Welcome back.

As you’ve probably heard me say many times, if you’re a regular reader of these pages at all, we like to think of ourselves here at SiliconANGLE as less of a news blog and more of a group of thought leaders.

As editor of a site full of thought leaders, monitoring their published thoughts is often humbling, but lets me constantly keep my thumb on the pulse of what’s important in the tech world.

If you were to ask me right now what the tech-set is thinking about right now, I can tell you that it’s distinctly non-tech in nature.  Certainly, I and many of my peers have been spending a lot of time thinking back over the landmark events of 2009 and what we think 2010 will hold for us all, but with few exceptions, the last couple of days have been largely filled with thoughts of family, society, and general good will towards our fellow man.

For instance, contributor Jeff Nolan has been using his platform to talk at great length for his pet charity, the Salvation Army, and has run a fundraiser at his personal blog:

We’re in the final stretch for the Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign and if you have been keeping current with the news you know that this holiday season is a lot tougher than in years past with demand for services much higher and contributions across the board a lot lower.

I am making one last appeal for donations to my fundraising campaign, just click on the red kettle in the sidebar or on this link and donate whatever you can spare… $5, $10, $20… it all adds up and makes a huge difference for people in need. As of today I am 50% to my goal and it’s all because of your generosity.

Many others are drawing attention to their favorite charities, and turning away from the daily grind of keeping up with thousands of RSS feeds and tens of thousands of Twitter feeds, and turning to their families.

@kencamp: @rizzn We're relaxing and I've shut my work laptop for my main gig down for the weekend…

@SherylBreuker: rizzn Good for you [for spending time with the family]. Your family is still so young. Gosh when I saw you have a 2 year old...I barely remember that age for mine!

Other than that, and the occasional conversations I’ve had by way of IM this week, our contributors are fairly silent, so I can only assume that they’ve achieved what’s generally considered impossible for folks like us – they’ve unplugged and are enjoying the company of friends and family.

Given that, at the behest of my wife and children, I’ve decided to follow suit. Unless Apple announces that the mythical iTablet is released (dang it), Twitter announces that they’re profitable somehow (darn it!), they release the specs on the Google Nexus One (oh come on, guys!), Bill Gates himself calls me up to give his 2010 predictions for our predictions series, I’ll be taking the next couple days off from updating the site.

Don’t worry, though – we’ve got a brand new site infrastructure, a fresh and evolving look, and a stack of prediction posts as high as my eyeballs ready to roll after Christmas!

So enjoy the holidays with your loved ones, and we’ll get together after that.

[Editor’s Note: Of course I can’t completely unplug – my wannabe-cyborg heart couldn’t take it.  You can still reach me via profile pings and via Twitter if you have a burst of editorial inspiration, a holiday tech rant, or a desire to wish me a holiday howdy. –mrh]

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