August 2025 Journal Entry

Minecraft

        Well, if last month was the month of Stardew Valley, then this month was the month of Minecraft. Actually got a server that works well (enough) to have a world with Thomas and Ben, and it's been a blast. Played a lot, did a lot of things I've never done in Minecraft before (get Elytra, Full Netherite stuff), made some cute little buildings, started up a couple big projects. Played a lot on my own as well as with Thomas and Ben. Unsure how much I'll be playing down the road -- for now, another game has taken my full attention (see next item).

A couple of my small cute builds that I like:

My Fishing Hut

My House with Ben's Rocket in the back (with a chest canopy thing to the left and a butcher shop to the right)

Silksong is Real!!!

        Silksong news galore. Much excitement. Release Date actually came. Heckin' wild.

Books

        Got to watch Avater/Korra while playing Stardew. My choice of activity during Minecraft was listening to the Wax and Wayne books. It's been great. Really need to make a Brandon Sanderson tier list. I realized just a couple weeks ago that I don't have a full one on my blog somehow.

Breach (new Twenty One Pilots album)

        The Contract and Drum Show, two songs from the album, came out and I love them both a ton. Makes me very very excited for the rest of the album (which I was already very very excited for, of course). It comes out on September 12th. Golly, I'm so excited.

        Full tier list revamp will be coming down the road, of course, but I think I'm really going to try to let the album sink in before making it. I've already done a bit of work on revamping the placements of songs from the other albums, though.

Stacked Smash Bros Tournament

        Went to a stacked tournament in Reno. Got a really solid win at the Prelocal, which I'm happy about. Almost clutched out another solid upset at the big tournament the next day, but alas did not. A few people from Rexburg came down for the tournament, so it was great to see them again. Got to play a couple money matches with Bronze and Rat from Reno -- two fantastic game 5 sets. Won one, lost the other.

        The tournament itself was weird because it was so stacked. I was seeded to go 0-2 and I went 0-2 and then my tournament run was over. So it was kind of anti-climatic. The pre-local was really good though because there was still a lot of good competition, just not as dense.

Dust, Java, Bulbapimp, Me, Ben

Had a seed of an idea for the Auzzy plot spot I couldn't figure out what to do with.

        Haven't tried working with it yet, but it's a start.

Google Data Analytics Certificate/Other Job Stuff

        I had a job interview of an entry level data analyst position. I thought it went well, but I just didn't have enough experience with a couple of the most important things data analysts need, so alas no second interview. But it got me thinking a lot about if I want to pursue more of a Data Analyst route instead of a Software Development route. For now I kinda think yes. 

        So I set a good schedule and went hard at work on the Google Data Analytic Certificate. All I have left is the capstone project (which is technically optional, so I suppose I'm done, but obviously doing the project is a really good idea). It was good. And it's helped me set a more clear route that I'm excited about to help me get a job.

        The route includes doing more things on top of my capstone project to have a good portfolio and also completing the Google Advanced Data Analytics Certificate. I think these things + an updated resume + (my current plan even though I know it'll be hard for me) working with recruiters, will make me very hirable and will be able to get me a job. 

        It's a lot of work that's not directly applying for jobs, so it feels a little weird -- as if I'm not making direct progress on the goal to get a job, especially considering how much time I'll be dedicating to those things. But I think it's a solid outline that will be good for me and will lead to better results than what I was doing before (lots of cold applying and not much building out my resume more).

        Plus, things like working on projects/certificate I feel much more comfortable spending a good chunk of time towards. Cold applying often got my mental state down in the drain after only 20-40 minutes. I stopped to preserve my mental health and just stayed consistent instead. And I feel good about my efforts in that department. But it feels good and really productive to be able to spend a lot more time toward job hunting-related things.

July 2025 Journal Entry

Had an absolute blast with the entire family in town. 

        It was soo good to have everyone together. Shoutouts to Hannah for putting together Hotseat, which was a lot of fun and helped me grow closer to my siblings. Got to play a lot of games with Andrew, of course, which was a lot of fun. Celebrated Heather's birthday (alongside various graduations). Got to talk a lot of Brandon Sanderson, which was awesome. Just a great week that I'm very grateful we all got to have:)

Stardew Valley

        Welp, if last month was the month of Monster Train 2, then this month was the month of Stardew Valley. 100%'d it. My enjoyment of the game decreased as the amount of hours I put into the game increased. Happy to be done. Sure, sure, part of me misses it, but most of me is just happy I don't have to hand out gift after gift (getting max friendship with everyone was definitely my least favorite part of the whole experience).

Avatar: The Last Airbender

        Been randomly having spurts of desire to watch Avatar for a long while now, and I finally acted on them. I knew a lot of stuff about it, but I hadn't actually seen most of it before believe it or not. Very very good show. 

        Started watching Legend of Korra after, which I knew way less about (all I knew going in was some spoilers about Amon and a minor spoiler about Bolin). It was alright.

        More thoughts on both upcoming in a future blog post.

Continuing my Job Hunt

           

        Overall, very happy with my consistent efforts on applying for jobs and working on some code stuff. Just going to keep being consistent at it and eventually opportunities will come.

Auzzy Update

        No update.

Finished the Mistborn Trilogy for the 5th Time

        Actually wild fun fact: The 4th time I finished The Well of Ascension (7/1/22) was 3 years to the day before I finished The Well of Ascension for the 5th time (7/1/25). It gets wilder than that, though, because it's also true about Hero of Ages -- the 4th time I finished Hero of Ages (7/17/22) was 3 years to the day before I finished Hero of Ages for the 5th time (7/17/25). I did not plan that whatsoever.

Taking a Break from Pickleball

        It's difficult to describe why, but overall I was just having less and less fun and instead growing more and more frustrated during play, so I decided to take a break. Have no timeline of when I might start going back. Idk, it's weird because on paper it should be fun, but while playing I found myself inexplicitly growing frustrated at simple things -- simple things that I should just being able to get over, but consistently found myself not being able to. So instead of continuing to try over and over again to just have fun and repeatedly not being able to, I decided not going for a while is better for now.

June 2025 Journal Entry

Various Things Read/Played/Watched

        Poured a lot of hours into Monster Train 2. Got all the steam achievements. After that, I've been filling parts of an in-game log book. Great rouge-like. Lots of fun. Pretty burnt out on it, though. After finishing my plan of one ascension 10 Titan run with each champion, I'm planning on giving the game a long break until new content gets released (which was just announced today).

        Watched Mysterious Benedict Society and it was quite delightful. Made me really happy simply because the books are important to me.

        Finally got around to finishing Fire Emblem 3 Houses. Played the first chunk before my mission. After coming back, I finished a couple chapters at a couple random points, but I finally locked in and finished it (Golden Deer path). Lots of fun. Reminded me why I love Fire Emblem. Love the tactical combat.

Auzzy Stalled Progress

        Made some more progress at the beginning of the month. Then I hit a plot point I'm not sure how to resolve. So the story hasn't made progress since. Working on it more has been a desire itching in the back of my mind, though, so we'll see if I can figure anything out this month.

Hannah's Play/Visit with Elder Niutupuivaha

        Went to a play Hannah was a part of, Peter and the Star Catcher. It was a blast. Great stuff. Hannah absolutely killed it. @TheCosmerenaut was randomly in it as well, which was a wild run-in, haha. He makes videos about Brandon Sanderson's books. Check out his youtube channel here.

        While in Utah, I got to see Elder Niutupuivaha for the first time since the last day of my mission!! He just moved to Salt Lake City recently. Spent 3 hours chatting with him and his wife. It was so so so good to catch up and reminisce. Filled each other in on pieces of stories we had forgotten. Reflected, of course, upon Man on a Mission. I got to learn some stories about MoaM's impact I had never heard, which made my heart fill. The entire conversation made my heart fill.

Love this man

Ryan, Angeles and Melody Coming Home

        After getting to hang out with Ryan, Angeles, and Melody in Texas, they made their way over to Fallon! It's so wonderful to have them here. And Andrew, Heather, Henry, Joy, and Kyrie are coming here shortly as well for a bit!!! So so excited.

Meditation

        Our household has started meditating for 10 minutes a day (as individuals, not one big meditation group thing). It's been great. Reading a chapter out of the Book of Mormon right after has been really good as well.

Mini-notebook

        I have this mini-notebook that I've been jotting things in and it's been great. I'm cooking up some fun ideas, so be on the outlook for those.

May 2025 Journal Entry

You know, it wasn't really my intention when I made the first one of these to make one every month; I just felt like I wanted to posted something and a simple report of what I've been up to seemed appropriate. And then I kind of kept doing it. 

And I see myself doing it for this year, just feels like a good thing to do for this year, idk. Doesn't mean I can't or won't post at other times about other things (as shown by the fact that I already have).

Anyway:

Andor Season 2. 

It's actually so good. I think I still currently put Severance above it in terms of ranking my favorite live-action TV shows, but I think Andor is #2 now (outranking Psych, which is now #3). But perhaps Andor will gain the edge over Severance since it's finished, while Severance is waiting for a 3rd season (having a good ending/being finished in the first place is really important to me). Andor is now my favorite piece of Star Wars content with Episode III now being 2nd.

Got to travel to Rexburg/Boise over the course of a long weekend.

In Rexburg, I got to watch the Andor finale with Tanner, my old roommate who got me watching Star Wars. It was great. Got to play some Lorcana with Tyler, my other old roommate. 

Had a really fun time at the Rexburg local Smash tournament, taking a set off of Gage (22Cents) in grands (and then losing the next set to him thus coming in second); such a fun tournament and a great way to cap off mine and Gage's competitive history.

In Boise, I got to hang out with Andrew and Jamie and it was wonderful and I love them so much:) And Jamie is pregnant and that's so exciting:):) 

Also got to participate in a 107 person Smash tournament (which also meant getting to hang out with Rexburg Smash people more, which was great). Got 17th! Which is probably my best placement at a big event like that. My controller was breaking down at the end, which was frustrating, though.

My Goats Chou and Gage

Pickleball

Been playing a lot of Pickleball, and it's been a blast! Really happy Ben got me attending regularly now. We attend pretty much every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and there's great turn out from the local community every time.

Monster Train 2

Played an absurd amount of Monster Train 2. Satiated my desire for Slay the Spire 2 while it lasted. Took 74.2 hours to get all the achievements. There's still other stuff to explore in the game, so I'll definitely still play it, but I've slowed down on my playtime a lotta lot since getting all the achievements.

Progress on Projects

Now that my Smash career up at college is over, the column on the right side opened up and has been repurposed to something that I think is pretty neat! I also just started up yesterday keeping track of each individual days progress on a google sheet that I think is neat.

Have been making good progress on Auzzy Quite Liked Her Name. Really happy about my consistent efforts. Writing a substantial story like this has probably been on my list of desires for forever, and so it feels really good to continue to make progress on it.

Also continue to march forward on transcribing my mission journals. A thing I've had planned from before my mission ended. It'll take a while yet, but I plan to keep slowly making progress on it.

Hair

Didn't get around to cutting my hair for the longest period of time in my entire life and thus my hair grew to its longest length it's ever been. Shout out to Jamie for cutting it while I was in Boise. Now that I'm graduated, I've grown at my bread and will presumably keep it around because it's way easier not to shave than it is to shave.

Pictures for the fun of it.

Before

Before but crazy for fun

After

My Fall 2024 and Winter 2025 Smash Ultimate Seasons Recap

Reminder even if you're family, you're under no obligation to read this whole thing, haha. I just appreciate you being here:) There's a whole lot of stuff in here that I'm pretty sure I only care about, so feel free to just glance at the bolded parts; that helps me feel more connected to you and hopefully you to me.

Recapping two seasons into one post. My last two seasons. 

It's been quite the ride; I have loved my time in the Smash community in Rexburg.

Not sure where to really start, so I'm just going to write about whatever I think of first.

My favorite part of these past two seasons has been my rivalry with Gage (Gamertag: 22Cents). It's been kind of insane and just so much fun. So here's the whole story, I guess:

(okay, rivalry is a strong word considering the fact that there's no animosity amongst us whatsoever and we love and support each other instead, but for purposes of competition, Gage has been my greatest rival)

Gage came into the scene two semesters ago. Initially, he didn't do so great, with his first tournament even going 0-2. If I remember correctly, I played friendlies with him that first tournament, and although I beat him pretty solidly, I could tell that he had a lot of potential. I remember thinking something to the effect of, "I hope this guy doesn't stop coming to tournaments just because he went 0-2 at his first one." Blessedly, he didn't.

For the next 7 tournaments, he had a string of solid performances with some 7ths and 5ths, but nothing crazy.

The Arcadian tournament was coming up, an invitational tournament where you are only allowed to participate if you haven't been on PR in Rexburg before. In our scene, we have players who are on PR coach the non-PR players who are in the tournament.

As referenced, I thought Gage had a lot of potential as a player, and he just seemed like a great guy, so I asked him at a tournament if I could be his coach. He said he thought that would be awesome and a lot of fun. We fought that same night in bracket, and I asked him before the set if he was ready to beat his coach, haha. He did indeed beat me that night. In fact, he beat me the next several times we fought, even though I was supposed to be his coach, haha. 

He won that tournament and the next 3, beating me several more times in the process. During this time, he starting coming over for friendlies frequently so we could help prep him for the Arcadian. 

Although I didn't do anything crazy during our coaching/training sessions and I'm confident he would have won the Arcadian without my help, he attributes a chunk of his uprising as a top player to me, which is very sweet of him.

After he won 4 tournaments in a row beating me 6 times in a row, I struck back and won the next 7. We've been back and forth ever since then, and it's been wonderful:) 

And because of our overall dominance in the scene and because of our very consistent attendance to tournaments, we fought a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT; in fact, by the end of the two semesters, we fought more than any other two players have ever fought in the Rexburg scene all-time. In just two semesters. To put this in perspective, Ben and I have both competed in this scene at the same time for roughly 5 semesters. And we've fought 30 times in total. Gage and I in just two semesters fought 47 times. Actually insane.

Our first semester our set count was 11-8. Our second semester it was 10-18. I visited for another tournament just a week ago and we fought twice, splitting 1-1. Our lifetime H2H is 22-27. I won roughly 45% of the time, he won roughly 55% of the time. I beat him out on PR his first semester there, he beat me out his second semester there.

We fought so much that it became a meme in our community. Ethan (Gamertag: Java) during a twitch stream commented something close to, "Hey, look! It's 22Cents and Theo fighting on stream. Someone, quick, take a screenshot, I'm sure we'll never see this again!" This quickly became a copy-pasta and was said practically every time Gage and I fought.

Gage and I played Randubs together twice and named ourselves "We'll never see this again".

One day, unfortunately, "We'll never see this again" became true, and our last sets were played :*(

Another one of my favorite parts of the past two semesters is training up and pulling out my Lucas in bracket.

Before this past semester, literally every game in every set I have every played in a serious bracket, I have played Pokémon Trainer. The only times I have not done so were in side brackets or other brackets that didn't count for the rankings.

This last semester, I decided to change that. In a random friendly session with Drake and Gage, I messed around with Lucas, and it did better than it reasonably should have and, more importantly, I was just having a lot of fun playing them. After that, I started training it up.

Brought it out in a few tournaments for fun and did quite well with them:) (Tournament results involving Lucas are noted in the results list below) Helping beat the carried allegations (which ofc I didn't because it's a meme at this point, so I did indeed get voted Most Carried again, woot woot, haha. They even made a carried2 emote (the carried emote being PT, the carried2 emote being Lucas)).

Arcadian and Summit

Already talked about Arcadian in the story with Gage. It was a lot of fun. Was a conduit for Gage and I playing friendlies a lot and becoming good friends, which was awesome. Got a 'Disapproval' Emote from it. Got to celebrate with Gage in his victory. Good stuff.

Summit would normally be a big thing I would write about, but this one was just a rough tournament for me, haha. Because the way everything worked out, the top 2 seeds, NinJamez and Gage fought round 1 and then the loser dropped down to fight me (the 3rd seed). I was not destined to win against Gage that day, and I unceremoniously got out at 9th. But it's all good, it was a well-run tournament and outside of my personal bracket, was a really fun time.

Came so so close to beating NinJamez on a couple-few occasions, but still haven't. Lost to Drake for the first time ever. Still undefeated against Java though 😁

Last two PR Graphics. Last time working on the PR. Last semesters at college in general. Life be moving forward.

My rankings throughout my semesters have been:

Unranked (13ish), 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, DNP, 4th, DNP, 2nd, 3rd.

Fall 2024 Tournament Results

• 2nd (out of 22), 1st Seed, User Buffer III
• 2nd (out of 31), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #55
• 2nd (out of 22), 2nd Seed, Free Friday #49
• 1st (out of 27), 1st Seed, BYU-I Bash #56
• 1st (out of 27), 3rd Seed, BYU-I #57
• 1st (out of 24), 1st Seed, Pinnacle Peak #58
• 3rd (out of 24), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #58
• 4th (out of 33), 1st Seed, Free Friday #53
• 2nd (out of 15), 1st Seed, BYU-I Bash #59
• 2nd (out of 18), 1st Seed, Spooky Smash
• 4th (out of 27), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #60
• 1st (out of 17), 3rd Seed, BYU-I Bash #61
• 1st (out of 16), 1st Seed, Free Friday #56
• 1st (out of 21), 1st Seed, Free Friday #57
• 1st (out of 19), 1st Seed, Retro Wager So Thankful
• 5th (out of 20), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #62
• 1st (out of 18), 1st Seed, BYU-I Bash #63
• 3rd (out of 24), 1st Seed, Free Friday #60

Winter 2025 Tournament Results

• 4th (out of 30), 3rd Seed, FF #61
• 3rd (out of 24), 2nd Seed, FF #62
• 1st (out of 27), 1st Seed, FF #63
• 3rd (out of 32), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #66
• 2nd (out of 22), 1st Seed, FF #64
• 1st (out of 22), 1st Seed, FF #65
• 2nd (out of 33), 2nd Seed, BYU-I #68
• 1st (out of 11), 1st Seed, FF #66
• 1st (out of 29), 1st Seed, President's Day Pop-up
• 3rd (out of 31), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #69
• 3rd (out of 20), 2nd Seed, FF #67
• 17th (out of 68), 24th Seed, LAN King Weekly 2/25
• 2nd (out of 24), 1st Seed, FF #68
• 2nd (out of 23), 1st Seed, BYU-I Bash #71 (97% Lucas)
• 1st (out of 30), 1st Seed, FF #69 (Mostly Lucas)
• 9th (out of 35), 1st Seed, FF #70
• 5th (out of 29), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #73
• 4th (out of 37), 2nd Seed, FF #71
• 2nd (out of 20), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #73 (Half Lucas)
• 9th (out of 16), 3rd Seed, Summit 3
• 4th (out of 22), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #74 (All Lucas)
• 3rd (out of 24), 3rd Seed, FF #72

My Presumably Last Rexburg Tournament for a least a while that took place last week

• 2nd (out of 16), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #78