I've gained a lot weight over the past several years and despite my efforts with using video games to help, I have not seen much progress. This is because I have been struggling to commit to these "exercise" games. I really want something like Just Dance to just work but since that game doesn't really teach you how to dance, it's somewhat discouraging to spasm, twitch, and vibrate in front of the screen trying to mimic these professional dancers - even though just merely doing those crazy things is, in itself, a great form of exercise. I have a brief stint with non-gaming yoga programs, thanks to Amazon Prime, and these are easy on my aging body and quite effective. But Amazon got greedy and introduced commercials to their video offerings recently where you have to pay extra money to go commercial free: I stopped doing yoga because the commercials would interrupt the video in the middle of a freaking yoga pose. Just absolutely nasty! And no, I am not going to tell Amazon that it's okay to add this sudden tier of subscription just because they are greedy. The bad thing here is, of course, a lot of people probably did pay the extra cash - the same happened earlier in the video gaming world with the PlayStation Network and eventually, Nintendo's online access. If a majority of Amazon Prime users were more like Personal Computer gamers, Amazon would have cancelled the new subscription tier the same way that Microsoft cancelled paid X-Box Live subscription on the PC and made the service free.
Today is the start of Valve's Steam Summer Sale, which as the years go by has become less and less exciting to me because, well, I pretty much have a lot of these games already - outside of the fresh brand-new games that normally don't get a significant price drop anytime soon. Thus, I don't participate in them as heavily as I have done so in the past. Still, I always manage to find myself a bunch of games to induct into my Game Library when the prices are right. It is during these large sales event that the word "backlog" gets tossed around everywhere within the Steam community. Sure, there used to be a time, or two, when I had a differing opinion about this whole backlog thing in the past, but I'd like to share with you my thought about this concept nowadays.
I was talking to my guy today on our way back from the lake and we were chatting about a celebrity who recently started streaming on YouTube. He was impressed by my knowledge of streaming - mind you, he is a non-gamer, and though he likes watching shorts on YouTube, he doesn't partake in live chatting, and that includes my own Twitch channel (though he may stop by every once in a while). He was impressed by my knowledge of live streaming and asked me, "How do you know so much about this?" I told him I have been streaming since 2010 and even I had to check myself when I said that. It truly has been that long since I first started going live on the Internet, exposing myself to online strangers while I partake in my video gaming hobby.
It's been a while, I know, and with my return, I have great news to share with you! I have been Heroes of the Storm free for close to a month! Yes, HotS... That dastardly delicious game that is so easy to get into and so hard to let go. To its defense, know that HotS is one of the best games I have ever played, but I have other games to play too you know, and I am not going to live forever - a fact that a lot of people just don't understand apparently since they are preoccupied with how others live their lives instead of focusing on their own. How did I manage this? Well, I am just sick and tired of getting matched against premade groups as a solo player. It's match after match after match after match in every mode. After dealing with this issue for a long, long time, I was just... Done. I sure hope that other solo players will follow suit so that the premades can finally get a taste of their own medicine. They only love the game when they are matched against solos, so when they have to actually work hard to win a game, it's over for them. Perhaps 5 years from now, us solo players can come back to the game to find that the premades have moved on to better things in their lives outside of circle-jerking each other raw day in and day out (even at the wee hours of the morning). But I really doubt that.
So, 4+ years after the start of the COVID19 pandemic, I finally caught the bastard. And yes, I am one of those people who would wear a mask everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Whenever I'm outside the house, I am wearing a mask because I really, really don't want to have anything to do with the virus. Every time I come back from the store and get to my car, I would immediately use my hand sanitizer. The guy I'm hanging around with is a little lax in his approach however - though he has never had COVID either, until now - so I am fairly certain that he's the source of my infection. After all, he got sick first. Well, not really, really, sick but he was seemingly coming down with a cold and started coughing. Whatever the case may be, I am here now, battling what I would describe as a nasty case of sore throat and cough.
I was looking at my Twitch channel the other day and saw the following thumbnail for a recent livestream session. I think the universe is trying to tell me something. I mean, it's been a little tough to stream without interruptions recently since I have to deal with a medical situation, so maybe it's a good time to transition away from all of this.
