I'm back from a week and a half of vacationing in Ireland. Aside from the frequent rain, Ireland is a beautiful country...and even the rain isn't that bad. I'll have some photos up soon (three quick photos on Flickr for now). I didn't take my computer along or check email while I was there, only thought about the web once or twice**, and didn't miss it at all. But it wasn't exactly the revelatory recharging experience that I've heard about from other people who are tethered to the web all day long and then take an extended break from it. Not exactly sure why...maybe I've honed my gear switching ability to a fine point so that whatever situation I'm in, I'm in the appropriate mental state. Or perhaps I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Anyway, I'm back and ready to get back to work (or whatever it is that I do here).
Thanks to David and Anil for posting remaindered links while I was gone. It's fun (if a little strange) coming back to a bunch of unfamiliar content on my own site...looking forward to rolling through all their links. However if you're considering hiring either of these two fellows to help you with your blog business, I would direct your attention to the graph of my traffic over the past week at right. When those guys took over -- which day will henceforth be known here at kottke.org as "Black Monday" -- well, you can see what their reign of terror did to the number of daily visitors around here. On the other hand, they were probably too busy with their proper (i.e. paying) jobs to worry too much about posting, so they are to be commended for their attention to their duties. In either case, it's been a pleasure...come back anytime.
** Apart from an extended conversation about RSS while hiking through some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen. You can take the boy out of the web and put him in a sheep pasture, but you can't take the web out of the boy. Or something.
