Weeknotes 23:27

August 31, 2023

Week of August 20–26

  • I enjoyed daydreaming about potentially relaunching GodSquad. A colleague from my days at Campus Crusade for Christ, now Cru, had contacted me through LinkedIn because he had heard that I have an archived version of the site. We started to have a phone conversation the previous week but didn’t get far due to poor reception on his end. I am not sure if anything will come of it but it was fun to dream. He had mentioned in his LinkedIn message that they had been thinking of making an updated version of the site.
  • I put together a post sharing my grief over what I have lost due to the death of Twitter. I shared some fun memories and lamented about the loss of community. I shared a link to my post on LinkedIn and received quite a bit of traffic. I had almost given up the idea to write a post but was inspired by a recent reflection by Ethan Marcotte.
  • I executed a plan to animate the project I have been working on. The site promotes a financial institution’s small business training program. I added some subtle reveal animations for both text and images as the user scrolls down the page. I am very happy with how it turned out.
  • I worked on some editor styles for the backend of this project which uses WordPress blocks.
  • I built out a new case study for the LGND site that we will be posting soon.
GodSquad was a site that I worked on from August 2000 to February 2010. The screenshot is from a redesign I did in 2003. I host an archived version of the site at godsquad.jeffbridgforth.com

Trip to the ER

On Thursday night, I had to make a trip to the ER. I had some trouble after swallowing a piece of steak. I should have cut it smaller and I swallowed it before I should have because someone at the table had asked me something or asked me to do something for them.

I knew right away that it was not good as it hurt when I swallowed it. I have also had an issue with food feeling like it gets caught in my esophagus that has become more frequent in the last year. My mother had to have her esophagus stretched periodically because of the same condition. I have lived with acid reflux for years and knew that I would probably need to have this stretching procedure at some point in my life.

Usually, when I have trouble swallowing because it feels like food is trapped, it will fix itself within a couple of minutes. But on Thursday, it was not clearing up. After about an hour of discomfort, I decided to visit the emergency room. I was able to get seen very quickly. They gave me a muscle relaxant which seemed to do the trick. I was able to avoid having a procedure where they would have put a scope down my throat to try to unblock my esophagus. We were only at the ER for a couple of hours and I felt very relieved once the “blocking” sensation subsided.

I have tried to be more conscious about chewing up my food better. I set up an appointment with a gastroenterologist, which I saw a couple of days ago. I am scheduled to have an endoscopy and colonoscopy in early October.

Rays’ 25th Anniversary Book

I had seen recently that the Rays had produced a book celebrating their first twenty-five years and that it was being sold exclusively at the stadium store. I decided to do an online search and found a site to buy it online but they were sold out. I filled out a form to be notified if they got it back in stock. I was a little bit bummed thinking I may have missed out. I looked at eBay and Mercari to see if anyone was selling a copy on those sites but there were no listings.

The next day, I got an email that the book was back in stock and I purchased it. The book arrived on Saturday and I have enjoyed reading through it and reliving memories this week. We started following the Rays during the 2009 season. We made the trip over to Tampa from Orlando four times that summer. We continued to go to games through 2012. I have continued to follow and root for the team after we relocated to Chattanooga 10 years ago. Rays up!

Articles I read

What I watched

Books I am reading

What I played

One of three home runs that Brandon Lowe hit in an 8-6 victory over the Yankees in 11 innings. I scored 6 runs in the last 3 innings.

MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I went 5-3 this week. Three of the games were decided by 1 run and the rest of them were two-run differences. Three of the games went into extra innings and I won two. The most runs I scored was 8 in a game that went 11 innings and I scored 6 runs in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh innings. Brandon Lowe hit three homers in that game.

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