Originally published at Comic Book Daily under my Bound Together column.
Fan Expo 2010 is done for me. None of my Sunday goals were reached and the show remained packed; no last day slow down. It’s solid for the retailers but as a buyer I like bargain hunting at the end with dealers who don’t want to haul merchandise home.
I wasn’t able to track Tim Bradstreet down so no sketch from him. Ethan Van Sciver still had a long list of sketches …

Originally published at Comic Book Daily under my Bound Together column.
Saturday at Fan Expo was crazier than usual: the crowds were so intense all afternoon there was a long line waiting to get in. If only the deals were that crazy…
I dedicated the day to getting various hardcovers signed. Two options: snag a signature at the creator’s booth or at one of their signings. Some like Olivier Coipel and the Kubert brothers were only signing for one hour at a signing area; …

Originally published at Comic Book Daily under my Bound Together column.
Fan Expo 2010 started today at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.  The early bird package had a 2:00 PM entrance and there were hundreds lined up to get in: I’ve never seen a crowd that large buying a premium VIP three day show pass.  Media and vendor passes are a beautiful thing.  Art prices are continuing their dramatic increase while vintage hardcovers are scarce.

My focus was artist alley and acquiring sketches from my favourite artists.  Paolo Rivera was set up …

Dell had a fourty-eight hour deal on a TomTom XXL 540 M GPS with case for $150 CDN so I jumped all over it.  Five inch screen, spoken street names, advanced lane guidance, U.S. Canada and Mexico maps plus lifetime map updates.  Everything I was looking for in a GPS for the car.

I unpacked it and turned it on: very straightforward questions about date, time, home location, voice to use.  Nice and easy: screen was large and easy to read and navigate.  On my previous TomTom One 3.5″ GPS my …

Originally published at Comic Book Daily under my Bound Together column.
In 1989 Marvel decided to give some Joe Simon and Jack Kirby works the deluxe treatment in the form of hardcover reprints.  The Fighting American, Captain America and Boys Ranch were reprinted as hardcover volumes outside of the Marvel Masterworks program that was in full swing.  At the time Masterworks were focusing on silver age Marvel works so these 1940s and 1950s works didn’t fit.

Captain America The Classic Years was published in 1990: two 7.25×10.25″ hardcover volumes in a …

Windows 7 is amazing but clicking the Downloads folder and then waiting and waiting while the green progress bar slowly progresses drives me crazy.  Luckily there is an easy fix to speed it up.

Locate your Downloads folder: it’s at c:\users\your-user-name\Downloads.  Right click on it and select Properties, then click the Customize tab.  Under “Optimize this folder for:” drop down the menu and select “Documents”.  Click OK and you’re done.  Accessing the Downloads folder is now speedy and without delay.
If you’d like to move your Downloads folder click on the Location …

Hurray!  Google has finally enables multiple sign in for the majority of its services.  It’s slowly being rolled out to all users but it was there for my three accounts as of today.  It’s very easy to enable: log into your account settings page and in the top middle column titled Personal Settings look for Multiple sign-in and click edit.  Here you’re greeted with this page where you have to enable and agree to the settings.

This has to be done for every account you want to switch to, but it’s …

One look and you know what I’m talking about: two patties, smoked pork loin, aged cheddar, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, mayonnaise.  A culmination of all my burger wants barely fitting between two toasted buns.

My wife and daughter have been carefully tending out first vegetable garden and we have a small harvest: zucchinis.  I wasn’t sure what to do with them but spotted a post about zucchini fritters on Michael Ruhlman’s website.  It was a solid recipe but I didn’t have most of the ingredients so I made a lot of substitutions.

One large zucchini or two medium, shredded
one medium onion or shallot, minced
two tablespoons of fresh herbs, minced
two eggs, beaten
three to five tablespoons of flour
1/4 cup shredded cheese
one clove of garlic, minced
salt and pepper …

Here’s a golden utility for the ages: SafeMSI is a user contributed single file to Windows IT Pro that does one thing and one thing only.
When you’re in Safe Mode you can’t install or more importantly uninstall an application because the Windows Installer Service isn’t running.  With SafeMSI.exe you enter Safe Mode on Windows NT, 2000, 2003, Vista, 2008 or Windows 7 and run the program.  You get this notification:

You then uninstall whatever ails you and reboot your system.  Wonderful!