Hey everyone, good morning as I sit here before 7:00am for some reason to write a WRUP. It looks like my area is expecting some much needed rain today which is fantastic because we're still in this drought in CA and the two major storms we've had all winter haven't done it. This won't either but it'll feel good to wash the atmosphere down a bit. Man I'm boring today. Just a middle aged dude talking about the weather to a bunch of people on the internet.
Somewhat more excitingly, today is the day that two strongmen finally get to have their boxing match. Eddie Hall and Hafthor Bjornsson, two very famous and very strong dudes who have had a beef with each other for years have been training for more than a year each to have a boxing match and finally work that shit out. The strongman community is hugely supportive and these guys are mostly all friends and they train together and have laughs and eat truck loads of food together etc all the time. But Eddie and Thor, though they have a certain amount of mutual respect, don't like each other. This stems from a competition some years back where there were allegations of cheating and it's never been hashed out properly. Individually these two are a couple of fun loving, hard training guys who can carry huge weights and are far more fit than anyone 300 plus pounds has any right to be. They've both been training hard to fight each other, and make no mistake, this is a fight. They've both lost about a hundred pounds each to get into shape and each guy is still in the 300 pound range. Eddie came in at 142.2kg that's 313lbs. He's known as "The Beast" in his circle. Thor comes in at 152kg that's 335lbs and people know him best from his time on Game of Thrones as "The Mountain". Eddie is the "smaller" of the two at a mere six foot three inches while Thor stands around six foot nine inches. I'm not even boxing fan, but I like both of these guys and I'll watch the fight. You'll probably feel the hits in your seats at home. Let's hope whatever happens though that these guys can bury the hatchet, win or lose, because I don't think they've always disliked each other and let's be real -- it's just less stressful to be friends. I think I can predict that we'll see a rematch called at the end or shortly after. I'll drop a link here from the free to watch live channel on YouTube. And in case that doesn't work, the official website will also have a free to watch viewing.
In more game related news Elden Ring had a big update recently in patch 1.03 that brought some quality of life help to the title. Trackers of a sort for NPC's to help folks follow their quest lines a bit easier, some extra quest phases and some bug and performance fixes. Nerfs were also had in the form of some spells and ashes of war. Probably the biggest came in the form of a change to the admittedly very OP Mimic Tear summon that could in some cases just solo bosses while you stayed back out of the way. PC Gamer has more deets.
I don't have much else of interest to share here, I'm sorry to say. There's some rumors going around that AMD might eventually add super resolution to older GPU's, but that's really speculative at this point. There are a couple anticipated games coming out soon-ish but it's not really enough to go on yet. So here we stand, in the shadow of Elden Ring a while longer. I mean I'm still playing and I'll probably get into NG+ here soon enough as I've dragged out my first play through long enough I think. The only recording I've done has been the Malenia boss fight, which is one of the toughest in the game. I got pretty lucky and with help of the crew I had summoned we managed to more or less cancel phase two of the encounter. Check that out here if you're interested in seeing for yourself. I've managed to rack up 18 views, so you know... really poppin'. This was just before patch 1.03 so it may not even be possible now as I've been in a few more of fights there farming rune arcs and have managed similar transitions points. But who knows? Maybe it can still be done at just the right moment.
Okay WTF are we playing?
AJ: More Analog Nt and I will also most likely be picking up (and playing) the new track drop for Mario Kart 8 (deluxe).
Nick: Will be attempting Ocarina of Time for the third time.
Yoda: So I've realized that Lost Ark has enough systems in it to allow me to just straight up become the greatest thing ever in a video game. A potion seller. I literally make and sell HP potions to other players for gold. So I get rich and they, real people playing the game, use my potions to go out on adventures. Until they need to come back to me, THE POTION SELLER.
Greywolfe: space quest 6 is properly starting, final fantasy 4 is ongoing [i'm now in the underworld] and i finally made some forward progress in infernax [another castle down] - so that's kind of my weekend.
Scrooloose: Well I've been inching my way to to the end of Elden Ring, tying loose ends and so on, trying to restock rune arcs to carry forward, upgrading new weapons sets and learning new ashes of war etc. So that's probably what I'll continue doing in between working this weekend.