While you were gone ...

Even when I say nothing, I'm a popular guy.

Rather than work at this project over the weekend, I logged into my Entourage account this afternoon to clean out the dead messages and take stock of the debris.

From Monday morning to 3:30 p.m. Friday, I received 352 messages. Very few were from students, as they already knew I was off line. About a third were from someone at the University of Missouri. The rest ranged from reports on newspaper management trends to dubious offers of discount Cialis or quick mortgages.

As I was cleaning up my inbox, I unsubscribed to a half dozen newsletters and "updates." I have many more to process in my Journalism List folder, which receives items directly via a filter on my inbox.