Month: March 2018

Two days ago on March 29, 2018, Valve announced on their blog some changes they’ve made to trading CS:GO skins. Skins in most games are cosmetic items that players can purchase and use in-game. Most of the time, these skins are traded between players because different skins have different qualities and values that people and some collectors desire. I myself also have several skins on my CS:GO account.

Before the update a couple of days ago, it was possible to trade items extremely quickly although you should’ve taken the time to review the contents of the trade and confirm everything. The fastest possible way to trade items before was to have both parties involved in the trade having the Steam Mobile Authenticator linked onto their smartphone or similar device. Once the trade has been confirmed one time by both parties on either PC or mobile, you would confirm once more using the Mobile Authenticator. The trade will then be completed and items are exchanged. If none or one of the parties involved with the trade does not have the Steam Mobile Authenticator it is a little different. Once the trade is confirmed the first time, the items are taken from both parties and held by Steam for fifteen days. During this time, any one of the parties is free to cancel the trade if something seems off. This made the longest possible time for a trade fifteen days prior to the update. However after the new update, any CS:GO skin that has been received in trade will be given a trade cooldown of seven days. This means that you cannot trade that item again until seven days later. Now, the fastest trading time between a new item a player has just received and another party is seven days instead of just one.

For example, let’s say I have just received a skin from a third party and I would like to give the skin to a friend. I have to wait seven whole days before I can trade it to my friend. That’s assuming we both have the Steam Mobile Authenticator. If one of us or none of us have the authenticator, this makes the time of the trade twenty-two days. Another common practice among players is the borrowing of skins. So let’s say I just received a new skin and a friend of mine wants to check it out. I have to wait seven days to trade it to them and in the worst case scenario, we both don’t have the Mobile Authenticator and then we have to wait twenty-two days before my friend even receives the item. After my friend has a chance to look at the skin he/she has to wait another seven days plus fifteen to trade it back to me. This makes the entire interaction for even just one item fourty-four days. Best case scenario for a borrowed skin is still a long fourteen days.

For the CS:GO community this displeases a large amount of the players even though Valve’s main intentions are to prevent scams, gambling websites, and those types of things. These skins can range in value anywhere from $0.03 USD to $100,000 USD. Some skins still don’t even exist and when they do appear most likely will be priceless. There are already a few skins that only have single digits of themselves that collectors aren’t even willing to name prices.

Although I myself am not a huge trader or collector, I am still apart of the community. Along with the mass majority of players, I do not like the idea of this new trading system. I can see how much this new change will inconvenience people and I hope that Valve can find a different option to issues like scams instead of this seven-day cooldown thing.

A few weeks ago, I ordered a new acoustic guitar for my birthday which is in around a week. It still hasn’t arrived yet, but I hope it will arrive within the next two or three weeks. The guitar was Baton Rouge’s AR11C/ACE model. Baton Rouge makes a lot of other models, but the reason why I chose the AR11C model was because it wasn’t too expensive. It also has a cutaway next to the higher frets making it easier to play higher notes as well. The AR11C/ACE is part of Baton Rouge’s Auditorium guitars which are designed for fingerstyle guitar which is what I play. Most of the Auditorium guitars also have a pickup system so you can plug the guitar into an amplifier making it an acoustic/electric guitar. A few guitar players I enjoy listening to also use Baton Rouge guitars like Eddie Van Der Meer and Andrew Foy.

From my experience with acoustic guitars, the strings are tighter than my Yamaha Pacifica PAC311H which is an electric guitar that I’ve had for a while now. With an acoustic guitar, I won’t need an amplifier to be able to easily hear myself playing and I could perform more of the percussive techniques. When the new guitar arrives I’d probably be more motivated to play and practice some songs that I’ve already learned or am trying to learn. I’m most likely going to write again after I receive and use the new guitar with my opinion and thoughts on the guitar.

This week I will be writing about my plans for this March Break. I don’t have much homework or any projects due after the March Break, so I can spend most of my time sleeping, lounge around, and things like that. For the weekends I’ll most likely just sleep in, then play some games with friends, and maybe when I’m not doing either of those in my spare time I’ll be playing guitar or drums in my room.

As for video games, I’m probably just going to play the games I already have like Fortnite, CS:GO, and Rainbow Six Siege. I don’t really feel like getting any new games since I’m still interested in my other games. I also am getting a new guitar for my birthday which is in a few weeks. I don’t expect it to arrive during the March Break but if it does I’ll definitely use it and write about it in my next blog. Besides playing games, sleeping, and guitar. My mom, brother, and I plan on trying different restaurants nearby which is what we usually do when we have time off from school and don’t have much to do. Last time when we visited a few restaurants there were a few good ones, so I’m looking forward to being able to eat some new food over the break.

That’s pretty much all my plans for the March Break which is just a bunch of lazy activities, but there’s not really much to do outside since it’s too cold. Maybe if it does warm up later in the week I’ll consider going out, but so far I don’t have any plans myself for that.

This week, my school took students from grade four to eight to different places for a type of field trip. All of the activities were related to fitness like skiing and rock climbing. The different options were skiing & snowboarding, Skyzone (trampoline park), rock climbing, and snow tubing. This week was our second winter elective of this year since we already had one a month before. A few friends and I decided to go rock climbing this time so I will be writing my opinion on the trip and overall experience.

We didn’t have to wake up early for the trip compared to anyone going skiing or snowboarding since they had to wake up and get to school a few hours earlier than normal time. I arrived at school at the normal time and everyone going to the rock climbing place met in one classroom. We all got onto the bus and the ride was short being around 15 minutes. When we arrived we had to wait quite a while before we actually did anything. The facility gave everyone a special pair of shoes that were tighter than your average shoes. Everyone was also given a harness and was taught how to safely repel downwards after climbing to the desired height of the climber. There wasn’t much to talk about besides that there were two walls that had timers to time how fast you could climb, but every other wall was just a normal rock climbing wall with different pieces to grab and use.

After around half an hour, we were given the option of using the other side of the facility to climb without the use of a harness. Along with a few friends, I also went to “boulder” which is what the type of climbing was called. It wasn’t that much different from the climbing with a harness except that the walls were angled more towards the climber making it harder to use your legs to climb.

After around two hours of climbing everyone had lunch and sat around until it was time to leave. Overall, I had a good time rock climbing and would say that it’s definitely not the worst or the best activity that I’ve tried before. The only things that I didn’t quite enjoy was the time that we sat around not doing anything and the sore forearm muscles around the wrist area.