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The Overwatch League is in its first season! I caught the first Saturday’s matches, although I was a bit late for the first game. My team, the LA Gladiators, had its match last, so no worries there.

Overwatch League wristband
Other side of the wristband.

First up:

London Spitfire versus Philadelphia Fusion

 

Largest progress indicator I’ve ever seen 🙂
Yes, that’s a pro Junkrat

Highlights between halves of the match:

 

next:

New York Excelsior versus Houston Outlaws

One of the desk commentators, Soe
4 of the desk commentators
Casters for the match
a large (!) view of Junkertown, the first map of the match
Junkertown
Junkertown interior shot
Spectator panels – these are animated and show player status live
Zenyatta is pretty strong. 🙂
a fan-favorite, Jake.

the main event:

Seoul Dynasty versus Los Angeles Gladiators

The Gladiators made a proper entrance:

Gladiators initial roster
A very purple version of the Gladiators logo
Gladiators logo – #ShieldsUP
the matchup
Showing how tough they are. First game against Seoul began with a tie.
Progress on a later game

I’m not posting the results here, but all the matches were fun to watch, with the last one being super fierce. Seoul has one of the best, and most experienced Overwatch teams in the league and the Gladiators didn’t slack off. The videos of the entire matches should be up at https://overwatchleague.com. Looking forward to next Saturday. 🙂

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It’s tough to get up when one has had a tough time sleeping due to a cold. That’s me this morning.

Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not ‘This is misfortune’, but ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune.’ – Marcus Aurelius

Today’s the first day of the first season of the new Overwatch League. I’ll be trying to watch as much of it as I can online, and then in-person this Saturday. I’m rooting for the LA Gladiators. Shields UP!

I started reading The Magician’s Nephew again last night. I’m going through the Chronicles of Narnia in their intended order to see if it feels like a smoother flow than the published order. We’ll see.

 

Cover photo credit: Nathan Anderson

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When I was a kid, watching TV programs meant watching what was on at a particular time and you had to know when your favorite shows were on and be ready to watch at that time, or have it recorded to tape (those antique things), or you’d miss out on that day or week. I remember some channels had bad reception in our area too.

I lived through the fall of the corner video stores (RIP Blockbuster and Hollywood Video), so the slow(!) change to the on-demand delivery of content was not unforeseeable. These days, I rarely turn on a TV to watch a broadcast channel. Usually, I’m just using the display to watch something on Netflix or Crunchyroll, or even streamed off my phone.

I can totally see a day when the cable that brings broadcast shows into the home will only be used instead for internet access and to watch live event streams as needed.

News programs still seem to dominate broadcast channels, or that’s at least what is on during prime times when I see my parents watching. It’s either that or shows about hoarders or house hunters I see most often, with the occasional movie.

As for the news, there’s just so many more options online and it’s super easy to focus on specific topics from multiple sources. TV just doesn’t offer such flexibility, and that’s why it’s super worrisome that there’s still a large number of people that only get news information primarily from TV, and from the big networks. Sure, some of them are doing a good job, but, there’s often these days stories that break online, with all the big networks scrambling to catch up or even just copy-pasting social media posts.

It’s a different world these days and it’s getting more online-centered. I wonder if anybody reading this is out of range for some of this, like in a rural area or something. I wonder what people in those areas think of all this. Do they even notice?

 

Photo credit: Sven Scheuermeier

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That feeling when you need a specific site login and don’t have it handy. This, even though you’ve long had a password vault properly setup (or so you thought) for year, kept up to date, and able to log in.

On one specific computer.

At your *work* computer (work requires it.)

You thought you had it properly set to sync with your home PC, phone, and a laptop.

Then, you need a specific login, so you try to log in from home, and the login is stale on all your home machines, so it’s no-go.

Having to actually wait to go into the office to fix something potentially fixable remotely kind of sucks.

 

Photo credit: Andre Hunter

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I tried to find some old papers I’d written in high school, for the composition class I was in, but they seemed to be buried super deep somewhere in the bowels of my closet, so the search is postponed for a while, or at least until a very sizable purge occurs.

Intending to transcribe them into posts here and possibly practice some revision on them, I thought that might be an interesting exercise. My writing style was probably a bit different a few decades ago. Oh, well. Someday I’ll find that stuff.

It’s the first Saturday of 2018, and I still need to focus a bit on making sure I type the year correctly.

 

Image credit: Aaron Burden

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The universe is trying to tell me something today. I’m gonna ignore the universe(but, not finishing this particular beverage.)
#nottodaysatan #flyincoffee (I’m not alone!!!) #optimistic #needcoffee #humpday

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Just me having some fun in the snow, virtually. It’s 6 versus 6 elimination match where every character has a snowball gun that fires a single round before needing reloading-via patches of snow spread throughout the map. This is a fun seasonal mode in the game of Overwatch. It’s a fun break from even the quick-play matches and a good way to blow off steam after some tough ranked matches.

Find out more here: Winter Wonderland | Overwatch