This Kindle highlight came up in my Readwise review today. It is a great reminder of what the struggle is.

I enjoyed watching Kansas play Indiana this afternoon. KU was down by 8 at the half and as much as 13 points at one point in the game. They came back in the second half and won 75-71. They looked a whole lot better in the second half. Better shot selection and continued to play great defense despite having key players with foul trouble.

This passage from Living Life Backwards came up in my Readwise highlights at the end of last week. I was convicted by the thought of how I approach the Bible each day when I read it.

Do I approach it expecting to be surprised or to learn something I didn’t already know? Sadly, I have to say the answer to the question is no.

I don’t want familiarity to keep me from coming with an expectant attitude. The Bible is living and active. I want to approach it with an attitude of expectation. I prayed over the weekend that God would help me to develop this attitude and outlook in the coming year.

And just on Sunday, I learned something new about the episode where God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. It was a brutal age and human sacrifices to “gods” were common. God tested Abraham to teach him that God does not require this of us. He is different. And the moral of the story is that God will provide.

I got to visit my ‘happy place’ for lunch today. I fell in love with Culver’s Restaurant on our first visit to Murray, Kentucky in March 2022. We don’t have one in Chattanooga so the only times I can get it is when I visit Murray, where my son goes to college, or in Nashville when I visit my daughter who lives there.

My favorite things are the Mushroom & Swiss butter burger, cheese curds, and the turtle sundae.

This is one of my favorite baseball moments. When the Royals won the 1985 World Series. I love this video because it uses Denny Matthew’s call on the radio, which is how I experienced the championship moment. I listened to the game on a headphone radio next door at Arrowhead Stadium.

My soccer coach, who was also a Scout leader, needed some help cleaning up Arrowhead after a Chiefs-Broncos game earlier in the day. His scout troop did not have enough manpower so several of us from the team helped out.

We were told that if we finished cleaning before the end of the Royal’s game they would allow us to go over and stand in the concourse to watch the conclusion. But that did not happen as we were near finishing the cleanup when the final out was recorded next door.

Denny Matthews had started the countdown with every out from the seventh or eighth inning on. After a very dramatic comeback win the night before, it was nice to have a game that the Royals were in control of very early on.

I remember hearing the sound of the fireworks going off after they won the game and catching a glimpse of them through one of the section entrances (we were working the side nearest to Kauffman Stadium.

We had a lot of fun celebrating with other fans as we made our way through the parking lot to go home after a long day. I would have rather been next door watching that game but I am glad we were right there so close when they claimed their first championship.

That moment happened 38 years ago today.

It looks like I will be getting a Christmas gift from Firefox. :has selector support is now available in Firefox Nightly (121) which is two versions ahead of the regular release. Firefox 119 just dropped yesterday so we can expect :has support near the end of December which will complete evergreen browser support. I have already used :has as a progressive enhancement. I am excited to start using this new tool with more solutions beyond progressive enhancement.

Cameron Moll posted on LinkedIn that Authentic Jobs was celebrating its 18th birthday today. Cameron started Authentic Jobs in 2005 and then later sold it in 2016. At one point, it was the go-to place to find jobs for Web creatives.

I applied for the front-end developer job for Authentic Jobs at the beginning of 2012. I had a delightful interview with Cameron, whom I had met in person and had lunch with at a conference in 2007. I did not get the job but was told I was in the final cut. I lacked some of the skills that he was looking for.

I used this as motivation to acquire those skills during 2012 which I believe prepared me to pursue a role later in the year that moved me to Chattanooga. I applied for that job through Authentic Jobs. I was introduced to LGND in 2017 by responding to a posting on Authentic Jobs. I am grateful for the impact that this site has had on my career. In total, it connected me to 3 opportunities between 2012 and the present.

I played a crazy game of MLB The Show 23 last night. I am about a month and a half into a Franchise season with the Rays. My offense has not been great. I am only scoring about 2-3 runs per game. My pitching has been great so it has kept me in contention.

Last night, I took a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the seventh against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Both my runs were courtesy of Brandon Lowe solo homers. Lowe has struggled with a sub .200 average. But he was hitting them last night. I blew the lead with the Yankees scoring a run in both the 7th and 8th inning to tie.

In the ninth, I got an unexpected homer from Harold Ramirez, who leads my team in hits and RBIs but had only a couple of homers. So I took the one run lead to the ninth and my closer, Peter Fairbanks blew his 3 straight saves (after going 9-9 before that in saves).

But then I homered in the top of the eleventh with the lead off batter of Francisco Mejia (who has come through with some key hits and homers this year) and took a two run lead (extra innings start with a man on second) only to blow it again in the bottom of the 10th. An error by Lowe led to one of those runs.

In the eleventh, Randy Arozarena homered to lead off of the inning and then Brandon Lowe came through with his third home run of the night to give me a bit more breathing space. The Yankees managed to put one across but I was able to shut them down and claim the 8-6 victory.

An explosion of offense in the last three innings and six homers allowed me to split the series with the Yankees and gave me some hope that my offense might start to come alive.

Brandon Lowe is one of my favorite Rays both in-real-life and in this game. I enjoyed playing with him and the team in MLB The Show 20 and won the World Series.

I replaced my LGND desk pad (2019) with a new one yesterday. I decided to celebrate my college spirit and opted for a Kansas Jayhawk-themed one. It brightens up my desk space with crimson and blue.

Kevin Powell released a new course today called Beyond CSS.

“A course to help you learn how to wrangle your stylesheets, keeping them organized and scalable no matter the size of the project or how big your team is.

“..I want to teach you how you can leverage modern CSS, and some of those other tools to create well-organized, and easy-to-scale projects that actually leave you and your team writing less CSS.”

I am interested to learn from Kevin and think about how I could employ new strategies and tools to improve my workflow.

Kevin is a great teacher and I have enjoyed his videos over the past few years. I also bought another of his courses, CSS Demystified. I worked through this first module of that course and really liked it. But I put it down and need to get back to it in the near future.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Pine Tar Game. The Pine Tar Game was played between bitter rivals, the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees. George Brett hit a 2-run home off Goose Gossage in the ninth inning to give the Royals a one-run lead.

Billy Martin argued that Brett had pine tar too far up the bat. The rule he referenced had nothing to do with performance but had been added because teams didn’t want to replace balls dirtied by the substance. Brett was called out but an appeal to the American League office overruled the umpire’s decision and the game’s final 4 outs were played on August 18.

I remember watching the end of that game at my grandfather’s house. We used to visit him on Sunday afternoons. I remember being so excited to see Brett homer again off of Gossage at Yankees’ Stadium. He had homered in Game 3 of the 1980 ALCS that propelled the Royals into their first World Series. Then I was so upset that the umpire called him out and the Royals lost.

I read a book this year, The Pine Tar Game by Filip Bondy. It was written by a New York sports writer. It had some great background information about the rivalry and the rule that was at the center of it all. It was one of the craziest incidents in baseball. And it was personal to me because I was a Royals fan and watched the game.

Sports Illustrated interviewed Brett for the 40th anniversary. I have not yet read the interview but look forward to it later today.