Picked up a bunch of DC trades and graphics novels off a Diamond sale last month: items I’d wanted to read but never got around to picking up.  One of those is Batman: Nine Lives by Dean Motter and Michael Lark.  Here’s the publisher’s snippet:
In this edition, the characters of Batman (Bruce Wayne), Robin (Richard Grayson), and Catwoman (Selina Kyle) are imaginatively reinvented so that their lives and relationships are intertwined with both familiar and foreign facets. Investigating reports of a giant alligator living in the Gotham reservoir, the …

You may have stumbled upon the collection of one trick utilities from Sysinternals (now owned by Microsoft) or NirSoft.  All kinds of items written to perform specific tasks the authors saw as a need: password recovery, page file defragmentation, etc.  To be honest there are so many you don’t even know they’re available until you have the need.
That’s where Windows System Control Center by KLS Soft comes in: they’ve created a free front end that manages every utility from these two software groups under one simple application.

The “must have” factor …

Last weekend grade A turkeys were $1 a pound so I bought three fourteen pound birds.  I know a deal when I see it and normally only purchase meat when it’s on sale and then I try to get a good amount.  We have an upright freezer in the garage that’s pretty much full at all times.
I broke down the turkeys into breasts, wings, thighs and legs.  Breasts were seasoned and cooked on the barbeque, then the meat was taken off the bone: we’ll use that for sandwiches.  Wings were …

I’m a big fan of free and luckily there is no shortage of free real time anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities available to Windows users.  The big news of the week was Microsoft’s beta release of Microsoft Security Essentials.  As part of the Connect beta program 75000 slots were made available for beta testers which filled very quickly: I was lucky enough to get in.
Microsoft Security Essentials is a free Windows security package that’s a derivative of it’s enterprise Forefront Security package, pared down as a free simplified offering.  That’s not …

I picked up Stalin’s Ghost on the bargain table at a local bookstore.  Martin Cruz Smith rang a bell but I couldn’t place it; the description sounded interesting.  Here’s the official blurb:

Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor’s office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; …