Category: Gaming

Going, going, and going…

So it’s been a little bit over a month since I last posted, and a LOT has gone on. Let’s get right into it all.

After we sold, we had moved [basically our entire house of stuff] into an informal rental (informal as in a place a family member had available we could use), but we had to turn around within 2 months of moving in and move out due to some misunderstandings from both sides on financials that would hurt our much needed budgeting for the new house. All good, though, we got storage for all of our stuff, and our cousins are gracious hosts letting us stay with them during our build.

Whew. Danielle and I are mentally exhausted from the seemingly non-stop work really since last November when everything started, but more so the last few months. We’ve been going, going, and going, but at least we can slow the brakes a little and rest a bit easier for a little while now. Yay!

On top of all the chaos of selling, moving, buying (land) and building, I’m still in school. My worst and least favorite subject on the entire planet … no, in the entire cosmos is math. It was inevitable that I’d have to take two maths, but way back starting out at Phx I wasn’t aware nor prepared both classes would be back to back. There are pros and cons to this. Con: you’re stuck with math for 10 weeks straight… Pro: get math done in 10 weeks and concepts from one class are fresh for the one right after. I had been dreading the math classes ever since I knew they’d arrive, but now one of them is already over and I’m 2/5 of the way through the second one. I was thankful I passed the first one and I pray I pass this one, too. Harder to come IT classes will surely have their challenges, but I speak computer … not math. So that’ll be a huge lot of academic stress out of my way when the final math class is done here in a few weeks.

Since everyone is stuck at home during the Corona/Covid pandemic, recent studies have shown that video gaming has skyrocketed. You don’t need anything but common sense to know this. Still, gaming is one of my favorite pastimes (and currently my only one). I was a Sony PlayStation fan when I was younger and have been a Microsoft Xbox fan since I was a teenager. Without going through essentially a book on my gaming history, suffice to say I’ve experienced and understand both companies and their offerings. I just like Xbox more. So, I jump on lots of opportunities when I can. Plus, with technology as a passion of mine, it was a no-brainer when I got a chance to participate in Microsoft’s beta for xCloud, which was their mobile phone game streaming technology. It was fun and pretty cool to use regular 4G cell service to play high-quality games. Since it is out of beta now and part of their new subscription offerings, I got a cool emblem for being a beta user. That’s all I really wanted to make this whole section about (hahaha).

I was also able to secure an Xbox Series X earlier this week during the madness for pre-orders of the next-gen consoles coming out. Future-proofing is good to go.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I set in place the official changeover from andrewcoody.com to andrew.coody.co. While selling, moving and Corona/Covid put a wrench in my videos for the Coody Connection YouTube project I started, I do like the different website name and merging my personal site in with the YouTube business site. It’s smoother to refer to so that my blog and personal site have moved here permanently along with the business site (just remember: it’s .co not .com!)

Well, I think that about wraps up this post. It is not as linear as most of my posts usually are, but sometimes a jump around of topics is all you’re gonna get when my mind and life are all over the place. 🙂

Until next time,

Andrew

Give A Little

So, I’m an avid fan of Reddit. Yes, that site that lots of people don’t like (but people dislike lots of sites!). My belief of Reddit, just like a good majority of things, is that there’s always a good and bad side of things. Well, let’s skip the philosophical side of this and jump to the topic today.

As I was saying, I’m an Avid fan of Reddit and I also love video games. Some coworker friends and I have been playing the latest title from Activision called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (aka “CoD” or “MW”). Sure, there was a slightly similar CoD game back in the early 2007’s but this is the remake/remastered (whatever) version from 2019. Boy was (is) it good. Again, there’s good and bad in everything.

So, where this story comes in today is more with a Quality of Life (QoL) aspect inside of the game. Even if you don’t video game or know anything else about technology, you’ll get this aspect. Inside of MW as you rank up, earn achievements, upgrade weapons/character, there is a little green indicator like the below figure for evvvvverything new that you’ve accumulated.

Think of it like this example: suppose you have a pistol and during a match you rank it up to where you earn a scope or suppressor on it, those will show a green indicator. All you have to do is roll past or click on each value to make the green mark disappear. Well, this sounds simple enough, right? Maybe. Now let’s say you play a LOT and accumulate a ton of these indicators and they can be all across the player profile. That’s a lot of hunting to find and get rid of them.

So, some other users on the subreddit (the specific community) for COD: MW suggested a fix to the developers of the game to make a “clear all” button … and they actually delivered on it. Now, a big part of that was people rallying behind it with a donation to a charity to support this. I, of course, saw this as a win/win and spoke up to make a donation if this got implemented. Well, lo and behold it did. So, this morning I made two contributions to two organizations that I most closely feel passionate too: Samaritan’s Purse and the Wounded Warrior Project.

Technology and gaming is not as bad as some (of you) may thing. There is good out there and this is one of those times where faith in humanity can have a glimmer of restoration.

If you’re interested in more details, click here for the original Reddit post and the follow-up post here. Even if you don’t game, I encourage you to donate to a charity/organization of your choosing at least once. It’s a nice feeling and helps people in ways we’ll likely never see … and that’s ok!

Xbox Series X Specs Released

I was excited to read this morning about the specs for the upcoming Xbox Series X, the successor to the Xbox One X/S. Also was information about backwards compatibility and ray tracing.

Here’s Microsoft’s fresh blog post at the Xbox Wire. Where you can read the details amd context for yourself.

CoD Season 2 out now!

https://www.callofduty.com/modernwarfare/season-2

Season two of Call of Duty (CoD) is out. My friends reminded me a couple of days ago about it, and so I fired up the ‘ol Xbox and started downloading… it’s a whopping 70GB! At that moment, we were having a brief Internet issue so I was getting a megabyte or so vs the couple hundred I usually get, and so I said nope and shut it down (was doing school work and house DIY stuff anyway).

Yesterday when I got home I kicked off the download after confirming speeds were good. It was fully downloaded/installed when I checked it later in the night.

I haven’t played yet, but I’m excited to see what it contains. I’ve seen leaks and the CoD website, but I mean firsthand.

Until next time,

Andrew

GTA 4/IV

gta4 logo

I’m SUPER psyched!! Why? Because Grand Theft Auto 4 (IV) released yesterday (Apr. 29th) and my copies -both PS3 and Xbox360 versions- were prebuy from the RockStar warehouse. I should get them tomorrow afternoon sometime.

I know games like this are frowned upon by fellow Christian brethren but I really don’t mind. I know all the better but my personal view pertaining to people (not only kids) and video games is set in stone: as long as you don’t repeat the words or go out an enact what you see in the game you’re fine.

I may go out to Walmart or Circuity City and get the Brady official strategy guide for the game since I got a $25 refund from books at work, I can spend it!

Aah. Time to get ready for lunch……….. and work. Talk to you later!

Andrew

 

UPDATE

I bought the strategy guide today but my games are delayed by a day or so…hopefully they’ll still make it sometime tomorrow.