Measure of a Man's Wealth

I know it has been a while since I've posted, but my passive attempts at achieving worldwide fame have gone unnoticed and therefore unsuccessful. Nevertheless, there may be many reasons why you're reading this post. Perhaps you're the type of person who peruses blogspot.com, or perhaps while searching Google in the quest for knowledge, you click "more" to search the blogs. Almost sounds like a metaphor for life, doesn't it? How many times do we look for information and when we take it one step further to search for more, all we find is random people's opinions?

Maybe it's not any of the reasons above. It could just be that you've read some of my previous postings and you have enjoyed them enough to read this one as well. After all, if you're reading the sentence in context, I thank you for your continued support. Worldwide fame is that much closer. Taking it back a bit, the primary reason you've found yourself here is not because you're on some existential quest, but probably because you saw a link on MySpace and decided to click it. You are, after all, a friend.

Being a friend of mine, I thought I'd share with you little bit about everyone else in this community called my friends list. All 50 of you. I'm not much of one for statistics, which is why I chose to do it now. 50 is a nice round number and easy to extract percentages from it with little arithmetic. I first got this idea before I actually reached 50 friends on MySpace. Interestingly enough, there's an error in the page code where it miscounts the actual number tricking you into have more friends that you actually do. "Oh cruel fate, why do you mock me?" (Simpson, 1990) Sounds like I need to talk with certain 2% of you who can't count. Tom, I'm looking in your direction. I later discovered that this error is simply a bug in the code that counts the friends that have actually accepted you to be their friends and for whatever reason (if their account is deleted, they sever MySpace ties with you, etc.) their little avatar may go away, but they are still in the count. You have to go in and physically delete them from your list

It wasn't too long ago since (out of complete boredom) I analytically organized a list of another group of fifty to the point of even making a pie chart out of the data. It was the 50 states of the union and their corresponding two-letter postal code. If you wish to know details, it is simply this. I plotted data as to organize the postal code correlation to the full name of each state and tallied which relationship(s) said postal code fell in to. For instance, CA, California's postal code falls into the First 2 Letters category as well as the First & Last Letters category. This unique combination, held by only a few states, was enough to warrant a separate category on its own and therefore precludes it from being categorized in either of the two other categories. 5 is 2+3, and 4+1, but 5 can't be in with the 1's, 2's, 3's or 4's. Isn't that right, Tom?

I no longer have that data, but I'm sure given minimal effort I could figure it all out again. With today's technology, I could even make a new pie graph, maybe 3-D, with a drop shadow. Anyway, I've stalled long enough. Here's the real reason you're all here. I warn you. Anyone who has a phobia or a strong adversity to statistics, please leave now. Otherwise, prepared to completely bored and delve into another dark corridor that is Glenn's brain.

58% of you, my friends, are male. Simple subtraction states that 42% of you are female. 26% you attended the same high school, and coincidentally 26% have shared the same employer. Almost six years since graduating from college at AIPx, only 6% have accepted me to be your "friend". Conversely, twice as many attended ASU. The same amount attended elementary school with me as well. 16% of you and I went to jr. high together. I was in scouts with 14% of you.

I'm related to only 4% of you through blood, yet 6% of my friends are celebrities whom I've never met. MySpace is not only an excellent place for fans to communicate with their favorite celebrities, it's a place for musicians to share their talent with the rest of the world. Another 6% of you have music oriented pages. 16% of you I consider friends I've originally met through other friends but we're all friends, so that doesn't matter. And since MySpace is such a great place to keep in touch with people it allows me to keep in touch with 30% of you who no longer live in Arizona.

Despite the numbers, 100% of you, for whatever reason, agreed to be my friend. When it all comes down to it, it's not always money or worldwide fame that describes a man's treasures. It's his friends, and for that I consider myself to be very rich. Thank you.