Thursday, April 15, 2021

March 2021 Entry

March 2021 Entry

March...

MISC=========================


- My cousin had texted me about hanging out (03.02). She was taking one of her new puppies to a vet that was near my place so we made the arrangement for her to hang out. She also agreed to play a game with me on stream. She said she would just sit in the back while I streamed, but I convinced her to play. Afterwards, we just spent time catching up. Asked lots of questions and learned stuff that we didn't know. It was a wonderful bonding moment. 

- Ordered a bunch of snacks (03.02). Ate one bag of chips per day and the cereal whenever I hand a hankering (finished 04.10). Hadn't had these chips in a long time and the cereal was so delicious. 

- After my cousin came over to hang out, we made plans for me to go to her place and hang out with her and her husband (03.12). About an hour drive to get there, but I knew that from going there many years ago. We went to eat ramen, take a hike on a trail (got to look at animals and enjoy the sun), played with their new puppies, ate some ice cream, and of course talked a bunch and bond. Such a good day. 

- Shout to KrispyChicky who started streaming (03.13). Krispy is Agent PQ from HER. She had asked for some help setting up stuff as she was prepping for weeks before her first stream. For anyone reading this, please follow her on Twitch. She's someone I look at as family. 

- Didn't know a shirt for Just Shapes & Beats existed so I bought it (03.27).

- Prime Movies Round 12 is in the books making it one year of watching free movies. Had a lot of favorites in this batch, but my top 3 have to be Chick Fight, What If, and CHI-RAQ. Had to end it with a solid favorite that still holds up, The Truman Show. I'm still planning to watch more movies after a year of doing this, but I'm only going to watch 12 now instead of 16.


WRESTLING=========================

- Lashely became WWE Champion (03.01). Well deserved. Absolutely earned.

- And Fastlane was a fun PPV (03.21). Good matches all around.

H.E.R.=========================

- This story is about my favorite interview I ever conducted. At HER, I was at one point the Lead Training Facilitator. Even on the tail end before that when I was a Senior Facilitator, I was sitting in and then helping conduct interviews. I enjoyed them. Have plenty of horror stories from bad interviews. I would say the majority were okay. Only a few were very memorable for better or for worse. 

For this one, I was still doing interviews along-side Agent Majordomo. He had made the interview process at first and then I helped refine it to what I used for many years. Other than the normal set up of the table and cubes (we had comfortable and expensive cubes), we also printed out the resumes of those we would interview. I normally would glance at them quickly taking in anything interesting outside of what you'd expect from a regular resume. That way I can ask them about it during the round of miscellaneous questions we might have had. 

The interview was normal. Nothing spectacular and not bad. Just good, which most interviews should at least be. When it came time to ask anything extra, I double checked her resume. There was something that I saw beforehand and remembered after looking again. I asked her about her Nigerian society she was a part of. Her face brightened up and she had the biggest smile as she was telling us about it. Her energy was higher and she was visibly more excited. And that's when I knew I wanted to hire her. I mentioned it to Agent Majordomo. If she gets happy and energetic about something she was so passionate about, imagine how she would be if she enjoyed working with us. Shortly later, we hired her and Agent Ca$h was born. 

I forget when and why, but I did tell her about why I hired her. This story is something I shared over the years and have even told to others outside of the company because it was my favorite interview and one of my best hires ever. Miss you, Agent Ca$h. 

GAMES=========================

- Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle | Battle Circuit (03.01)

- Untitled Goose Game (co-op w/mangostick15) (03.02)
Playing this again with my cousin was so fun. Definitely is a lot easier with 2 geese than with one goose. 


- Demo Showcase 58 (03.04)
Made an alternate profile for when I tried the Age of Calamity demo. I had contacted Nintendo online to make sure if playing the full game and going backwards to the demo would overwrite it. They weren't sure and I couldn't find an answer online. So for any future games that I've played the full game of and then I play the demo, I will make a new profile to avoid any data overwriting.


- Pyra/Mythra (03.04)
Using Pyra/Mythra was really fun. I preferred Pyra over Mythra. But they are probably in my top 5 favorites of the DLC fighters. 


- Eliminator Boat Duel (03.05)

- The Elder Scrolls: Blades (03.06)
This was fun. I'm usually hesitant when playing free-to-play games. We've been burned before, ha. And this was also my first time playing an Elder Scrolls game in any form. It wasn't bad. You could see I was getting into it. 


- Super Mario 3D All-Stars | Super Mario Galaxy (03.08-03.10)
Galaxy was amazing to replay after so many years. The music, the levels, everything. I didn't think I'd get all 120 stars, but that still doesn't count as complete as there is a second play as Luigi that unlocks a little more. Will I play Galaxy again as Luigi? For now, no. I considered playing it the month after, but thought to move on. I most likely wouldn't mind playing it one year later or on the off hand we get Galaxy 2 released. Then I'd play as Luigi a month prior. 


- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (03.10)

- supershigi - The Natural Playboy (03.11)

- Flowlines VS (03.13)
Not a bad puzzle game. I think I would have finished it were I not extremely tired. 


- Collection of Mana | Trials of Mana (03.15)
Finally beat this game after removing myself from it. And it wasn't easy. I think we died 5 times to the final boss. It really sucks to be very excited to play this multiple times only to be glad it's over. Hopefully I won't feel this way with the 3D remake. 


- Space Otter Charlie (03.18)
Sponsored by The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild. It was a fun game. However, the glitches that came from the post game to try and 100% it were bad. I took some time to email the developers with time stamps to show them what happened. I did get thanked for the bug findings, but I don't know if they're working on a patch or not. But I've completed it so there isn't a reason for me to go back to it. 


- Demo Showcase 59 (03.19)
Portions of playing the Just Dance 2021 demo were muted as expected. I was glad it had 2 songs to try instead of 1 like in previous demos. 


- Jumping Joe & Friends (03.20-03.21)
This got split into 2 parts because our internet went out for over 5 hours. Sucks that it happened because the second part was finished in 90 minutes. 


- Neo Cab (03.22)
This was a favorite from Demo Showcase 34. It was scheduled multiple times for 2020. As it got farther and farther pushed, I decided to play it on the year anniversary of playing the demo. It was worth the wait because it was great. And there's a reason to play it again because of all the characters you can pick up as well as how you react to them. Next year? 


- Flatland Prologue (03.24)
Sponsored by QUByte Interactive. This was a short prequel to Vol. 1. And by short, I mean really short. It only took close to 90 minutes to do it all. That was too short so I did it a second time. Didn't feel this game was necessary. 

Sadly this was the last sponsored stream I got from them as of now. They used to DM me every month with a new code for another new game. They're still releasing more games so I hope they'll reach back some day with another fun game. 


- HALF DEAD (w/Firewalker56) (03.25)
Another guest on stream, but only voice. Firewalker56 was there when I played the demo so I thought it would be fun playing it with him. It went on longer than we thought, but we could not finish it. While he was doing the bulk of the work, it was very helpful. He was drawing maps on his end when there weren't maps. But that last stage (which was the next to last stage I think), was tough. But it was fun great playing with him. 


- amiibo (03.26, 03.28)
Got Banjo, Terry, and Byleth. However, there was a shipping error for the stores and they got as more Byleth amiibo instead of Banjo. So I had to go back a couple days later when it finally arrived. This was also supposed to be the same day the Monster Hunter Rise amiibo were released, but those got delayed (got them in April). 


- Lost Lands: Dark Overlord | VIEWER'S CHOICE (03.27)
Winner of the last Viewer's Choice Vote (exclusive to Discord). I personally haven't played a point-and-click find-the-image type game in a long time. I did my fair share of brute forcing and had to look up answers a few times. But there is also a second and third game available so I might get around to those in the future. Broken record for this blog entry already, but maybe next year? 


- Cadence of Hyrule | Aria (03.29)
This was impossible (for me). I didn't realize Aria was a one-hit run. I tried my best, but died so many times in mere seconds. You only get half a heart and hearts, fairies, or potions won't refill it. Not only are enemies a threat, but so is moving off beat. Yes, you can die by trying to move. I turned that off and it was a little more manageable, but still difficult. Took 2 hours just to get through and beat one dungeon boss. That was enough for me. 


- The Ignition Factor (03.30)
Never played a game where I was a firefighter. I didn't really get it at first, but I got into it and had fun with it. It was silly, broke the fourth wall, poked fun at itself, etc. Definitely wouldn't have played this were it not free on the SNES app. 


ETC=========================

- MOMO Performance Project Behind

- Utada Hikaru - One Last Kiss (MV)

- ITZY YEJI - River (Artist of the Month)

- So a few health things happened this month. After visiting my cousin, I felt very tired the next day. Never felt that fatigued in a long time. Then I started to notice other symptoms related to COVID. Getting massages helped, but the fact that I was relying on them every day was worrisome with everything else. I spoke with a friend who is a nurse as well as my mom and they suggested I get a COVID test. Took a while to find a place to schedule one the next day, but finally did (03.16). It was only 20-25 minutes away. Actually had a little trouble finding it as it was behind the building with very small signs pointing to where it is. Minutes later, we were done and I went back home. The next day, the results were negative. 

While feeling fatigued and other symptoms started going away, something new popped up. I was having trouble sleeping flat on my back. If I did, it would be very hard to breathe. On my side, not so bad. Mentioned it to my mom and she insisted to keep doing massages before sleeping so I would be more relaxed. My dad wanted me to drink the sleeping aide he uses to help him sleep, which was a sleeping medicine. I didn't do that as I worried about my breathing if I did fall asleep. And that worsened things as I became incredibly anxious about it. I did learn that being reclined while sleeping helped. Got an extra pillow so I wouldn't be flat on my back. Thing is, if I lay down while watching a movie or playing a game,I was okay as my mind was distracted. After a couple of days, I became hyper aware of my breathing in general where I kept thinking about it (minus streaming). So watching videos or other distractions didn't help as much or at all anymore. Anxiety got worse as the night drew near and I was worried about falling asleep. It got so bad that my mom suggested going to an emergency center and so I did (03.22). We already planned to go the next day, but it was too much at the time. My parents drove me to the nearby emergency center (went there 6 years ago). They had to wait in the car as I was there from 11PM-2AM. Got an EKG, blood drawn, x-ray, and another COVID test (just in case). I thankfully remembered I had not finished listening to a New Day podcast episode so listening to that while waiting for doctors and nurses to come by during that time was very helpful. Everything came back negative, but the doctor suggested seeing a cardiologist if things persisted, which they did. We went home, I drank some of the sleeping medicine, and went to sleep. For about a month I drank the sleeping medicine as I really needed it. 

We did go to a cardiologist (03.31). They did another EKG and asked more questions. I also got weighed for the first time in over a year. I thought I was 10-15 pounds heavier, but it was only 4, which was very surprising (all in the gut). While they found nothing new, they suggested an ultrasound and a stress test in case there was something wrong with my heart that may be linked with not being able to breathe while lying flat on my back. 

And as of typing this (04.14), those tests had to be rescheduled. I have been feeling better in general and have attempted to sleep without the medicine (lost more sleep that way), but I want to slowly get back to being able to sleep normally again. The one thing I forgot to mention was not feeling great overall. My anxiety was at an all time high and simply breathing was an issue. I did have a heart-to-heart with my mom during all this as she was very worried why all of these were happening. We talked about our relationship, the winter storm, me being lonely, losing my job, and so much stuff. It felt good to finally have that out there as our communication is now more open. And while the health issues have been less and less as the month went on (and into April), I do have to watch myself. Exercise is out of the question for now, singing is tougher, not being able to drink certain drinks anymore, cutting back on certain foods, and monitoring what I do on a regular basis is...things haven't been normal in a long time. 

So many health things came up at once. It was stressful and draining. It made the month feel longer than it was. I am okay, I'm worried, and I'm lonely. 

- That's a wrap on March 2021. Thanks for reading. Thank you for your support. Be cool and be kind. 


"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits." 
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Thursday, March 11, 2021

February 2021 Entry

February 2021 Entry

Heck of a month. Heck of a month.


MISC========================= 

- Twix Cookies & Creme are delicious (02.03). The ice cream version is great and so are the regular candy bars. I have been eating half of one bar for each break on stream. But I did need to pull back on it some and not eat them every day as I noticed I was getting similar feelings for eating too much sugar. So at least every other day. 


- A friend from the dance studio (I used to go to) and I recently reconnected online sometime last year. We weren't super close back then, but it was nice to talk to someone I had not seen in 5+ years. We decided to meet up for dinner (02.07). It was nice seeing her all grown up now and to simply talk to someone and see them in person. Definitely talked about things I never thought we would talk about, but I guess we're cool like that, ha. Hopefully it won't be another half decade before we see each other again. 

- New TWICE face mask (02.08). Had a $5 coupon to use at YesAsia so I figure this would be a good purchase. 


- The winter storm happened (02.15-02.21). I'll recap stuff per day, but I may forget some small details. 

02.15 - Lost power from 6:30AM-3:30PM. The snow had fallen that night. It wasn't a crazy ton of snow like in other places that regularly get snow. It was nice to see the snow. Plus it wasn't too cold during that outage. During that time, I listened to podcasts that were already saved on my phone and leveled up in Trials of Mana (to a certain point) and Wheel of Fortune (one full game). When the power came back on, I didn't think to recharge all my devices because I thought we were good, but the power went out 4 hours later. That first night I put on extra layers of clothes and got one extra blanket. Wasn't too cold that night. 

02.16 - First full day without power and water. Tried keeping contact with others as best as I could. Unfortunately, my phone doesn't stay charged for a long time anymore. Plus there was also the struggle of having a weak internet signal. I think the power came back on for 5 minutes at one point. Sucked to see it go. It was colder too so all day I had at least 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of pajama pants, 3-4 shirts/hoodies on with the hood up, gloves, and a ski mask. Also slept with 2 more blankets and had one set up against the wall since my bed is next to the windows. I listened to music from my iPad to help me fall asleep. I think on this day that I left a message on Discord so people knew what was going on. This was the day that my brother and mother opted to go to a cousin's who still had power. Dad didn't want to go and I didn't want to leave him alone. So they went and we stayed. Later learned that they lost power there around 10PM. We ate dinner around 6PM and the lights were already out. We ended our day at 7PM. When I went to my room, I had an overwhelming sense of loneliness. It was pitch dark, it was incredibly cold, and I was by myself. I cried. I went to go see my dad and we ended up having a heart-to-heart, which we normally don't do. Some already know the details, but things are set in motion for things to happen if I can't personally make it happen myself. I messaged a group text about it too as I really missed seeing them (been over a year). One ended up calling me and it was good to talk to him for about an hour in general and about what may happen. I felt better going to sleep that night after that call. 

02.17 - Still no power or water. I went out with my dad as he helped some of his friends with pipe issues. We also went to Hong Kong Mall, which was open. It wasn't completely open, but the grocery store and some restaurants were. They also had wifi so I got a good hour of being able to check on things. I also helped him with some pipe stuff when we got back home, which required a trip to Home Depot. That was bad. A line outside to get in,  a line inside to wait to shop, and once you were out of that line...no social distancing was enforced and everyone was in the same aisle for pipe stuff. We got the pipe faucet we thought we needed and left maybe half an hour after we got there. Unfortunately it was the wrong piece. I wanted to end my night with Wheel of Fortune again like I did the previous night. Towards the end of the game was when our family in Canada called. They actually had no idea what was going on. The power actually turned on for 10 minutes 2 separate times. It finally came back around 8:45PM and stayed. 

02.18 - Brother and mother returned around lunch time. The rest of the day was kind of normal. I did start to discard blankets and extra layers of clothing as we had heat again. But I had everything ready just in case. Thankfully the power never went away from this point on. 

02.19 - Same with water returning, but at low pressure. 

02.20 - Back to normal minus the low water pressure. 

02.21 - Water pressure was finally back to normal. 


- Sonic The Hedgehog became free on Prime Video the day before the one year anniversary from when I saw it. I felt it was highly appropriate to watch it the following day (02.19). It was just as fun as I remembered it being. After the winter storm, this was one of the best pick-me-ups to happen. 


- Prime Movies Round 11 is in the books. They weren't all winners, but there were some I really enjoyed a lot. My top 3 were A Simple Favor, Sylvie's Love, and Life In A Year (director liked my tweet, yay). 


WRESTLING========================= 

- NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day was excellent (02.14). I feel like I say the same thing over and over for TakeOvers. It's always true though.


- Elimination Chamber was full of surprises (02.21). Definitely not one to miss out on. 


H.E.R.========================= 

- One of the best things I got to do during my first year at H.E.R. was a pregnancy reveal. I might have told this story before. The email request came on February 18th, 2015. When it was forwarded to the staff, I jumped at the opportunity in coming up with a way to alter Mo's Safehouse to make it work. I don't know if anyone else had ideas because no one said anything and my idea got greenlit. There were a couple of things I remember being funny about buying specific props. One was just going to a Babies 'R Us in general because I can't even remember if I had been to one prior. The other was having people stare as I was buying very specific things. Like here's possibly a single father buying things that make no sense together. I also started to correspond with the customer we were doing this for. Other than asking if she liked the idea or not, I asked for a few things like her sonogram (and a few other things I can't remember). She had also done Mo's Safehouse already and that's why she thought it would be a great idea to do this. 

I was obviously going to run the session too as it was my idea. I explained to the group since she had done the session before that she was going to be an observer and stick by me, which made it fun for her to see things from our perspective. I'm sure she was also nervous and excited to see her friends and family figure things out. While the plot of the room led the participants to think Mo was pregnant, it wasn't until a planned key point towards the end that it was revealed that the one who invited them was pregnant. That part in itself was great because the majority of the group found out one after the other as they couldn't all crowd around and read the clue. As others were figuring it out, the ones that did went to hug her as she cried so it was a kind wave of emotion flowing. I think I was either texting the rest of the staff what was going on or they heard. Afterwards they told me they were wondering if they should join the room to congratulate her as well, but they didn't. After a few minutes, I reminded the team we were still locked in and they almost immediately went back into game mode while the true main character was wiping her tears. They eventually escaped, I explained the differences in props, and the story of corresponding back and forth was revealed to them. 

While we had done wedding proposals, birthday surprises, gender reveals, and more, there was only one pregnancy reveal. It was the story I told the most and is one of the more clear memories I still have of a specific group. The link below is the thank you card that was sent to me a week or so later. I might still have it. If I do, it's in a box of memories. That kid would be 5-6 years old now. 


GAMES========================= 

- Something I had forgotten to mention (or maybe I forgot that I had already mentioned it) months ago was I found a work around for the PC audio jack issues. I remembered that I had an audio splitter so that 5 sets of headphones can be connected to the same device (bought and used twice for separate Christmas events). Plugging that in and then plugging my headphones into nullified the issue by 90%. The other 10% is just a small touch or adjustment and it's good. Yay for a simple fix. 

- Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle | Armored Warriors (02.01)
Started the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle. The plan is to play one of the 7 games a month in alphabetical order. I've only played a few of the titles and Armored Warriors was not one of them. The game itself was fine. Played like most beam 'em ups, but with different mechs with different weapons you can pick up. But it was fun. 


- Demo Showcase 57 (02.02)
While Grimvalor might have been my favorite out of the batch, a large chunk of this Demo Showcase was from Fitness Boxing 2. I threw so many punches, ha. According to one friend, they bought the game after watching me demo it. Always nice hearing stuff like that. 


- S.C.A.T.: Special Cybernetic Attack Team (02.04)

- Super Punch Patrol (02.06)
While I was looking forward to playing Super Punch Patrol, it was a little disappointing. The art style is great and one of the main reasons I was interested in it (same creator of Gunman Clive). If you're in the Discord, you'll know why. But yeah, not as great as I hoped it would be. 


- Super Mario 3D All-Stars | Super Mario Sunshine (02.08-02.10)
Playin Sunshine for the first time in decades was great. I was worried at first as I was going slower than I expected, but we did finish with a little over 100 Shines. The remaining Shines would have taken another stream to do so and I didn't want to add another stream to this. It was still as challenging as it was back in the day. Despite a new generation not liking the game (understandable to a degree), I enjoyed getting to replay Super Mario Sunshine. 


- GRIS (02.09)

- RUINER (02.11)

- Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity acrylic (02.11)

- Overcooked! 2 (02.12)
Added this game to the stream schedule. Overcooked is fun, but I'm not great at it (as I knew from playing the first game before). Someone did join the stream who was an expert with thousands of hours logged into the game. It was cool learning interesting techniques and exploits for it. Still enjoyed it overall. 


- Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (02.13)

- Florence (02.14)
Originally wasn't going to stream on Valentine's Day, but this was an appropriate title to play that day. Short and sweet and lives up to the positive hype I've heard about it. 


- KUNAI (02.15) 
This was a scheduled post as I did not have the internet at the time it went up. 


- amiibo (02.20)
I picked up Bowser Jr. from Best Buy the same day I got Bowser's Fury from GameStop. The Cat Mario and Cat Peach amiibo arrived one of the days during the winter storm surprisingly. 


- Forgotton Anne (02.21)
Forgotton Anne was the first stream back after the winter storm. The ones scheduled during that week were to be pushed to the following month. But this game was great. Wonderful animation, voice overs, music, and a deeper story than expected. I knew it would be a long one. My voice wasn't keeping up with such a long stream after a week, ha. But I definitely recommend giving Forgotton Anne a try (there's a demo on the Switch). 


- Ninjala (02.23)
Our free-to-play game of the month. It was...okay. Fun at times, but I agree with others that say the matchmaking isn't good. It sucked going against players hundreds of levels above you and they're infamous for showing no mercy. But I enjoyed parts of it. 


- Space Elite Force I & II (02.24)
Sponsored by QUByte Interactive who had given us games in the past. Both are decent horizontal shooters. The first game was short, which gave me false expectations of how long the second game would be. It was double/triple the length. The only downside was the slow frame rate at a specific point in the second game. Other than that, not bad. 


- Cadence of Hyrule | Shadow Zelda (02.26)
This is something I'm looking forward to each month now. The music, the world...so good. This run as Shadow Zelda was the second fastest I went through the game (first being as Cadence). That was thanks to finding an item early that negates lava damage. The fire dungeon was done in 5 minutes or less. Can't wait to play this again next month.


- Super E.D.F. EARTH DEFENSE FORCE (02.27)
Wow, this was tough. From the beginning, it's tough. But I got into a flow and thought we'd be able to get a second playthrough on Expert. Nope. The last boss took a good hour in itself. Cheat codes only worked in the Japanese version so we were stuck there unless we wanted to start all the way over. Glad to have beaten it, but geez. 


ETC========================= 

- TWICE - Switch to me (DAHYUN and CHAEYOUNG)

- GoBuKuRo (Special Version with SANA)

- TWICE - MOMO Performance Project

- February will be remembered because of the winter storm. That was not great at all. I was dreading writing about it, but figured I needed to keep a record of what happened. Honestly, I don't think I've recovered from it mentally. 

- That's a wrap on February 2021. Thanks for reading. Thank you for your support. Be cool and be kind. 


"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits." 

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Thursday, February 11, 2021

January 2021 Entry

January 2021 Entry

One month into 2021. Felt long. 

MISC=========================

- I knew of JoAnn's Fudge a long time ago, but it was brought up to me recently in a stream. So I ordered some for myself as a Christmas gift. They arrived at the beginning of the new year (01.06). They're great and thick and delicious. Ordered peanut butter and rocky road. Been eating a small slab of one as a snack for streams to make it last. As of typing this (02.04), they're almost done. 


- Got the new crown put in place (01.12). It was a busy day for them. Busiest I had ever seen them. The new crown felt fine, just sensitive to cold drinks. Went in a couple of weeks later to get another one that fit better (01.26). Honestly felt very similar, but they liked it better, ha. 

-  Took me a while to figure out how to spend a $5 credit I had on Amazon. It was limited to certain items sold by Amazon. Nothing on my wish list was available to use it on. I ended up looking at boxers and socks, but the ones I wanted were either on back order or not my size. Then I randomly searched for Snoopy clothing and found a nice baseball shirt that the credit could be used on. Fits nicely (01.13). 


- Now I own a Sonic shirt (01.16). 


- I had some issues sleeping for a good week this month. It was the week of playing Trials of Mana. I did have to take some NyQuil to help for a few nights and ensure I got 10 hours of sleep each time. It ended at least (01.18) and sleep is kind of back to normal. 

- A friend from college has asked a few times to hang out. Usually I was busy streaming or had things to do. I apologized for always turning him down and actually hammered out a day that would work for both of us. He chose a couple of places to go to, but that didn't work well with the day. So I chose Korean Noodle House, which he was also familiar with. We finally met to catch up and enjoy a great dinner (01.19). Hugs are good, hugs are good. Nice to see him doing well and just talking to anyone in general. And it was good to see Korean Noodle House still succeeding during the pandemic. I was excited to see the familiar faces that have been there since day one. 

- Every now and then, I get the urge to watch YouTube videos of choreography I used to know (01.21). I figured this would be a good way to do some type of weekly exercise. Unfortunately, I haven't kept up with that. Maybe it came at the wrong time, ha. I'm still doing my morning stretches consistently. 

- TWIX Cookies & Creme ice cream bars are delicious (01.26). It had been a few months that I had ice cream and was really craving it. I wasn't looking for anything in particular when I went to the gas station, but I knew I wanted it to be an ice cream bar. And that's when I saw them. Never had a TWIX Cookies & Creme ice cream bar. The only ones they had remaining were Right ones otherwise I would have bought a Left as well. But those things are yummy. 

- Picked up a copy of Batman: Soul of the Dragon (01.26) and watched it a few days later (01.29). I was excited for this one because of the setting and theme, but I was actually disappointed by it. 


- Found out I could not use our printer (01.27). Reason being was that it was tied to a subscription to HER. I had printed something since inheriting it, but I suppose that subscription ran out. Tried setting it up myself, but ran into difficulties. The online chat wasn't helpful so I ended up calling them. The person on the other end of the line was very helpful and was able to help sign me up for the cheapest subscription. 

- Prime Movies Round 10 was crazy. It was mainly because a good number of the choices became unavailable. The biggest plus was that I watched the entire trilogy of The Expendables. The second was my favorite out of the three. The Grand Heist and Instant Family were also my favorites for the batch. Round 11 is up. I am contemplating if I want to change things up once we hit one year, but we'll see. 


WRESTLING=========================

- It has now been over a year since I was at a mass gathering. That last event was the Royal Rumble 2020. 

- The Royal Rumble 2021 was so much fun (01.31). Great action, cool surprises, etc. 


H.E.R.=========================

- Renamed this section to H.E.R. since these will be stories from that time. If work became a thing again, I'll probably make another section for it. 

I do want to try something with this section with recalling stuff from the Houston Escape Room. I think mentioning a negative thing instead of trying to only tell positive stories might be good. It would help to get it out there and not keep holding onto them. I know I've mentioned them in the past, but the good times wouldn't be as good if there weren't any bad times. 

And I think I'll start with a big general overall thing. One thing that bothered me were the family/friends that always said they would come, but never did. You had 6 years to come see me do something I was very proud of and that you would really enjoy. Offering discounts and even coming in for free didn't work for some as they were too busy. That's understandable...but you had 6 years to carve 2 hours out of your day to visit and experience what we did and did so well. 

Thank you to the friends and family that did come out. Those were some of my favorite sessions because I got to see you participate in something I helped create. Thank you so much. 

GAMES=========================

- Aviary Attorney: Definitive Edition (01.01)
This was very interesting. I thought there would be more to the trial aspects, but it definitely was story heavy outside of it. Didn't know there were multiple endings. I got one and watched the rest on YouTube. Going for the rest would have taken another playthrough because there were things sprinkled throughout that could have been different dialogue-wise. 


- Demo Showcase 55 (01.03)

- Crash Team Racing Nitro-Feuled was free to play for a week so I needed to add it to the schedule (01.04). I was not great at it, ha. Shout out to polly58033 for playing with me the majority of the time. 


- The Immortal...my goodness (01.06). I knew of this game from Game Informer doing a video many years ago on the Genesis version. It's not a good game. Definitely needed a guide for it. I don't recommend it, but if you have a choice, perhaps go for the Genesis version. 


- Island Saver is a fun FPS tied to recycling (01.07). I do think it was pretty good for all ages. It's not violent, it's colorful, it functions like other FPS games, and you get hours of gameplay for free. 


- Saw these Super Mario 3D All-Stars coins on sale for half off (01.08). They're nice. 


- Finally started Super Mario 3D All-Stars with Super Mario 64 (01.09-01.10). My skills have diminished after 20+ years. We did get all 120 stars within 2 streams (originally planned for 3). Despite not performing at my peak, I did things faster than expected. Still great. 


- 2048 Battles (01.13)

- Back to the Collection of Mana with Trials of Mana/Seiken Densetsu 3 (01.15-01.18). This was originally planned for 3 streams at 8 hours each. Based on an FAQ I was using (which was not good but the most recommended), I was towards the end. However, there was a difficulty spike. Those happened here and there, but nothing overly daunting. I really thought we would wrap it up in that 4th extra stream, but 2 screens over was a boss that was too strong. Leveling up off stream for 2 hours in between each stream wasn't enough. Spent 7 hours to gain 8 levels (I tried facing him each level gained) to beat the boss and it was...frustrating. There isn't much left (a few more boss fights) and I probably could have kept adding extra streams, but I was burnt out and needed to step away. So I'll return to it in February and be done with it. It might be done in one short stream, but I still reserved 3 days for it in case there is another level spike for possibly the last boss. The original plan of playing through this game 3 times with the different pairings is no longer happening. March will be the start of the 3D Remake of Trials of Mana. 


- Twitch Recap (01.15)

- Demo Showcase 56 (01.20)

- Party Treats was a game I got for free because of an ownership discount (01.21). I would not have paid for this. I suggest you don't either. 


- Panzer Dragoon: Remake was not that great to be honest (01.23). I enjoyed what I played of it, but it was too short and there really weren't any reasons to play it multiple times other than the extra options (God mode, etc). It was a little disappointing. 


- Bust A Move/Groove is still my favorite rhythm game. Never looked for merchandise outside of the games and soundtracks. But now I own a shirt for it (01.23). And because of this, I think I know which series I want to complete collecting now that I have finished collecting the Ace Attorney games. 


- Skybolt Zack was my favorite demo from June of 2020 (01.25). I didn't think I wouldn't be able to beat it, but I couldn't. The latter levels get tough and I ended up mostly beating the easier path of the map. I did go back and was able to unlock and beat most of the first world. But the "easier" boss still had bottomless pits and multiple phases (checked a video). I could only get to the second phase. I got further little by little, but there were times that I'd have a case of the yips and would lose faster. 


- Blackjack Hands was sponsored by QUByte Interactive (01.27). We had played Poker Hands on stream before and it was interesting. I like Blackjack more in general, but this was over really fast and not as challenging. 


- Started playing the DLC for Cadence of Hyrule (01.28). We used Shadow Link this time. It did take a while to get back into the flow, but it's great returning to this game. Not only that, the new tracks are great (can't wait to hear the rest in subsequent plays). We also got our (at the time) 3rd largest party to come into the stream (20-25) thanks to RaptorKitchen for sending fresh eyes my way. 


- Never played Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (01.30). It is definitely tougher than the original. Still enjoyed it. The added plus were the 3 parties that showed up with our largest party ever (47 from SolaceAndDread) and our new third largest (27). We also hit 550 followers at the very end of the stream, which was a great milestone. We never gained an extra 50 followers in such a short amount of time. We did lose a follower minutes after the stream and 2 more within the following 24 hours, but oh well. 


ETC=========================

- yukaDD - Superhero (feat. Momo)

- ITZY - Not Shy & WANNABE (BTS Performance)

- ITZY - Performance Practice: End of 2020 (Seoul Music Awards)

- January was an odd one. I feel it was fine overall, but the streaming part was rough at points. Nothing else comes to mind for the month other than my crush on Ryujin has grown, ha. She's the absolute coolest. I started watching some older variety/reality shows ITZY has been on to catch up on what I've missed. But other than that...nothing much to note. 

- That's a wrap on January 2021. Thanks for reading. Thank you for your support. Be cool and be kind. 


"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits." 

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Friday, January 8, 2021

December 2020 Entry

December 2020 Entry

2020 is over.

MISC=========================

- Went for my ENT appointment (12.03). My mom came with me as she wanted to talk to the doctor about the possible surgery. After the hearing test, the long wait, and the cleaning, it turns out my left ear is back to 100%. It's crazy and amazing as I had not been doing anything to hurt or hinder it. Surgery went from ASAP to whenever I feel like it. And it will happen some time because it will prevent future worse problems. It's just that the downside to widening my ear canal is that I'm guaranteed to lose some of my hearing. Better to enjoy the maximum of my hearing now and get the surgery only if things get worse. Still going to monitor it every 6 months to make sure it's good. 

- I recently reconnected with an old middle school friend through Facebook. We had been friends on it for a while, but only started messaging more often. I had been meaning to ask him about if he still had my soul or not (12.08). He busted out laughing. Some back story, we signed a "contract" and he owned my soul for X amount of dollars. The caveat was that I would get it back if he ever lost the contract. Knowing him, I knew he would still have it, ha. He hasn't found it yet, but he says he has it. It's a silly thing, but I can't wait to have it back. 

- A darn power outage occurred (12.11). I actually don't remember much about this one other than it happened and it didn't last super long thankfully. 

- Finished the box of Cheetos popcorn I ordered months ago (12.12). As I've said before, they're good, but I prefer the regular chip version. 

- Went to the dentist for what was supposed to be a root canal (12.15). When they removed the crown, they saw it wasn't that bad (why was there cotton there). So the plan changed to get fitted for a new crown and putting on the temporary one making the visit go from 3 hours to only 2. I listened to a podcast the whole time and sort of forgot I had the process done until a large headache came hours later. That sucked, but was expected. It took a good week before that tooth wasn't as sensitive to chewing. 

- I had been friend requested by someone in a Facebook group I was in. They were new to the group and all I did was Like her introductory post. We exchanged a few messages a couple days later. She was from Thailand so our timezones didn't quite match to talk, but we messaged when we could. Then she started to share photos of herself. And then she started talking a lot about sexual things. I'm okay to talk about those topics, but I was getting tired and paranoid when that was all she wanted to talk about. Plus calling me "baby" and wanting to role play only after a few days of talking was alarming. I would try to talk about normal subjects, but she always brought it back to sex. I confronted her about it after she got mad that I wasn't messaging her daily. But I mentioned that I don't message anyone I know daily whether they're close or not and that I am busy with streams and other things. It went back and forth from talking normally to sexual talk to her getting mad that I wasn't playing along. I know that one of the reasons I didn't unfriend her was that I just liked talking to someone new. However, she messed up. In one of the last photos she sent, it was uncropped and showed a different person's name as well as the user's profile image being a guy. I double checked the account and saw it was a foreign model and found all the other photos she sent in their non-cropped form. I unfriended her/him that day (12.21) and felt better once it ended. 

- We've had shoddy internet for a while now so a technician was scheduled to come by (12.23). The originally scheduled stream was delayed as they came around 1PM and the whole process took a couple of hours. The internet was better, but the technician scheduled another tech to come out and check the grid network as it was affecting the neighbors as well. The next day, the tech finished everything in less than an hour and our connection seemed fine. But when I streamed, it went bad. The connection dropped 3 times within a 2 hour span causing me to delay the stream to another day and run tests to make sure the connection was good. Thankfully it has been fine ever since then. Long story short, our internet connection is better overall. 

- For Christmas, I did a video call with my cousin (12.25). She sent me a package that arrived earlier than she thought it would (12.11) and asked to watch me open it on Christmas day. Inside were 2 gifts. One was from her husband; a handheld Oregon Trail game, ha (he had asked me about older games a month or so prior). The second gift from my cousin was full of candy I liked such as Jolly Ranchers, Warheads, and Sour Punch. But the main things were small beanie babies of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well as a gummy pizza. Very unexpected and awesome. We spent some time catching up before ending the call. As of typing this (01.02.21), most of the hard candy is gone, I'm saving the gummy pizza for last, and the beanie babies are now rotating on streams. Thank you, cousin. 


- Prime Videos Round 09 was very interesting. There were a couple of stinkers in the holiday themed movies, but I liked the majority of movies in this batch. Favorites include A.C.O.D., Christmas Cupcakes, and Christmas Cancellation with an honorable mention to Santa Jaws (so good, it's bad). Round 10 will start off 2021. 


WRESTLING=========================

- My gosh, NXT TakeOver: Wargames was great (12.06). They always deliver and it's always awesome. Shout out to all the performers. 


- And WWE TLC 2020 was great too (12.20). Fun PPV to end the year. 


- Brodie Lee/Luke Harper passed away at 41 (12.26). The outpour of wonderful stories following his death are incredible to read. When you see how much people cared and appreciated who he was and what he did for others, it makes it tougher as he was still young. I really liked seeing that wrestlers from every organization did things to celebrate his life. The AEW show dedicated to him was tear inducing. I lost it when John Silver got the hot tag and went insane with his offense and then seeing Rowan show up and then hold up his sign...wonderful. You will be missed. 


WORK=========================

- Still collecting unemployment. I did have to start performing work searches. 3 a week. I thought to skip out on it, but they actually reached out to me to explain that it's fairly simple. Plus I was worried that doing upstart work would disqualify me. They assured me it would not.  

- HER Work Story: The first escape at the new location (12.20.14) 
Our first location was on the 3rd floor of a shared building. We weren't there long and I wasn't there for more than 2 weeks before we moved. After settling in to the new place, we ran things as should be. However, it took a month or two before I witnessed my first escape. And at this point, I was not trained on what to do as it never happened. So when the team escaped, I didn't know what to do other than stop the time. I brought them to the couch area, which was our briefing area and sat them down. They were excited of course, but didn't know what was going on. That's when I congratulated them and let them know they were the first team to escape and they cheered. It was a cool feeling. 


GAMES=========================

- Tetris 99 again for stream 499 (12.01). Did my best ever and got 3rd place. 


- Ordered a Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity notepad from Nintendo (12.02). Cost platinum points, which made it free and only had to pay for shipping, which pretty much balanced out. 


- Discord voted for me to play Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King for my 500th stream (12.04). I really liked it. Part of me wished I did do it as a multi-session (2) so I can take my time and explore more, but I had to make it a one-off for scheduling. 


- Once the 400th stream was over (8.5 hours later), I found the clip I wanted from it and finished up the new stream trailer. It was the same time lapse video theme, but with 400 clips instead of 300. Changed up the song too to another one of Dan Angelo's instrumentals (thanks for the song files). I forgot about the normal speed version until late at night. But that needed to render overnight as it was going to take many hours. They're both up. My current plan is to do it again for 500 streams, but then change the format to only show the next 100. I'll need to think on that more, but I do think the more I add with the current format, the harder it will be on the viewer's eyes. 


- Demo Showcase 53 (12.05)

- First time playing the Famicom version of Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels (12.06). Only played the Super Mario All-Stars version of it. Still a tough one. 


- UBERMOSH: SANTINCIDE was given to me by the developers. I already had OMEGA since I bought it for a dollar or less. I knew they would be on the short end of length so I didn't think playing them separately would have been fun. So I bought BLACK as well and decided to play all 3 in one stream (12.07). OMEGA was my favorite and BLACK was my least favorite. All were 90-second survival games with tons of chaos. 


- Saw Reversed play Iconoclasts on stream and he recommended I give it a try. It was also on sale for half off so I bought it. Definitely enjoyed playing it (12.09-12.10). With how colorful the game is, it was very surprising to find a deep and dark storyline unravel. 


- Sephiroth being revealed for Smash was phenomenal (12.10, 12.19). Didn't unlock him right away, but it was cool trying him out. Probably my favorite DLC character overall, but I'm not good at using him, ha. 


- Ordered a Shantae shirt from Amazon (12.11). Have yet to wear it though other than initially trying it out when I got it. 


- Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms (12.12)

- Was looking forward to playing Trancelation when it was released (12.14). Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations. It became more about memorizing, which is not easy for me when studying anything. It might work for others, but not me. In the end, I took the easy way of beating the game. 


- Got a Katana Zero shirt from FanGamer (12.14). I thought they weren't supposed to be released until January, but mine came in early. Can't complain about that. Just like the Shantae shirt, I have yet to wear this out. 


- Back to the Collection of Mana with Secret of Mana (12.16-12.18). Haven't played this since around the original release. A little more difficult than I remember. In the end, I followed the FAQ beat by beat so I wouldn't waste too much time. Great to go back to it after so long. 


- Demo Showcase 54 was  the last Demo Showcase of the year (12.20). Good batch to end with. Shout outs to the developer of Wunderling hanging out in chat. 


- Pocket Mini Golf (12.21)

- 2020 Nintendo Switch Year in Review was available (12.22). I'm glad they did it again. Cool to compare with others. I only saw one person I knew that logged more hours than me. They weren't all accurate though especially the busiest day. Still cool to see them compiled. 


- Received a game key for Roundguard and decided to play a gifted game on the day of gifts (12.18, 12.25). Ended up having lots of fun with this one despite it being a rouge-like. The downward pinball mechanic and having characters with different abilities was neat. This is also the most expensive game I've ever received from a developer at $20. 


- The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories happened after Christmas (12.26). Originally it was supposed to be Christmas Eve. If you remember, this was the second day the technician came to work on the grid network. Everything was working fine. About 50 minutes into the stream, the internet crapped out. Came back on soon after and we tried to continue...until it was gone in another 10-20 minutes. It came back on again and I decided to try again after 30 minutes to see how the internet was holding up, but I was going to start over. And then it stopped after the same amount of time and I called it quits for that day and ran a bunch of tests. 

When we finally did play The Missing, the stream was steady and thank goodness since we completed it after 9 hours. What a crazy and amazing game. I had heard stuff about it and how it does respect a specific audience as well as tells a good story and all the praise I heard was right. I did make sure to tell anyone that came in that the game had trigger warnings because it doesn't shy away from certain subjects and actions. It is one I think a lot of people can appreciate whether they play it themselves or watch it played. 


- Ended the year by playing Super Mario All-Stars (12.28-12.31). Been a good decade since I last played it. Good stuff. The only downside was a rolling outage that occurred during Super Mario Bros 2 making that a split stream. I actually could have probably finished things up in that one had I not shown off the 2021 calendar that arrived that same day. 

The cool thing I did was perform warp and warpless runs in all of the games (minus The Lost Levels, did both a Mario and Luigi warpless run). Figured it would be a fun way to extend the stream instead of me steamrolling through them. 


- 2021 My Nintendo Calendar (12.30)

- During one of the Mario streams, someone in chat mentioned they found me because of my playthrough of Aldred Knight. They spoke about how he and others were doing world records for them, but specifically for levels and not the full game. So I jokingly said that means I technically have the world record for a full playthrough. They then asked if they could submit my run for it. As long as I didn't have to do anything else, I was okay with that. All they had to do was verify the official time as me intro, outro, and any break times would be subtracted from it. When I woke up the next day, I officially held the world record for Aldred Knight (12.31). Technically I've had it for almost a year, but the official submission means I've had it for only a short while (I'll keep track of both). Lots of people were surprised and liked my posting of the record, which was very surprising. The person that verified my record also mentioned that the others in the community are now gunning for it, ha. 


- Large Twitter thread made for my 2020 Games Year in Review. I started keeping track of stats around October/November as I was purely curious how many hours I had streamed in 2020. From there I started calculating other things as you can tell. But now I know how to go about keeping track of stats in 2021. I also started figuring out what my favorite games of the year were after November. I figured the lists could be made at that time with only a few possibilities being added in. 


ETC=========================

- BoA - Better (MV)

One of her best songs. It's one of the few times that the teaser made me realize that it was going to be a great song. Yes, extremely biased. 

- BoA - LIVE ON UNPLUGGED (12.12)

This was basically a concert. I definitely watched all of it and sang along to it as if it were. 

- BoA - Better album (12.14)

It's been a while since I bought a physical album. Her last one might have been the last one I bought. It was also a good thing I recently reorganized all my BoA stuff because there wouldn't have been room for the new ones. 

- Happy Birthday, Sana. (12.29)

- 2020...I don't know. Other than the worldwide issues, this was an odd year. Did the most streaming I've ever done with a nice amount of growth, but I thought more would happen with it. I'm thankful for the high points that have happened because of it. I know I'm niche, I know I do things differently, and I know I don't follow the normal path of growth, but that's me...always doing things differently. I do wish for more growth. Anyone that wants to help, let's talk. 

I've been the healthiest in a long time. I didn't get sick at all this year and that rarely happens. My hair is the longest it has ever been and the smoothest it has been in a long time although it still falls out at a normal rate. My teeth are getting better and the worst thing, my hearing, is now back to normal. I still get occasional rashes from sitting too long and I've put on probably 10 pounds. 

Overall...this has been the loneliest I've felt in a long time. This pandemic might have more people on dating apps, but it didn't make it any easier. It wasn't impossible, but it wasn't happening. There's more to consider now because no one would want a date to end with exposure to COVID. But being in the house almost every single day didn't help. I've been given advice to widen my age range (which I do almost every year and it's the largest age range I've ever had) or to not look for love, just a connection. Maybe 2021 will be better in this aspect, but it is what it is. I don't want to feel this lonely anymore though. I'll continue asking others to help me out with this because I need the assistance. 

- That's a wrap on December 2020. Thanks for reading. Thank you for your support. Be cool and be kind. 


"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."
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