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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