M-x Kelsin

I think Serendipity Recording Studios is finally ready for action! For those that never saw it, here are a couple of photos of the room prior to any work.

I hired http://www.edenhomeimprovement.com/ to do the work and here are some photos after the first day.

Some photos of the room during work and after they were done preparing it for painting.

Now our work began! Caitlin helped me a ton on this project since I'm not good at painting trim at all! First was priming all of the walls and painting the ceiling.

After came painting the walls. I chose the blue and orange combination from our wedding combined with my favorite color: purple. Big thanks to Mark for helping put the final coats on!

And finally today I got to put stuff in it!

Hopefully I'll get some time in the next couple of days to hear how it sounds!

Today was only good in that I was able to play 12 games and didn't get incredibly mad while doing it. The problem is that I won 3 of those games. I ended up losing way more points than I won and didn't even make a dent in my bonus pool. Now I feel too tired to play and have to go do something else. My fingers feel like... electric (not in a good way) so I keep screwing things up.

My scouting is terrible. Just map awareness is bad but I NEVER know what they are doing. If I play where I feel I'm teching and scouting then I feel like i have no units when they do push out and then I lose. If I don't scout I'm never prepared and they always push out right when I'm planting my expansions (must be great to have invisible observers or scans to scout with). If I spend apm on scouting then my macro immediately goes to shit, including early game. Don't know how I'm going to solve this.

It's also aparent that I don't know jack shit about timings. Four gates are hitting me with my pants done cause I don't know what to scout for. Terrans just end up pushing with thors and killing me and ZvZ I'm just at a loss. A number of the games today even went to late game and I don't even have a second to be happy cause I immediately fall apart. These platinum players have enough apm to harass in multiple places while expanding and I just run around like a chicken with it's head cut off. I lose too many drones and then they push and I have nothing to stop the push cause their units by this point ussually hard counter mine. I didn't scout, they did and I didn't tech cause I was too busy dealing with whatever they were doing. It's fucking terrible. I want to play this game but if I go 3-9 every time I actually get 3 hours to play I'm not going to be able to keep it up.

Last night I got another 4 games in. Unfortunately I only went 2/2 and didn't manage to stream the best game which was the first.

It was vs a protoss cross positions on Shattered Temple. I'm in the north and him in the south. He opens the game by saying "Hey faggot"... to which I respond by immediately blocking him. I find him try to place a cannon at my natural and attack it with lings (went pool first). He cancels the cannon and loses the pylon and runs away. I then just start droning up and making some roaches keeping an eye on when he expands (he doesn't). He eventually came at me with about 5 void rays and a bunch of other units. When he first tried to push I killed his proxy pylon easily (had it within roach range at the gold). The next push had all of the void rays but I easily killed them with my 4 queens all transfusing each other while my hydras / roaches took care of the ground army. I love beating assholes (but of course have trouble getting mad when they beat me!)

Second game was ZvZ where he pushed right when I put down my 3rd and was teching (CLASSIC Kelsin not scouting mistakes).

Third game was a terran cross positions on meta. I was able to stop his marine/tank/thor push with my banelings and mutas and was able to make enough roachs off of my 5 base at the time to stop his expansion attempts at the gold and 3rd after.

Forth game was on Xel'naga where the terran went even more tank/thor (less marines) and I went too heavy on mutas and lost them with bad positioning.

Lessons learned? SCOUT MORE!

So I managed to get top 5 in my current Diamond division. It's a pretty new division and most good players (at my level) would be in a division formed much closer to our ladder season. I'll secure my place as long as I play enough to use my bonus pool.

Two nights ago I played the best games of my life (as well as flipping out on my stream... embarassing). The night started out badly. I lost a ZvZ where I fast expanded to slings. The next game was a DT rush that I didn't see at all... After that I got another ZvZ and decided to sling myself against the opponents fast expand. He got spine crawlers up in his main base and I decided to lose too many units to it. After that he got blings and owned me while I didn't transition. Lesson learned but I got super pissed after the game and hit my leg on my stream. Hopefully the embarassment will keep me from doing it again.

After that lost another ZvZ where I left early due to not canceling my hatch that was being killed by slings. After that however I played three games vs Protoss where I felt like my macro was ON FIRE. The third game wasn't as much on fire with macro but I actually scouted that he was going all gateway and held off his 6 gate AND his future pushes with hydras and creep all over the map. The earlier games I held off deathballs and VR pushes by actually getting air when I needed it (not before) and over macroing and denying bases. I felt like I was scanning my base a ton. Responding when buildings finished. Scouted more than normal (but not enough). Injects were well timed. I also managed to get a lot of bases and get gas on them and saturate them at the right times which is great!

Last night I went 2-2. Lost to a bunker rush and to a sentry heavy toss push that completely played with my flank. I moved some roaches behind his army to flank when he pushed and he saw it and just killed them first and I lost right there. The two games I won was one Terran that didn't have his macro up to snuff and one toss where I managed to overtake him and get broodlords to seal the deal.

Main notes that I got from all of this? I still need to scout WAY more, and just learn what to do in different situations. Fact of the matter is the other day I scouted 2rax in close positions and made drones... like just lack of experience. I know 2rax is bad, and even though common sense says make units I didn't know that for sure, but now I do. I need to analyze losses more (instead of just blaming macro but that is a key component of course) and make sure to not get pissed when I lose. As far as I see the two main things holding me back from doing better at NE Sc2 lans is scouting (big time) and being able to play games without getting mad (a lot harder to fix). We'll see how it goes this weekend! I'll try to stream every game I play as normal.

Played three games tonight and all three were horrible losses. Two diamonds and a Platinum to round it out (I lose to the opponents that Blizzard gives me to win against as well). Totally prepared to be demoted any time. Turns out I'm glad Blizzard started hiding loses so I can't remember how fucking horrible I've been playing.

First two games weren't even close. I had no army, they had armies. Third game our supplies were technically equal when he attacked, except that half of my army supply was technically in eggs, most died when it hatched due to the army trying to run to the waypoint. Regardless of the first battle he backed off and let me get even with him on food again; everyone knows what a Toss vs Zerg even army battle looks like however. I had nothing but roaches and lings + hydras (since the first fight had no collossi). Second fight had three so my army died without him losing anything important. Immortals + Collossi + Stalkers = dead lings + roaches + hydras + 6 mutas.

Just have to continue practicing macro to eventually be able to beat platinums. Maybe someday I'll have enough apm to scout.