Sunday, February 3, 2019

January 2019 Entry

January 2019 Entry

The first month of 2019 is over. Time for a recap.

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- Watched all 3 Rurouni Kenshin live action movies in one day (01.02). Took breaks in between each one. Originally was planning to watch one a day, but I just got hooked after rewatching the first one again after so many years. I finished the last one just a little before midnight. They are all so good. The action, the character portrayal...all done very well. Highly recommend watching them even if you aren't a fan of the anime.

- After mentioning it in the8bitdee's stream, I looked a dance video for Mirotic (01.11). I was able to recall a good amount of the moves so I tried to do it. Didn't try it full out, but I actually was taken aback that I felt very winded and weak afterwards. I did try it a few days later and it was better. 


- y0nderboy did his first gunpla stream (01.11). Since I knew he was doing it, I sent out a tweet to someone specific. It was a shot in the dark, but Vampy was able to come in to his stream (21:42) and talk to him for a bit (even followed him). His reaction was great and I'm glad that he was making a connection with her.


- One of my favorite sunglasses broke (01.13). I was heading out from work to buy supplies and as I went to put them on my face, apparently I stretched them out to much and they broke apart. Sure, I own many many sunglasses, but I really liked this one. 


- Finally finished all of the cans of Cheese Ballz (01.13). If you don't know this about me, for certain snacks, I count how much of them I eat. Like if I am eating a box of cookies, I'll eat 5 each time and keep track of it. For the Cheese Ballz, I ate 25 each time I did. Sure, I lost track a few times so the counts might be off by a few, but my results are below. 


- Got to catch up with a friend who I had not seen in many years (01.15). We were going to meet last year, but she had to cancel it. Now that she is back in town, we decided to try again. Ate some good ramen, shared a lot of stories, went out elsewhere to continue the conversation. Hopefully it won't be another 5+ years when we see each other again. 

- Had planned a day to take care of a few errands (01.22). First, I went to the dentist for a cleaning. Yay for new dental insurance and yay for the dentist giving me a free box whitening strips (I was actually thinking about getting some too). Then I went to the post office nearby to pick up a prize from Toreba. They had tried to deliver it on the 28th of December and nobody answered the door. And then I went to the bank to deposit a check. Sure, it didn't take long to take care of all these things, but it was convenient instead of doing all on separate days. 


- Bought Reign of the Supermen (01.29). Didn't get to watch it until a couple of days later (01.31). It was okay. I think I expected too much especially after the Death of Superman. It lacked in a lot of places like the pacing and character portrayals. Also the animation wasn't as polished as other DC animated movies, which I was very surprised about. There were things I liked, but this one is hard to recommend. 


- Won my 12th prize on Toreba. I spent too much money trying to get this one. Just imagine that I moved the prize all the way from left to the right for it to fall. Watch the video to see how the final turn actually go down. Definitely going to take a break from Toreba for a while. 


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- Rest In Peace, Mean Gene Okerlund (01.02). 


- NXT TakeOver: Phoenix was so good just like every TakeOver (01.26). Predicted all the match outcomes correctly. 


- Went to a friend's for the Royal Rumble again this year (01.27). Got 6 out of 9 predictions correct. I was going for all champs retaining and all Irish winners for the Rumble matches. My goodness, was it so fun. Becky! Becky! Becky! 



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*if possible, I will post Twitch links to collections* 

- I beat a lot of games in 2018.


- The mic arm I ordered arrived (01.02). Just like my NES controllers, this also decided to come in minutes before starting a stream. I managed to set it up just in time to give it a test run. Throughout the month, I had to figure out how to position it as for a while, I had to rest it on my thigh to keep it positioned properly. Weeks later, I moved one shelf next to my computer desk and the arm seems to be at the most optimal spot right now. The only downside is that it covers up the shirt I wear. 


- The first game I played in 2019 was 99Vidas: Definitive Edition (01.02). This was the game that was gifted to me by the developer when I completed their challenge during a Demo Showcase. The first story playthrough on Normal took the whole stream to do (5+ hours). But I made a goal to unlock all the extra characters and beat it with each one on Izzy (easy) mode on (11 total) on Arcade and Remix mode. The last stream of the game happened on the 10th. It wasn't revolutionary in the genre of beat-em-ups, but I enjoyed it. 


- Ordered a set of cheap Animal Crossing amiibo (01.07). I really wanted the KK Slider one for a while, but it was always part of this bundle. It was cheap on Amazon, so I got it and unboxed it on stream. This brings the amiibo count to 117. On the same day, I received my Momo phone charm. 


- I was planning to play Lightseekers for the stream, but it's only playable in handheld mode. Luckily I figured that out right before going live and switched to Color Zen (01.14). It was visually pleasing and relaxing. My cousin was in there too and I asked him to pick an NES game for me to play after. His choice; Dr. Mario. I tried to beat it normally, but then played the SP version to see the ending. 


- The first Demo Showcase of 2019 (01.16). Tried out Desktop Soccer, Dungeon Village, Fitness Boxing, Robbotto, and Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story. I actually found all enjoyable. But my favorite of the batch was Fitness Boxing. It reminded me of how I felt playing Wii Fit. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up playing it for 2 hours (looking back at the stream, I also played Valthirian Arc for almost 2 hours). Could've gone longer as I had a few more free trials of it, but was getting tired. Added it to my wish list. 


- Picked up Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (01.18). I was excited to play as Travis Touchdown again as it has been many years since No More Heroes 2. They don't play the same as this was more like a Gauntlet beat-em-up game. Enjoyed it though. This was also a unique stream where you could actually hear me cuss as I was reading the dialogue out loud. I was able to beat it in 2 streams, but decided to go for 100%, which took an extra 2 streams to do (01.23). While I was glad to complete the game, the last stream was a drag as I was only gaining experience points for the last couple of hours by fighting the same crop of enemies the entire time. It was one of those times I wished more people were in chat to keep me company.



- Don't know what possessed me to check, but I looked to see how much space I had on my Switch's memory card (01.20). There was only 4.4GB left on the 200GB card. So I decided to archive all the demos I had already played (100+). After doing so, I went from 4.4GB to 73.6GB of free space, wow. From now on, I will archive demos after I play them.

- Did some cleaning around my room (put controllers in boxes and stored them away) and did research on my camcorders I wasn't using (01.24). Yay for more space and cleanliness. As for the camcorder, I wanted to convert it to a webcam for the stream. Found some articles online that said it was possible, but couldn't find the proper drivers for them. Finally got to chat online with someone from Sony and he let me know that it wasn't possible with that model or newer ones, only older ones. That was funny seeing as my camcorder is actually 10 years old. At least I tried. 

- Decided to tackle Blaster Master on the NES App (01.25). Never beat it as a kid as I never owned it (either rented or borrowed). 8 hours later, the task was done. Glad to have that one under my belt. 

However, this was the stream where I let a lot of frustrations out about Twitch. About half an hour into the stream, I had to take a break to take care of something that took over 20 minutes to do. I came back from it being frustrated and I was thinking to end the stream as I wasn't in the mood. A couple of people were in stream and I was openly venting about ending the stream since I wasn't feeling too great. But that's when I started letting it out. I'll talk about it more at the end of the blog as it combines with other things and you can watch the video to listen in. But I do want to thank abomination1212, bamCRASHkapow, SNERDAPERDS, and softguitar for being there when I was venting and for being supportive. 


- Another Demo Showcase in the books (01.28). However, this one was jam packed with 7 demos instead of the normal 5. Reason being that 4 out of the original 5 were incredibly short. The first 3 were done in the first hour. Coming towards the end of the 5th demo, I decided to add 2 more. I chose one and I gave options to chat to select the other. So for this stream we tried out Drowning, Gelly Break, Jewel Fever 2, Octahedron: Transfixed Edition, Retimed, Cinderella - An Interactive Fairytale, and Piczle Colors. My favorite out of the batch was Octahedron, a puzzle platformer with great visuals and music. I did end the showcase early as I wasn't really feeling the last demo (liked it, but got frustrated towards the end). But not only was this our biggest Demo Showcase in terms of the number of demos we played, but this was the most retweeted and liked be the developers of the games. Also playing 7 demos helped even out the number of demos played to 130. 


- Last game of January was GetAmped Mobile (01.30). It was a free download. A simple generic brawler kind of like Power Stone, but not as good as Power Stone by any means. I found things to like about it to play it for 5 hours, but I definitely needed to do other things to keep me entertained. I played some Korean, Japanese, Spanish, and English music for a couple hours and even rewatched the entire 2019 Women's Royal Rumble to end the stream. 


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- We had our annual Holiday Party at the beginning of the year (01.04). Originally, I wasn't going to go as I was in a sour mood for the party not actually taking place during the holidays, the change of location when it was supposed to be in Memorial, and that I was planning activities like I had been every year but the task was given to someone else without me being informed. But after my visit to Downtown, I changed my mind because I wanted to help liven up their spirits. The party was fun overall. Agent Wolfman came up with some good games. I still thought something was missing, but it was enjoyable. 


- Listened in on one Misss Clickk's streams at work (01.07). She mentioned escape rooms. I chimed in along with Agent Ocean and we got her pumped to possibly visit us. She even read out the names of our escape rooms on stream, super cool.


- Agent Yeti put in her 2 week notice (01.07). Unfortunately, I did not like working with her for the past couple years. I won't go into all the details, but I do see this as the opportunity the company needs to steer the ship in a different and needed direction.

- The Memorial team had their company meeting (01.11). We went back to the last escape room we went to and tried their super hero themed room. We had a larger team as it was myself and Agents PQ, Ocean, Gig, Widdershins, Voxel (welcome back), and Majordomo (visiting). The room itself was not bad. A little small (we exceeded the limit by one), but overall good. I think we all preferred the wizard room more.


- Agent Ocean and I went out during a dead day to eat at Grub Burger (01.19). It was good to get out of the office and to talk about some work related topics. Not only that, we made nice with the Grub Burger team and invited them to come to HER. 


- We have an actual sign now. I don't remember the actual date, but it's up and it lights up at night. Definitely had more people notice where we are now.


- Had a frustrating session (01.29). A lot of technical issues happened that haven't occurred in a while. It's the first time in a while that I could remember that we had to reset the game. Fortunately, the team was okay with everything and had fun. Still frustrating though.

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- Apink - %% (Eung Eung) (MV)

- Hyomin - U Um U Um (MV)

- Tiffany Young - Born Again (MV)

- The proceeding 2 paragraphs were added here as I have been told in the past that some people skip sections of my blog because they aren't interested in that topic. 

- I've had thoughts to quit Twitch. That also included watching streams. It really could be burnout, but the main thing I said is that I actually felt more lonely ever since I started streaming. I go into more detail in my Blaster Master stream, but the main thing was feeling more lonely. It's a platform that is open to build a community and it sucks when no one is in the stream at all, which has happened a lot. It's hard not to compare myself to other streamers, but the ones I follow usually have a good number of people always contributing to chat. Seeing that and then seeing nothing in my stream really adds to the loneliness. Thankfully there were a few people in that Blaster Master stream that I opened up to. And letting it out really helped. But I do think something needs to happen. I want a more active chat to interact with. That would really help. I'm 4 months into being on Twitch now. I'm trying to keep all the high points in mind because there have been some really wonderful things that have happened. 

- With Agent Yeti gone, a lot of my work frustrations have gone away. I'm sure that's the same for others. Agent Ocean and I did go Downtown to pick up stuff and visit and their spirits were definitely better. Agent Striker and Agent Blue-Heeler both came back to the company too. And a lot of us are on the same page in change and progress. That's not to say there aren't any work frustrations at all. I still wish Naval Warfare was 100%. I don't agree with trying to salvage The Countdown. But we shall see where the company goes from here. I have motivation, but things just need to happen now.

- That's it for January 2019. Thanks for reading.



"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."

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