Can you believe, I got over the wall!

Hello, and welcome to a very unusual fortnight on this blog.

Typically, I talk about server and network administration, I harp on documentation, diagramming, user support, and a wide variety of other admin-y topics. Not for the next two weeks, however.

You see, for the next two weeks, I'm on vacation.

My wife and I are in the middle (near the end, actually) of relocating from central Ohio to New Jersey, and we desperately needed a vacation. It got to the point where I didn't care at all, and would have gladly spent 2 weeks vegging in front of the TV rather than go to work or respond to emergencies. Luckily, I got creative and starting trying to come up with places to go or things to do during the two weeks. After tossing around and discarding several ideas, a European vacation sort of got stuck in my mind.

After weighing the financial options, we decided on a Mediterranean cruise. It had all of the features we wanted in a vacation: travel to several interesting places, no (or extremely expensive) cellphone reception, and lack of proximity to work or a computer.

Since we hadn't had a vacation at all since our honeymoon in 2007, we went for a 12 day trip all around the Mediterranean. Our ports of call are Rome, Athens, Ephesus, Alexandria (which we're really just using as a gateway to Cairo), and Malta before returning to Barcelona.

If you're into cruising and are curious, we're going to be on the Norwegian Jade.


Now, since I have absolutely no intention of using a computer more complex than the one in my camera, I'm not going to be writing blog entries for the next two weeks. Rather than leave the blog barren, I have enlisted the aid of some excellent bloggers, as well as some readers who have shown interest in contributing material. This will serve the dual purpose of providing interesting material and informative content, and a link back to their blog, so if you aren't familiar with their work, you can check it out and see what they're all about. If you already read lots of blogs, maybe you'll find your favorite author doing a guest piece here.

So for now, enjoy the guest bloggers, and have a good two weeks on the internet without me.

Sincerely,

--Matt Simmons