Tagged: Kaylin

The Most Valuable Comics I Own

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My Most Valuable Comics

An array of Kaylin's comics

Last week I got an email from a prospective new customer for All New Comics asking what condition our comics come in.  My business partner Peter prides himself on the way he ships stuff, he puts each comic in a bag and board, wraps a bunch of them together in a bag, puts that bag in a layer of bubble wrap, then puts the bundles of bagged, boarded, bagged, and bubbled comics in a box, fills that box with a bunch of packing paper and ships them out.  My comics always arrive perfectly, and we’ve only had about three complaints in the five years we’ve been in business (for literally thousands of orders).  Not shabby.

This customer however wanted to know what “CGC Grade” our comics were in, because if they were less than a 9.9 he wasn’t interested in our books.

This is a market I’m not interested in at all, so I told him he should probably get his comics from a brick and mortar store where he can go through a stack of comics and find the ones that meet his exact standards as it’s not something we’re very good at.  We ship out good comics with no obvious dents or dings, but what we deliver meets the qualifications of  “mint to near mint”.

  • The Cover has: No creases, no fading, lies flat and has no rolls or curves
  • The Spine: is straight, staples exhibit no signs of rust, minor bindery tears are acceptable no more than 1/16th of an inch.
  • Inside: pages have no stains, marks, cuts or tears.
  • Overall: The comic should look like new.

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What’s So Great About Being A Dad?

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Kaylin, Maks, and me

Kaylin, Maks, and me

I wrote this for “The Mom and Caregiver” magazine this month, and thought that it would be fun to post it to my site as a Father’s Day tribute.

A father’s role has changed a ton in the past several decades. The rise of feminism has resulted in some pretty great things, like a much larger role in the lives of our children. When I was born it was still something of an anomaly for a father to be in the room at the birth of their child. Today it’s commonplace—the births of my two children are two of the greatest moments of my life. Continue Reading

What our children think of GM

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Kaylin on the future of GM from Brian Garside on Vimeo

I spent some time last night speaking to my children about GM’s recent decision to declare bankruptcy, leaving them with a nice fat $10 billion dollar 12% investment in what was already a useless company.

Heaven forbid that our government had taken that $10 billion dollars and invested it in a forward looking company like Tesla, instead they invested it in a company who’s predatory business practices have managed to drive what little innovation entirely out of their industry. Well played Canadian (and even worse US) government. Now not only are we taxpayers out that $10 billion, but we’ll STILL end up with hundreds of thousands of auto workers on our unemployment roles.

Kaylin’s comments were a little more succinct than Maks, who I think was only interested in grabbing this reporter’s camera, but in the interest of fair and balanced journalism, here is Maks’ point of view.

Maks on the GM Bankruptcy from Brian Garside on Vimeo.

What it’s like to have kids

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Kaylin and Maks

Kaylin and Maks

Charlene sent me an article recently on what it’s like to be a stay at home mom, and it got me thinking, I’ve figured out a lot of little analogies that help put some perspective on what it’s like to have little kids rolling around the house.

Most of the people I work with are in a similar point in their lives, some are ahead of me with older kids, some are still at different points, pre-kids, some pre-marriage.  Today isn’t bad, but it’s different.  We look back on our lives and wonder “what the heck did we do?”, we used to wake up when we woke up, go to bed when we went to bed, spend money when we felt like it, and we always had money (usually more than we could spend).  We’d buy little things and big things for ourselves, and never really think about dropping two hundred bucks on dinner and a movie (two hundred bucks???  Really???  That’s like a WEEK’s worth of groceries WITH DIAPERS!).

But here we are.  The here and now.  It’s a different world.

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Kaylin visits the fair

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We had planned to go to the Western Fair on Friday, but because it was such a miserable day, we decided to hold off until Saturday.  We left our house around 11 Saturday morning and arrived at 11:30, greeted as we were by a sleepy, quiet little affair.  Hours later the place would be a booming madhouse, but for those first few hours, we had the joy of non-existant lines, sparsely trafficked walkways, and easy to find seating.

It was a good decision. Continue Reading

Garage Sales and Geometry Wars

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Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

Wow…talk about a busy weekend.  Not only did we have a garage sale, do lunch with friends, see Grandma and Grandpa, have Char’s sister over, put in a couple of steps, go shopping for some cool stuff, go to Storybook Gardens and visit Rib Fest…TWICE, but I also got some video gaming in this weekend.

Now THAT’s how you have a weekend! Continue Reading

Play hard, work hard

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Kaylin as Baby JaguarIt’s been a busy few days, with quite a bit of work, and quite a bit of play going on. I had to cram a little to get the monthly All New Comics update done, then this weekend we got some last minute comp tickets to Go Diego Live, watched some fighting, and finished up the weekend with a little Info-Tech work, a get together, and a little more Info-Tech work. Continue Reading

Of comic shows and hometels

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Mini Batgirl - Kaylin styleThis past weekend was the Toronto ComiCON Fan Appreciation show on Saturday and Sunday at the Metro Convention Centre, Pete and I were there with All New Comics and four tables of our stuff. It was also a chance for Kaylin, Char, and I to have a little mini-vacation in downtown Toronto.

Friday night I took the train down to Toronto and spent some time building the new All New Comics. Here’s a live sample of the work in progress. I’m still going to Tab-Ify the navigation, and tighten the cart area on the top, but I’m pretty happy with this overall. Continue Reading

Holy SNOW Batman!

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Kaylin up to her shoulders, me up to my waist in snowNow that’s a load of snow. The picture you see above is our back yard on Sunday with Kaylin and I standing. The snow’s up to her shoulders, and up to my waist. Now admittedly this is in a drift in the back yard, but it was still huge. In around 24 hours we had about a foot of snow dumped on us. Saturday we were trapped in our house, but Kaylin and I went outside anyway to dig out the driveway. With a bunch of cars stuck on the road I knew that we weren’t getting anywhere.

Instead Kaylin and I dug around in the snow, cleared the driveway, and then went between the houses to dig holes in the big piles of snow. I dug her a tunnel, and she crawled through it way braver than I would ever be. After about an hour though we had to head back in. While the actual temperature wasn’t too bad when we were all bundled up, the wind was biting and hurt like heck. Continue Reading

Our London Year

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One year ago March 2nd we took posession of our new home in London. A year ago today we made the long commute from Ajax to London for one final time, closing the old house and taking over the new one. It’s been a year, and a ton of things have changed for us in that time. Work is challenging and awesome, I like where we live, and having my parents close by has given us the opportunity to go on a vacation without the munchkin.

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