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December 3, 2008

I am the entertaining and friendly type

Because I was on vacation I missed Jay Hancock's post in which Typealyzer analyzed my blog entries. Thanks, Jay.

Here I am. Actually it sounds better than I really am: ...

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 8:17 AM | | Comments (32)
        

Comments

This sounds suspiciously like Myers-Briggs to me. Being in the HR field, I've been subjected to Myers-Briggs profiling more times than I care to count.

I'm an FSOB, for those of you who speak Myers-Briggsian.

Okay, its a slow morning so I clicked on the Typealyzer link. From the screen it looks like the entire blog is analyzed not just the host's writing. That being said, they tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation is clearly a WTF kind of moment.

Adroit analysis for you Dear Leader. Not so much for me. I had it analyze Lemon Tart's favorite comment, the rant on slow-walking javabots at the farmer's market. The analysis said that I "prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts."

I love a good interpersonal conflict. It's like fiber in my emotional diet. How a program could come up with such a conclusion after analyzing text that includes the following is beyond me:

Mmmmm..... slurpity slurp slurp, ahhhh, mmmm, shuffle stutter-step stop linger start stop wandering in your addict's haze and narcissistic dark roasted egoism. Walking two or more across because if nobody hears your mouth-gasms they just aren't that good. The problem other than my lifelong hatred of the coffee HABIT (not coffee, it's the celebratory ritual of lame addiction that irks me, damn, if you're going to get that worked up start chasing the dragon, swirl into a deep opium fog thinking of crickets and chanting all the vowels.) ...
... and in my mind-kill-zone there is just a puddle of non-fat milk java that is the stain that you will be. Slurp on that.

I'm killing people with my mind. Come on. What kind of analysis only gives compliments? Now I want to fight the Typealyzer program.

Bucky, I'm INTJ. Not sure how much faith I have in Myers-Briggs. In my experience, anything embraced by upper level management has been watered down to the point of uselessness.

There is a companion tool (no jokes), that analyzes the gender of the blogger too:
http://www.genderanalyzer.com/

I analyzed about a dozen Sun blogs and the gender of the writer was correctly identified in all but one case (sorry Sam). The most masculine writing was from the improbably named Peter Schmuck and the most feminine was from the BaltAmour blog (both 70%).

I theorize that since blogs are more causal than the writing that appears in print, the personality of the blogger is more apparent and a gender guess is more likely to be true. (I have no idea how they do it) In fact Dear Leader's blog scored 69% probablity of being written by a woman and her recent review of Feast@4East scored a 76% probability of being written by a man. Mari Luna review = 82% ♂. Fascinating. A recent regular column by Schmuck scored 75% ♂.

I also analyzed my javabot rant, which includes some lusty farmer's daughters remarks, along with unbridled short-step rage, and I find that there is a 51% probability that I am a woman. Hmmm...

I've got to go build an obelisk now.

Happy Birthday Owl. Oh, you have wounded me -- "Lemon Tart"? It's Lemon Girl, and I'm just a little tart. Stay away from those farmer's daughters, that always ends badly.

A coworker and I once invented an additional scale for the Myers-Briggs, the Canine-Feline scale.

Computer programmers would tend towards the Feline end, and salesman towards the Canine.

INFJ (or INFP, depending on the year) for me. Myers-Briggs has its uses, but people tend to contort it until it becomes a scientific version of a horoscope, with much the same predictive value.

It was the Brain Activity graphic on the Typealyzer that did it in for me. That, and its labeling my writing as ESTP. On the other hand, its analysis of You Don't Say was ... amusing.

Hal, I think salescritters are more like ferrets.

Cats don't do, they get others to do. So they are more management than programmer. Then again, we geeks want to be told we're Vulcan-like, except for the minority of Klingon fans and furries.

Lissa, it's often said that "trying to manage programmers is like trying to herd cats."

Lissa, your comment reminded me of the old joke about the difference between dogs and cats.

Dogs have owners,
Cats have staff.

Bucky, you're too much! It took me a second of trying to place what FSOB means in Myers Briggsian to realize that you're using an altogether different set of initials. Ha!

Anyone care to guess my Myers-Briggs category?

Hal, I have an EDS cat herding coffee mug, from my time at that particular insane asylum.

EDS was so proud of that commercial (and, it was a very good one) that they gathered the hundreds of EDSers who worked at GM's Tech Centre together to show it to us. Unfortunately, the PHB who was trying to play it for us couldn't get his laptop to work.

600+ geeks sat there, and not one offered to help.

OMG, I bet you have all the categories, in random order, for random periods of time.

I'm ENFJ

EDS? And they didn't break you? Good job.

I'm INTP.

I absolutely love personality assessments, in the same way I love watching Kieth Olbermann and Rachel Madow -- for their entertainment value, rather than any real light they shed on reality.

I am also an INTJ, according to Myers-Briggs. According to the Enneagram, I am a 5, an "Observer." My dominant behavioral pattern is "Concientiousness," according to the DiSC Classic analysis at www.DiscProfile.com ("A Division of ProfilesRUs.com") and according to the University of Chicago Leadership Assessment I am a "collaborator."

All of this stuff makes more sense after a couple of glasses on wine on the Friday evening of a retreat weekend. In fact, the more wine you drink, the more it may make sense!

My spirit guide is a badger. I recently decided that I wanted a Scottish terrier, who love to fight badgers. Could I be more messed up? I unknowingly chose a dog who wants to kill my spirit guide.

EDS, subcontracted to GM. I think they did break me.

Before that, I worked for a mental health HMO. Those were the evil years...

If we're doing personality tests (and, they are fun), it has been some time, but Kingdomality is fun. What medieval occupation would you have. I'm convinced it lies horribly (I'm quite sure I'd have been a serf, at best, and long dead), but it isn't dead serious, at least.

My first computer programming job,three decades or so ago, was at a small company doing computerized psychological testing software. If you think computer geeks are strange, you ought to try working with shrinks!

I could probably still today take an MMPI and make it come out however you wanted it to.

OMG, they can't break you unless you let them.

Here is my medieval occupation (it's good to be King):

Your distinct personality, The Benevolent Ruler might be found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. You are the idealistic social dreamer. Your overriding goal is to solve the people problems of your world. You are a social reformer who wants everyone to be happy in a world that you can visualize. You are exceptionally perceptive about the woes and needs of humankind. You often have the understanding and skill to readily conceive and implement the solutions to your perceptions. On the positive side, you are creatively persuasive, charismatic and ideologically concerned. On the negative side, you may be unrealistically sentimental, scattered and impulsive, as well as deviously manipulative.

Deviously manipulative? Harumph. Where's my hassenpfeffer!?

Thanks KristenB.

Hal, when I worked for that mental health HMO, I think I was the sanest person there.

Lissa, I once turned down a job at a subcontractor to a mental health HMO (the sub determined whether or not the patient "needed" mental health treatment) because everyone with whom I interviewed was crazier than a loon.

Eve, if they were in Columbia, I'm sure they were.

Lissa and Eve - I have spent my entire professional career in the mental health field (as a provider, not a patient). However, I just left the field for a more coporate job...mostly for the reasons you pointed out. After so many years of my idealistic beliefs of helping others being trampled by the realistic expectations of the managed health care system I became disillusioned.

I used to work in the school system. The school psychologists were all crazy. Talk about people with serious issues: they were all very dysfunctional. And to think they meet with, and treat kids!

Lissa, These particular loonies were in Owings Mills.

My medieval occupation:

Your distinct personality, The Dreamer-Minstrel might be found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. You can always see the "Silver Lining" to every dark and dreary cloud. Look at the bright side is your motto and understanding why everything happens for the best is your goal. You are the positive optimist of the world who provides the hope for all humankind. There is nothing so terrible that you can not find some good within it. On the positive side, you are spontaneous, charismatic, idealistic and empathic. On the negative side, you may be a sentimental dreamer who is emotionally impractical. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today's corporate kingdoms.

Not bloody likely.

Yeah Eve, the minstrel dreamer has no place in corporate America. LOL Maybe selling homemade hackey sacks at Renaissance fairs. Of course as Benevolent Ruler I might be able to find you something in HR, where dreamers go to die. ;-)

I have a cousin who sells really ugly handmade jewelry at Ren (can't spell the rest of this word) Fests. The pauper-freeloading-on-the-couch for 6 weeks was sort of cute and quirky (not at all! I was just being nice when I pretended that!) when she was 20something but now that she's pushing 50, it's worn thin.

Houses are quite expensive and not everyone can buy it. However, personal loans are invented to support different people in such kind of situations.

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About this blog
Richard Gorelick was appointed The Baltimore Sun's restaurant critic in September 2010. Before joining the paper staff fulltime, he contributed freelance criticism and features articles about food to area and regional publications. Along the way, he dispatched for short-distance trucking companies, shilled for cultural non-profits, and assisted in cognitive neurology research – never the subject, always the control.

He takes restaurants seriously but not himself, and his favorite restaurant is the one you love, too.
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