Jose Valverde Blows Up Twitter

Even when he was awesome Jose Valverde gave me gas when he closed out a game. He takes forever and seems to always put a runner or two on base and then pitch out of the jam. Right now he is not effective and today he blew a save and Twitter blew up. Here are a few.

Most pathetic end to a baseball game I've seen in a long time. Valverde makes me want to rip my eyes out #BoycottPotatoeHead

— Jacob Linklater (@J_LINKscribes) June 12, 2013

I put a Jose Valverde poster on my door and now it won't close!

— Cole Lopez (@ColeLopez77) June 12, 2013

Jose Valverde couldn't save a pdf file to his desktop

— Fake SportsCenter (@FakeSportsCentr) June 12, 2013

It's over Papa...Tigers need a closer, sorry but Valverde is done...can't recover from this one

— Jim Brandstatter (@brandymancan) June 12, 2013

The fact that Jose Valverde continues to close games for the Tigers should be a human rights violation.

— Joe Stapleton (@joe_stapes) June 12, 2013

I agree! RT @tigstown: Good result, bad result, doesn't matter. Tigers can't win a World Series with Jose Valverde as closer. End of story

— Sam Webb (@SamWebb77) June 12, 2013

Valverde blows another one. #tigers

— lj (@ljpring) June 12, 2013

Can't take it anymore. Valverde is atrocious. Get him out of this organization.

— Jacob Babbitt (@Jacob_Babbitt) June 12, 2013

VALVERDE IS THE WORST PITCHER IN MLB HISTORY!!!! HE JUST BLEW IT AGAIN!!!!!

— Luke Jones (@Luke_Jones33) June 12, 2013

Dear Jose Valverde Your multi-colored beard is stupidThe line up job on your hair is stupid You're stupidAnd I hate you

— Ryan McWilliams (@McWeezy27) June 12, 2013

This is a little harsh, sir. It's only a game.

If valverde took a line drive to the face and died on impact, I'm not going to lie I would smile.

— Ben Kleiman (@BK_BenKleiman) June 12, 2013

Platinotype Clouds

I still enjoy the app called Vignette that I have on my phone. I need to use it more.

More Michigan Slides

I am now more than halfway through my last batch of old slides that I bought on eBay. They were all taken, probably, somewhere in Michigan. Not probably on some. Some are definitely from Michigan because I can see the Mackinac Bridge and the Mackinac Bridge can only be found in one place, Michigan.

Here are a few choice shots in no particular order. The dates I have come from a stamp on each slide. I assume the stamp means the date the film was processed and not the date the picture was taken.

Exuberance from September 1959.


A June 1959 picnic with old cans of Budweiser and Lays chips.


A vacationer descending the stairway at the Chippewa Hotel in July 1964.


The same lady in her bathing suit on Mackinac Island. July 64.


July 1964, Mackinac Island street scene


Grilling in August 1959


August 1959 Firing Range

What Cool Looked Like in the 80s

Some time in the early 80s my sister and I received proper outfits for cross country skiing. I remember when I first saw the outfit I was skeptical. Shorts? who wears shorts outside in the winter? Turns out that cross country skiers do. I found out quickly that loose fitting heavy corduroy shorts and a sweater were perfect for outdoor winter exertion. Freedom of movement, you know. Once I had this outfit I skied a lot on my own in the woods you see behind me in this picture. After a couple hundreds of yards the woods opened up onto a series field covered hills that were perfect for skiing.

This picture I scanned from Kodak Disc film negatives and the resolution on this picture is terrible. The negative is only 8mm by 11mm wide. I see where they were going with this. I'm surprised that since Kodak was so into miniaturization with their film in the early 80s that they would be so resistant to digital photography when it came along.

Moon Shots

Just in case you were wondering the longest home run hit by a Detroit Tiger this year during a home game is Prince Fielder. The ball traveled 460 feet.



But, what really surprised me while I was browsing the website Hit Tracker is that the longest home run hit by a Tiger this year was this 463 foot shot hit by 37 year old Torii Hunter. Lord knows why the MLB website will allow me to embed one video and not the other. Who knows why MLB does anything sometimes (see their blackout rules).

Queen vs. Satan

I posted this on Facebook earlier today. I cannot possibly say how much I love this mashup. Pure genius by the DJ Lobsterdust.

A Horrible Choice

Troy asks this question. A guy I knew and hung with in the early 90s was in a motorcycle accident and his leg was badly injured. He went through surgeries and agonizing physical therapy and he eventually lost his leg anyway. I think in a similar situation I would opt for the amputation and get on with my life as soon as possible.

Yahoo Developer Virus

For a couple of weeks at home I was having trouble with a virus that is described as the Yahoo Developer YQL Console virus. What happens was that every time I tried to do a Google search I got kicked over to the site that read Yahoo Developer. It took over my laptop and slowed everything down. I used the steps set out by this Metafilter user and that helped up to a certain point. The virus would go away but return. What I learned through more searching was that I needed to do all those steps and also reinstall the firmware on my router. I think the virus was living on my router. After I ran all the antivirus software and resinstalled the firmware on the router the virus went away and has not returned for a few months. I didn't see much on the message boards that addressed that so here is my little contribution to world peace.

Hollywood Marines

This is me and Cale in either 1989 or 1990. I think we are at an outdoor festival in Oceanside, CA. We were obviously spending a lot of time at the beach at this time.

Annual Trip to Darlington

Here it is Mothers Day weekend and Jeff and I met in Darlington so we could go to the NASCAR Bojangles Southern 500.

I didn't take that many pictures of the race itself this year. A night race from high in the grandstands makes it hard to really get good shots of the cars. Besides, walking around and taking pictures of the fans is more fun.

We did get a funny story out of the trip. After the race we were back at our campsite and after a few minutes of sitting around and talking I noticed there was a person in our tent sitting on my air mattress. It was one of the campers from the site next to ours. I said to the guy, "Hey man, you're in the wrong tent."

He said, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I said, "pretty sure."

He was really, really, really drunk and more than a little confused but, at least, he was't belligerent.

Jeff said, "Here buddy, let us help you up."

He offered us his hands and we walked him over to the campsite next to ours and sat him in a chair there. We headed back over to our campsite and had a good laugh. About a minute later he lurched to his feet and walked back into our tent and sat down on my air mattress. We laughed some more and pulled the tent flap back and I said, "Hey man, you're in the wrong tent."

He was shocked. "I am?" he asked. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I said, "we're sure."

We walked him back over to his campsite. This time I noticed that there was someone in his tent. I pulled that flap back and said, "Hey, does this guy belong to you?"

His friend laughed and said, "Yeah." We pushed drunky into the tent and went back to our campsite and that was the end of that.

The next morning I saw our friend sitting in a chair at his campsite and I walked over and said, "Hey, we had to kick you out of our tent last night."

He looked confused and I could see him thinking real hard and it hit him, "Oh, yeah. Sorry about that."

I said, "No big deal, you were't being a dick or anything, it was funny."

Not as good as the story about the drunk women swearing at her husband during my first trip to Darlington but it's still a good Darlington story.

A few photos

A rare rat tail


One of those giant Budweiser horses


Ryan Newman hanging around by the giant horses


The center square of Darlington bingo, the rebel flag bikini top


Joey Logano signing autographs at his souvenir trailer


A blind man and three young ladies


South Carolina state trooper making sure drunk pedestrians don't get run over by drunk drivers


Three officers watching to see which rich person climbs out of a recently landed helicopter


Many people, including us, did enthusiastically "proceed to party."


This is Jeff


The same panorama I took last and the year before from our seats. For this reason alone I wouldn't mind new seats but the view right here at the entrance to pit road is too good to pass up.


I like this picture I took down on the concourse during the race. I posted it on Instagram


This is a short video of the cars going into turn three shortly after a restart so the cars are still bunched up.


Darlington, always fun. Always a two-day hangover.