work in!

Tonight's stream, if all goes well, will features the wrap up of Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward, as I have three character endings (Luna, Quark and Phi's, which is the true ending) to get plus one bad ending to get. Depending on how long that takes, we may end up doing something extra, but I'm not completely sure.

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

Today's Notes 3/12/21

 

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Star Trek Online was particularly unstable, as the stream experienced a couple of resets, massive dropped frames and all sorts of other issues including massive lag and latency in game. From what I could tell, this seems to be a case of my ISP (Comcast) either throttling my upload and even download speeds. This was something I was noticing as far as download speeds during the afternoon for my day job, where loading of a webpage needed for my job would take unusually long to connect. I did call Comcast last night, they said to literally write down every instance it happens for a week. 

Well the only ones I can properly track are the streams because it would be impossible to track each instance that happens for when I'm working during the afternoons.Ah well, we did manage to get a lot of things done for nearly every one of my STO characters last night, some story progress here, an task for operation there. But the thing is when I tested playing Overwatch via the Switch last night after the stream, I had no issues... maybe it's on Twitch's end, I'm not completely sure, because when I do the auto-config in OBS, it always comes up with about the same recommendation 3000 KPBS 1080P 60 FPS.... and I set my settings for 2700 KPBS 720P 30 FPS.

Oh well, we'll document things and push onward as they said, as the plan for tonight is to wrap up Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward so that Saturday we can run the PS3 that arrived through its paces to see how it performs for an extended period of time.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was pretty solid, a bit of a higher Fitness Age score, but all in all, it felt good. Didn't do anything extra because I was testing various internet speed things to try and trace the source of the problems I had last night. We did reach a new milestone in Fitness Boxing 2 this morning, unlocking the Cruiserweight Puncher Lv.3 Achievement which involved having a total punch count of 121,500, with my exact total being 122,113.

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