New Bowling Ball (3rd lifetime)!

You may recall in 2014 that I bought a new ball for the IBM Bowling League.  I had pretty high expectations for that ball, but over the course of a couple years, I started to struggle with it.  Part of that could be attributed to getting older or the fact that I was undertaking a lot of additional activities (such as basketball league and learning to play golf).  Below you'll find my averages with this ball for the past four years:

As you can see, my average started to tail off the past two years.  Despite my poor averages, our team still won the championship both years.  Regardless, I felt the need for a new ball before this season, so I got myself another Storm ball, the Code Red!

I bought the ball off bowling.com for $158 and then had it drilled for $45, so it was about the same price as the previous ball.  We'll have to see how this generation of bowling goes and hopefully I can return to some 190+ averages!

Officially a Twitch Affiliate!

When I first started streaming myself playing StarCraft 2 on Justin.tv back in 2011, I didn't have any expectations for what my stream would become.  I mostly just wanted to capture my gameplay and share it with friends who wanted to watch whenever I happened to be playing.  I started out by using Flash Live Media Encoder to stream my games, which was mostly a command-line interface at first.

Soon after I joined Justin.tv, the site moved all gamers over to Twitch.tv, their new domain for video game streamers.  I switched over to FFSplit as my streaming tool and advertised my stream on places like Facebook, Team Liquid, and my blog.  Eventually another IBMer in Tucson found my blog by googling "IBM Starcraft 2".  It was then that I met other players from IBM, which would eventually transpire into our competition in the After Hours Gaming League.  It was my "career" in StarCraft 2 that I grew the most as a name in the community.  But eventually as the game of StarCraft 2 became less popular and the After Hours Gaming League went on hiatus, I stopped streaming for a majority of 2016-17.

The Affiliate program for Twitch started in April of 2017, but I didn't start streaming again until 2018.  At this point, my computer was not as powerful to produce the same quality as other streams out there, but I wanted to share the experience of IBM's return to the After Hours Gaming League in the 2018 season.  I would eventually upgrade my system and with the help of Streamlabs OBS, I was producing a quality stream once again.  However, since StarCraft 2 was just not a popular a game anymore, I had to move elsewhere to maintain viewership, and I found that in Fortnite Battle Royale.

As of August 1st, I was officially invited to join the Affiliate program with Twitch, where I can start making money when playing video games.  And just like when I started streaming back in 2011, I will continue to temper my expectations here.

Twitch will only pay out once you've earned past a minimum $100 threshold.  I'm guessing my earnings over time will be similar to the AdSense for my blog - I've earned $91 since 2010 and still haven't been able to cash out.  Regardless, it's been fun to get here and I'm looking forward to many more days of streaming!

Feel free to follow along at https://www.twitch.tv/atrain64

Watching the Marvel Universe (Movies + Agents of SHIELD)

A friend of mine recently recommended that I watch Agents of SHIELD, which is currently available on Netflix.  I decided to check it out, but I realized there are still several Marvel movies that I haven't seen because let's be honest, there are just so many to keep track of.

In preparation of re-watching the Marvel Movies + Agents of SHIELD, I researched online all the movies and episodes and their viewing order.  In the process, I discovered many sites recommending to watch the movies and shows in either by order of release or by the Marvel universe's chronological order.  To me, it didn't make too much sense to watch the movies in chronological order, since everyone else would have watched them in order of release date.  So I compiled an order that bases the movies by their release and episodes of Agents of SHIELD sprinkled into the Marvel movie timeline.

Movie/Show	Season/Episodes	Release Date
Iron Man		May 2, 2008
Iron Man 2		May 7, 2010
Thor		May 6, 2011
Captain America: The First Avenger		July 22, 2011
Marvel's The Avengers		May 4, 2012
Iron Man 3		May 3, 2013
Agents of SHIELD	S1/E1-7	September 24, 2013
Thor: The Dark World		November 8, 2013
Agents of SHIELD	S1/E8-16	November 12, 2013
Captain America: The Winter Soldier		April 4, 2014
Agents of SHIELD	S1/E17-22	April 8, 2014
Guardians of the Galaxy		August 1, 2014
Agents of SHIELD	S2/E1-19	September 23, 2014
Avengers: Age of Ultron		May 1, 2015
Agents of SHIELD	S2/E20-22	May 5, 2015
Ant-Man		July 17, 2015
Agents of SHIELD	S3/E1-19	September 29, 2015
Captain America: Civil War		May 6, 2016
Agents of SHIELD	S3/E20-22	May 10, 2016
Agents of SHIELD	S4/E1-6	September 20, 2016
Doctor Strange		November 4, 2016
Agents of SHIELD	S4/E7-22	November 29, 2016
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2		May 5, 2017
Spider-Man: Homecoming		July 7, 2017
Thor: Ragnarok		November 3, 2017
Agents of SHIELD	S5/E1-18	December 1, 2017
Black Panther		February 16, 2018
Avengers: Infinity War		April 27, 2018
Agents of SHIELD	S5/E19-22	April 27, 2018
Ant-Man and the Wasp		July 6, 2018

Last updated on 7/23/18

*Phew*.  Now that the ordering is done, I can finally just focus on watching.  So far I'm at the end of Season 3 for Agents of SHIELD and I'm loving the show.

Special thanks to the following websites for the suggestions on viewing order for the entire Marvel Universe movies and shows:
List of Marvel Cinematic Universe films (Wikipedia)
Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline (Indepedent)
Marvel Cinematic Universe in chronological order (Digital Spy)

Fighting my Internet Connection - Packet Loss and Downgraded Speeds affecting Upload Performance

So after I finally got that nice new computer, things had run great for a month.  However, over the past two weeks, I've been fighting 10-50% packet loss on my internet connection where my upload speed will just go to crap for 5-10 seconds every other minute.  I've probably called Cox about 10 times in that timeframe, had a tech come out every weekend, tried two new 24x8 cable modems, and still the problem persists.

It's really frustrating having crappy internet and I hope the problem gets resolved soon.  I really want to switch to fiber, but the only service provider in my area is Century Link and they only have a very small 20/1 MBPS plan, which is not enough for my needs.

A fourth Cox technician is coming on Monday to run a new line in my house.  Let's hope it helps.

P.S.  I had really nothing else to blog about this month, heh.

NEW UPDATE - 7/10/18

Last Monday, Cox sent a third-party technician to my house to run a new line from the cable box outside my house to the wall on my bedroom where I connect the cable modem.  The very first technician they sent had only run a new line from the cable box to the main unit across the street.  After this tech ran the line for my house, I was guaranteed a brand new line.  Immediately after he ran the new line, the issues I was having seemed to go away and I was completely ecstatic.  I was able to stream to Twitch.tv for 8 hours without a single packet being dropped.

While I've had pretty consistent packetloss-free service over the past week, I still notice a drop in upload performance from time to time.  However, if I'm not streaming, I almost never drop anymore packets on Fortnite while I'm playing, which leads me to believe that the line was indeed a problem.  I do believe that when I see downgraded upload performance I'm experiencing either poor QoS from Twitch or Cox.  Either way, the internet has been much more stable since the brand new line, so I'm satisfied from that standpoint.

For any random visitors seeking problem resolutions for similar issues with their cable internet, I suggest the following:

• Latest Firmware - Some wireless routers need to be manually updated, so check if you've got the latest firmware.  You can't manually update the firmware on most cable modems, as this is done automatically via your ISP whenever you reboot the modem.
• Cable Modem / Wireless Router isolation - If you're using a wireless router, remove it from the equation and plug your computer directly into the cable modem using an ethernet cable.  This will determine if you have an issue with the router.
• Replace the Cable Modem - If you're running more than 5 years on a modem, chances are it could be going bad.  Sometimes the lifespan of modems is even less than that.
• Have your ISP run a new line - Make sure they run a brand new line all the way from your neighborhood's hub to your house.  For me it took two visits because they only replaced the line across the street the first time and a second tech had to replace the one from the box outside my house to the jack in my bedroom's wall.
• The issue is almost never software related (excluding spyware/malware attacks), so if your internet was working fine beforehand and then randomly went bad, don't bother messing with registry settings or adapter tuning.  Chances are you'll mess things up worse than they were before.
• If all the above fails, it's likely just bad QoS from your ISP or the streaming services you utilize.