What’s up everyone! We’re back to cover the latest. I hope you all enjoyed the last week. I did! I’ve been having fun lately.
First things first, let’s dive into the past seven days on Twitch.
8/23 - 8/29 on Twitch
I’m officially adhering to a schedule on Twitch nowadays if you haven’t heard. I’m streaming Tuesdays and Thursdays from approximately 1230pm - 4pm (EST) and either Saturdays or Sundays from 1030am - 2pm (EST). The Saturday or Sunday thing is just to let me have more flexibility with scheduling social events on the weekend. You get it.
Last week I streamed that schedule:
Tuesday August 25 - 3h46m. I streamed a hybrid of speedruns and practice. It was probably half and half. I lower my sum of best segments by like 8 seconds. No PB.
Thursday August 27 - 4h15m. I stream runs. I lower my sum of best by another 8 seconds but still have no new personal best time.
Sunday August 30 - 2h56m. I end the stream with the new PB of 38:37. Hype.
So the flow of the week was the first two streams were littered with indicators that a new PB was coming soon. The “Sum of Best Segments” that I mention above is what your time would be if you matched your gold split on every split (your gold split being the best time you’ve ever gotten on that split in a run). By the end of the second stream, I had lowered that by 16 seconds, but not actually gotten a new PB. It’s like high barometric pressure readings before the storm. We all knew it was coming, we just had to wait and see when I would string a full run together.
At the end of the Sunday stream I finally broke through with a 38:37. It has already been verified. Here’s the YouTube video. You can also find it on Twitch.
This was a large improvement. My previous PB was a 39:10 so we’re talking 33 seconds here. For scale, I am now 104 seconds off of the world record. That was a BIG leap. Here’s what my Mega Man 4 PB history looks like:
January 30, 2026 - 41:36. Approximately #100 on the leaderboards
February 5, 2026 - 40:15. Approximately #76 on the leaderboards
February 18, 2026 - 39:30. Approximately #53 on the leaderboards
March 7, 2026 - 39:10. #45 on the leaderboards
August 30, 2026 - 38:37. #34 on the leaderboards
I also feel 98% confident that this is not my last Mega Man 4 PB. There’s more time out there. I was very nervous by the end of this run, and there was plenty of spaghetti in the final two stages,* when the pressure was at its max. I need to put more reps in so that I take more runs deep into the game, gradually lowering my overall nerves with more exposure.
*The gamer slang “spaghetti” or “mom’s spaghetti” originates in the Fighting Game Community (FGC), and refers to losing composure and playing sloppily under high pressure. It originates from the Eminem lyric, “knees weak, arms are heavy, there's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti," in the song Lose Yourself. While it is most commonly heard in the FGC, I petition that it become more of a common phrase in speedrunning, because nerve management is hella important.
For this coming week, the Tuesday stream feels like it will mostly be runs. It will be good to get a feel for what it’s like to run against the new splits.
There are a few things I want to review before the next batch of runs. I suppose if I don’t get to these before the stream, I may just open the stream with a brief practice session that goes over these things:
Ring Man’s pixel position
Skull Man fight
The checkpoint screen on Dive Man’s stage
Refight reps (~20-25 minutes)
I’m not sure what the goal is just yet in terms of my final PB that causes me to happily walk away from Mega Man 4. We’re definitely getting there. There’s still plenty of meat on that bone though. You put that in a pot, add some broth, some potatoes….baby you’ve got a stew going!
Other Stuff
Longtime readers of this blog can probably recall a few posts in the past detailing our annual tie dye day. Well, this past weekend was the 2026 edition, and it was the best one yet!
We had 10 total people hanging out on the deck for tie dye. Everything hasn’t rinsed and dried yet, but I can at least share this stunning piece that one of my friends from GYM made.
Speaking of GYM, there was also a GYM party this past weekend, which in GYM parlance means everyone hung out after the Saturday morning class and the owner provided coffee and donuts and even raffled off some prizes. That was fun too.
A Diatribe on Friendship Perk & Brew
In other news this week, the local business that is closest in proximity to my apartment has just closed - Friendship Perk & Brew. People who know me know that I am adamant about supporting smaller and local businesses whenever I can. I’m always pushing myself to give less and less money to the Fortune 500.
Friendship Perk & Brew was seriously like 20 steps from my apartment. When you combine these facts, you’d probably guess that I was a regular at the ol’ P&B. Surely everyone knew my name and I was just in love with their homemade breakfast sandwiches.
Sadly…no. Not the case at all. Friendship Perk & Brew fucking sucked. I socialize with a lot of people in the neighborhood, and I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have outright negative things to say about it. One of my favorite people in the neighborhood is someone I will refer to as Oscar in this story - not his actual name. Oscar is 70 and is one of the friendliest and nicest guys I know. He has a dog and also does a lot of yard work and other exercise outside so he’s outside all the time and he’s always striking up conversations with everyone. His reputation is the opposite of Perk & Brew; I’ve never heard anyone say a bad thing about him. I stop and chat with him every time we cross paths.
Oscar is also an upbeat and positive guy. He’s trying to see the bright side of things. He’s not someone who I imagine is handing out too many negative reviews. One day during lent last year, Oscar crossed the street specifically to explain in detail to me that the Perk & Brew fish fry he ordered earlier that day was one of the worst sandwiches he’s ever eaten, and that he had to throw most of it away. I can still picture the look on Oscar’s face while he was telling me all this. It was clear that he was absolutely stunned by how bad this sandwich was…shaken, even.
Another annoying thing about Perk & Brew: they had a whole ice cream counter setup and the display case with all the slots where the ice cream would go and all that but they never had ice cream. And, I’ve lived in this apartment since 2021. This is not some temporary ice cream shortage. This is like having an exercise bike sitting in your apartment for six years even though you’ve never used it.
Another thing Perk & Brew was hilariously bad at was having and advertising specials. They had this chalk board out in front of the place, and remember, I live so close to here that I am walking by this place constantly. At one point they literally advertised a special that was “A cheeseburger and fries with a pickle for $xx.xx.” That was the one and only thing written on the chalkboard. Like guys…that’s not a fucking special. That’s one of the most commonly eaten meals in America. It was also 100% just a frozen patty. Similar to the fish fry sandwich incident, a consistent theme of Perk & Brew as reported by absolutely everyone in this neighborhood is that the level of cooking was just plain sad.
Like, you guys can’t make a hamburger? You have to buy frozen patties? There’s an Aldi selling grass fed organic beef for $5.50 a pound steps away from where Perk & Brew is. I make hamburgers like 50 times a year and I’m just a random human of no culinary renown who needs to make food for my family. Those burgers are all always amazing. You season beef and cook it to temp. That’s it.
A similar example was their chocolate chip cookies. Perk & Brew used to sell a bunch of sad AF looking pastries and other baked goods that were sad AF looking because they didn’t make any of them. Bakeries around Pittsburgh would send them stuff and they would sell it and nothing was ever fresh.
UNTIL, one day I’m looking at the counter, and I see something I’ve never seen before. It’s a large plate of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in plastic with no brand or label or anything on it. I immediately inquire. It turns out that Perk & Brew themselves have actually MADE these cookies. There’s an immediate morbid curiosity there. I have to try it.
I want to be clear here, the cookies were not merely burnt. I would estimate that these cookies probably needed to be baked for 10 minutes, and were actually baked for at least 20 minutes. They were a good 100% off. We’re talking cookies that were three shades of cookie-brown darker than they should have been, not one shade. These cookies would be the result if you forgot to set the timer and only remembered to take the cookies out when you smelled burning.
How can the Perk & Brew situation get any worse you’re wondering? Well, I see your completely incompetent cookery and I raise you an America 250th Anniversary banner out in front of the store. Yes, the owner and most of the staff are also idiot MAGA boomers. The first time I met the owner of the store, he looked me up and down and then goes, “Are you Italian?”. I think Italians are the darkest skinned people that he’s aware exist.
He was also happy to lecture people about the Navy and the fact that no young people want to work anymore. Reddit is littered with misogyny complaints about the owner.
So out of all of these offenses, which one is the worst? I agree with you - it’s the chocolate chip cookie one.
That’s all for me - have a great week everyone <3