Here’s a table with the results from a little online linguistic test I
just took. Follow the link at the bottom to take it yourself. My thanks
to Patrick Eakes for posting it first.
Your Linguistic Profile: |
| 60% General American English |
| 20% Dixie |
| 20% Yankee |
| 0% Midwestern |
| 0% Upper Midwestern |
Call it the Jon Lowder Curse:
1972 – Jon moves to D.C. Neighbor’s townhouse burns down. Washington Senators become Texas Rangers. The Redskins get thumped by the Dolphins in the Super Bowl (January, 1973).
1978 – As an exception to prove the rule the Washington Bullets win the NBA championship. After that Washingon joins the Clippers as one of the worst franchises in the NBA for close to 30 years.
1980s – Early 90s – Okay, it wasn’t all bad. Redskins are one of the dominant teams in the NFL as they win three Super Bowls, but then…
1984 – Jon graduates from Capital Lutheran High School West. Two weeks later the school goes out of business.
1989 – The Texas Rangers (see 1972 Washington Senators above) are purchased by a consortium led by George W. Bush
in 1989, which helps catapult him to Governor of Texas in 1994 and
President of the United States in 2000. Consequently bad public
speaking becomes the order of the day (even most Republicans admit
that), my mother’s blood pressure rises exponentially and trees experience
lots of bark loss as they are hugged relentlessly in protest.
2004 – Jon moves to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Montreal Expos become the Washington Nationals, and Northern Virginia climbs to number 11 on Inc. magazine’s Best Places while Winston Salem plummets to 234th place.
The Washington Wizards (nee Bullets) make the playoffs for the first time since 1997, and the first time not as the lowest seed since the early 80s.
And in a direct continuum from the 1972 reference above we endure an endless presidential campaign featuring two of the worst public speakers in the history of US politics. Worse, we are forced to admit that our country’s fate was left in the hands of Ohio, the Florida of the north.
Now be nice or I’ll move to your neighborhood and bring the locusts with me.
"Warren Buffet buys stake in Anheuser-Busch. Smart investors go long on wife-beater tank tops" – Farkalicious.
"Man films Canadian bigfoot. No word if it’s 20% less hairy than US bigfoot" – Visit Fark.com for more.
A new service called Insider Pages takes the concept of a referral network, i.e. asking your friends for the number of the contractor they used for their addition last year, and then lets you add your own recommendations.
Basically it’s just a referral network that you can build for yourself, invite your friends to contribute, and then add your own ratings, comments, etc. In other words it is highly dependant on its users building it up to what some call "critical mass." I tried searching for a plumber in my area (North Carolina) and it came up with two sponsored listings in CA, along with this note: "
We are working on getting reviews
for Plumbing Contractors.
Please add a recommendation to help get us started."
Feels like 1999 all of the sudden. I’m pulling every dime I can out of NASDAQ…well I would if I had any dimes in it.
This month’s issue of Inc. magazine has a list of the best places for doing business in America. The list contains 274 cities and ranks them using a formula that measures job growth. To measure growth they looked at current-year growth, average annual growth over three years and growth over the first and second halves of the 10 years ending September, 2004.
Unfortunately for the NC Triad (Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point) it ranked 234, down from 147 last year. It really isn’t a surprise given the hammering that the prominent industries around here (textiles, furniture) have taken. It will be interesting to see what effect the new Dell plant being built here will have on next year’s ranking.
Me being a glass-half-full kind of guy I look at the Triad as a great entrepreneurial opportunity. Why? Lower costs (rent is cheap, labor is abundant, and wages are lower due to low cost of living), good infrastructure, good local universities, and great quality of life. You also have easy access to other metro areas (1 hour to Charlotte, 1 1/2 hours to Raleigh-Durham, 45 minute flight to DC and Atlanta), so you get the benefit of their business without the traffic. So if you’re an entrepreneur come on in, the water’s great.
Speaking of DC: My old stomping ground, Northern Virginia, leapt from 54 last year to 11
this year. The magazine attributes it to all the war spending, and
interestingly separates Northern Virginia from DC (28, up from 29) and
the Maryland Suburbs (29, down from 25).
This is a screen shot of a very cool online game based on the refrigerator magnets you can use to spell whatever you want. The catch is that there are up to 50 people playing at a time and they keep stealing your letters! Just what I need, one more way to procrastinate.
I know I’ve said it before, but I’m continually amazed at how well blogs do on Google. Here’s another piece of anecdotal evidence.
A while ago I wrote a post titled "Pope Bracket" that then referenced and a post on David Hoggard’s blog that referenced and linked to the originator of the Pope bracket, a spoof on the NCAA bracket that someone put together during the elect-a-Pope craziness.
Well at some point today I was #2 on Google for the search term "Pope Bracket" and the search results showed "85,500." Amazing. And the only one that ranked higher is uber-blogger DailyKos. I’m dancin’ with the big boys!
My current "big" work project is marketing and managing the exhibit hall for the 2005 International Conference on Intelligence Analysis. This is definitely an interesting gig, if for no other reason than the fact that I’m dealing with a lot of people involved with the government intelligence community rather than the private sector competitive intelligence people I normally deal with.
The conference is in two weeks, and it ought to be pretty interesting. Will update later.
Next time you’re having a bad day, think of these folks…you know misery loves company:
Bad Day #1-Source KABC: A local musician is issuing a desperate plea for the return of a valuable violin that was stolen.
The rare violin and bow are worth $850,000
and were on loan to 20-year-old Lindsay Deutsch of West Hills. The
violin was made in year 1742 and the bow is just one of five in the
world. Both were snatched from Deutsch’s car as it was parked in a
Pavilion’s parking lot.The rare instruments belong to Peter
Mandell, who loaned them to Deutsch. Both are insured, but aren’t
covered in this case, because they were stolen form a motor vehicle.Bad Day #2-Source Boing Boing: Berkeley laptop thief is scared out of his wits by professor
The last few minutes of this video from a biology class at Berkeley is
of professor explaining the terrifying consequences that will soon
befall the student that stole his laptop. Hell, I’m 500 miles away from
Berkeley and I’m scared after watching this."For those people who don’t want to deal with RealPlayer I made a very lo-fi mp3 of the audio from the "Stolen Laptop" lecture posted earlier today…
(Editorial note from Jon: If
you want to hear this professor scare the bejesus out of someone in
front of a lecture hall full of students click on the "ver lo-fi mp3 link when you visit the source page).
Have a great day!
