Follow up
Ok, so I have been tracking the increase in links via site-explorer and they have now tapered off and are starting to drop. The first two days I saw no increase, but after that, they started going up at a nice pace, not too fast, not too slow. Here are the results:
2 days after 189
3 days after 219
4 days after: 256
5 days after: 293
6 days after: 339
7 days after: 379
8 days after: 414
9 days after: 479
10 days after: 534
11 days after: 548
12 days after: 584
13 days after: 617
14 days after: 610
Not a bad run in my opinion. Yahoo and MSN responded favorably, and as is common when adding new links, the G rank tanked, but the site is still indexed and in good standing. I'm fairly confident the G rank will come back much stronger than before. I've seen many of my sites tank after adding new links but it's always been a short term (< 3 month) drop.
I don't have the nuggets to attempt the 30,000 blast, but this one seems reasonable for 2nd/3rd tier sites especially if you have some legit links to counter-balance the effect and quality content.