When Mike did his book signing for SAMS Publishing back at Comdex 1996, we had no idea that it was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. They used to have a booth at Comdex every year and give away piles of books for free to the people willing to wait in line. The very next year, they stopped doing that so Mike’s book signing was a unique experience for us.

Here is the line of people waiting for Mike’s book.

Here is the board with the schedule of author signings.

Here’s Mike sitting at his table with a nice board telling the world who he is and which book he wrote.

This is a photo of the first guy in line at the signing.

Here is Michael signing books and me handing them to him.

They ran out of books before these guys got one. It was the first day and they could get one tomorrow, so I didn’t feel bad asking them to pretend to look really sad that they didn’t get one of Mike’s books.

SAMS did so much promotion for his book that they even had a huge copy of it on the side of the Comdex Bookstore. I was so excited about it, but Mike really wasn’t. I forced him to stand next to the book cover for a photo. Can you tell?

Looking back at that time makes me feel happy and wary all at once. I took all these photos with my beloved 110 camera that I got from my grandma in fifth grade. I recently scanned in all the Comdex 1996 photos for a series that I did on the Gadgets Page, but I thought I’d share these personal favorites with you.