Back at the paragraph factory

So how y'all been?

I'm back at work today after taking a few weeks off to relax, visit family and friends, do some quality porch-sitting with Fred the hound dog, that sort of thing. I also spent a few days in Memphis, checking out the great Stax Museum and playing cards with the brilliant sportswriter Joe Posnanski, who... well, let him tell it. And buy his book.

Toward the end of the vacation I got a little antsy and spent a couple hours redesigning the blog. You should have seen it -- cool green palette, funky fonts, the whole deal.

It turns out this was a very bad idea.

Along the way I erased some of the code that our Web staff uses to count visitors, display the Charlotte.com logo, send you spam from Nigeria, etc. It is also possible, this being the Internets, that I might have unintentionally launched a nuclear missile. Sorry, tech folks, and sorry, North Korea.

I did keep a new photo and blogroll and such. Of course, now that I've done all this work on how the site looks, I guess I should actually POST now and then.

So to get things started, a few links that I browsed while on vacation:

-- This guy does astonishing things with an Etch-a-Sketch.

-- This guy is my favorite author in the world right now, and his latest book kept me up until 2 in the morning last week.

-- This guy knows the (unfortunately) true secrets of a lot of journalism these days.

-- And these guys just put out a really good record. Go buy it. (And they're playing Ovens on Wednesday!)

One more thing: I'm still looking for folks who were students or teachers in Charlotte when Dorothy Counts and other black students integrated the schools here in 1957. Give me a holler at 704-358-5227 or ttomlinson@charlotteobserver.com.

So what's on your mind these days? Comment below. It's good to be back.