Welcome to my Now Page, my thoughts and what I’ve been up to lately. Loosely inspired by my friend Jack Grimes’ format. You’re reading the 2026-08-05 version of this page. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Doing

Aw shit it's been another like 3 months since I've written a Now entry, I keep doing this! And also for some reason I make a bunch of these around the time of Big Transitions. This time, it's cause I'm moving cities and starting at a different college!

Last semester finished absolutely abysmally for me. I burnt myself the hell out and still only passed 2 of my classes, and just barely. I still have to finalize things, but I'm in the process of moving home and transferring to UW-Green Bay. MSOE is a crazy rigorous laser-focused school, but I've hit a huge roadblock: I've always been a hands-on learner and I've got a lot of theory classes to deal with right now. Maybe it'll only be for a semester or two, but finishing my program at UW-GB isn't a bad idea. They've got a beautiful campus, and it doesn't feel like admin is at odds with the students like at MSOE. Plus, they don't rent a building out to ICE where they actively detain people in inhumane conditions!

Other than that, I'm helping my family back for a big move, from a small town near Green Bay to Green Bay proper. It's gonna be awesome to actually have places to go and things to do that don't require a 40-minute drive. Sure, GB isn't the biggest city around, but it's got a cute downtown and plenty of pretty awesome places. And also, Lambeau Field is right the hell there. I don't even keep up with football much, but it always amazes me that I can be walking around and BOOM there's Lambeau!

Watching

• Lots of Vinny Vinesauce and Joel/Vargskelethor. I discovered both these guys at a fairly young age, young enough that a bunch of the adult humor went over my head. Somehow, they're still making me laugh my ass off. Vinny's created a hilarious, horrific fever dream of an island in Tomodachi Life, and Joel's having a hell of a time playing through odd Doom WADs and a ROM hack that turns Super Mario 64 into Deltarune.
• Pitch Perfect. I'm watching this with my mom and stepdad as I write this lmao. Pretty funny "augh i'm tired and don't want to think or anything, let's just turn this on" movie, and it's got some good jokes like the a capella announcer going "Well you're a misogynist at heart, so you never woulda bet on these girls anyway." There's a handful of jokes that feel very 2012, like how there's a running thing about "yeah we know you're a lesbian".

Playing

• Left 4 Dead 2. My sister and I have been playing this in splitscreen for the last few weeks. We started on official campaigns, but now we're playing random Workshop maps. There's some great ones like Daybreak, some unfinished yet fun concepts like Big Wat, and some nonsensical shit like whatever the Glubtastic series is. This game is 17 years old, old enough to drive, and it's still got people making maps, mods, and videos about it. I see why Valve never makes a third game, they just about perfected everything between 2004 and 2010.
• Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. Emulated of course, because Nintendo isn't getting my money for a while if ever. This is just "nonsensical scenario generator", and I love it. I sent Weird Al to Australia and Pepsi Man is friends with Marceline from Adventure Time.
• Lumines Remastered. This hit mobile last week, and I bought it almost instantly. Nothing hits like a Tetsuya Mizuguchi game. It's so entrancing, and everything comes together perfectly that I end up getting lost in it... which isn't good when my sister is trying to get my attention lol.
• Compile. Shoutouts to Gnome Games in Green Bay for finally having this game! It's an excellent 2-player duel game that somehow packs so much strategy into a pretty compact deck. Your deck is made up of 3 6-card Protocol decks shuffled together, and each has different principles that their cards focus on. Speed lets you draw and play more cards per turn, Fire has mulligan and discard mechanics, Gravity shifts cards between columns, and there's a bunch more cool Protocols I haven't played yet. Since there's 12 decks in each main box, that's something like 440 combinations, if I'm remembering the right formula from sophomore year Prob & Stats. It plays really quickly, but it scratches the itch of a TCG or even Netrunner without having to get too in-depth with deck construction!

Listening

• Toxicity - System of a Down. I'm typically no metalhead, but MAN I've gotta listen to more SOAD.
• A podcast rec for once: Sorry, I Missed This by Cate Osborn at Understood.org. I love a good podcast about ADHD, and this is one that makes me go "huh, that makes sense!" and "oh, fucking MOOD."