» Watch Your Language 2008
In an office environment where PHP and Internet Explorer 6 are used on a day-to-day basis (by necessity, mind you), the use of profanity tends to get a little haywire. As a business manager, managing the morale and attitudes of the office peeps is a major concern, and as time has gone by I’ve noticed that said profanity has really brought us down a few notches.
It is for this reason that we spent a couple of hours the other day putting together The Profanity Counter. This über-simple application allows you to track anyone’s use of verbiage, and will ultimately include some graphing that may give insight into how we react to the very knowledge of the regularity of our profanity.
Along with the launch of this application comes the competition:
who can curse the least?
The participants are Paul “The Champ” Grimes, and Yours Truly, Craig Coffman. At the beginning of the competition, there was already data in the system — Paul with 2 incidents, Craig with 3. The competition started today, May 21, and will end June 21, at 5:00pm. The rules we’ve determined between us limit all expletives to PG-rating and lower. Here’s what happens at the end:
If Paul wins, we trade desks for one month (until July 21), and he gets to lavish himself in slightly-more-expensive cherry-colored wood.
If Craig wins, Paul can only take one smoking break per day - at lunch. Craig will lavish himself in the added productivity, and gain nourishment from the suffering Paul goes through without his precious nicotine.
Try the counter out! Anybody can do it, and it’s a lot of fun to play with! We can’t stop you from tracking things that didn’t actually get said, but it’d be nice if you didn’t interfere with Paul and my scores in the least.
Tags: cool stuff, database application, profanity
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:31 am
mmmm… delicious profanity
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
This link is somewhat related to the topic at hand:
http://www.jwz.org/doc/censorzilla.html
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
What counts as profanity? Is it the George Carlin “7 dirty words?” Or are you a little stricter. We’re not allowed to say anything worse than “darn” here.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
In the competition, we have to keep it PG.
In the counter app, you can record anything you want, though. I’m tracked as saying “Apple” a couple times around midnight… We’ll not discuss the context.
Sounds like a pretty strict environment over there! It’s probably for the best. We’ve got a motley crew of sailors around here.