Odds and Ends for a Rainy Day

Well, of course ... I took the day off to go to my midday dental appointment and work in my garden. Guess I didn't pay the good weather bill on time.

Well, at least the blog doesn't get rained out, and I have two interesting things to share today.

First is this article which ran last month in the blog of the online professional networking site LinkedIn - Top CEO Names Across the Globe: Brad, Bland, or Brand? LinkedIn surveyed over 100 million user profiles and churned out a list of the most popular names for corporate chief executive officers, including nifty charts that show popular names by country and "name length distribution" (somebody at Linked In has way too much time on his hands). Results indicate that the most common names for male CEOs are:

Peter;

Bob;

Jack;

Bruce;

Fred;

Bill (good name, that!);

Ron;

Christian;

Alexander; and,

Don.

The most common names for female CEOs are:

Deborah;

Sally;

Debra (interesting that there are two variations of this name on the list);

Cynthia;

Carolyn;

Pamela;

Ann;

Cheryl;

Linda; and,

Janet.

The study also looked at the most common names for other fields, including:

Sales: Chip, Todd, and Trey.

Engineering: Rajesh (hmmm...that ought to tell us something), Jeremy, and Andrew.

Restaurant and Food Service: Thierry, Philippe, and Laurent (I must not dine at these places).

Law Enforcement: Billy, Darrell, and Pete (I just use the all-purpose grovelling term, "officer").

Human Resources: Emma, Katie, and Claire.

Athletics: Ryan, Matt, and Jessica.

So, how does your name stack up?

And ...

My daughter sent me this link to a cool post on the blog The Lost Eyeball: 56 Best/Worst Analogies of High School Students. My readers who are professional educators (yes, Kathy and Melissa, I'm talking to you) will doubtless appreciate this list, which includes gems like:

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

“Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.

And ...

She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.

Just a few odds and ends (mostly odds) for a rainy morning.

Have a good day. Don't leave your cake out in the rain.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo