Chatty Insanity
I chat using google Talk. A lot. Instant messaging is a big part of my daily routine, almost regardless of what I have going on. At any typical moment, I'll commonly have at least fifteen chat windows up, with conversations in various stages and degrees of activity. As such, I can't use the chat feature within gmail, as I'd have so many miniature windows up that I wouldn't be able to use my actual email, which I'm using constantly for work and otherwise.

I've been using gmail for about five and a half years, and Google Talk for a little over four(since it came out). I was talking to Derek this morning about nothing in particular, and it occurred to me that since, by default, all my chats are logged in my gmail account, I could probably find out how many times I've had a chat window open with a particular person. So I started searching. Unfortunately, Google has no reporting tools available to the public, that could probably have compiled in seconds all the information I mined over a period of an hour or two. So, I made do, and forged on.

The results were absolutely shocking. I know I communicate a lot over instant messaging, but I wasn't prepared for the numbers I saw. Just Derek, with whom I was chatting at that moment, accounts for 264 individual conversations, many of which go for hundreds of messages apiece. I decided to dig more deeply, and found that Derek is quite literally the tip of the iceberg. Instead of regaling you with exasperated prose about my internet addiction, I did what any good geek would do. I made a chart. Click it for the full-size image.

This image is a chart of the aggregate total of all the chats I was able to find of everyone in my chat list with more than ten total chats in my history. Sorry, Josh Olsen, but our six conversations didn't make the cut. As you can see, the distribution is pretty one-sided. Mr Jeffrey Denny handily tops out my list, and is followed by Chris Harper, Matthew Staub, and Brad Schmitt before the number dips into the triple digits, of which Nicolas Bock is the chief. In short, I have personally authored hundreds of thousands of words of informal correspondence with friends, relatives, colleagues, and a group I affectionately call, "the ladies."

Speaking thereof, I also made charts that isolated the numbers to the two commonly-accepted genders of our time: men and women. This is all tied together in greater resolution and numeric verbosity in a spreadsheet, from which these quite possibly useless charts are derived.

This all adds up to almost fourteen thousand individual conversations. However, as great is my fascination with these numbers, greater still is my enthusiasm for compiling them for you.

Jeff F. brooked no delay in saying:
I demand a recount!!

1:38 PM, Oct 23, 2009

Gulia offered:
Nice! Top 5 of the chicks and within the top 20 overall. Not bad....

7:58 AM, Oct 27, 2009

better than jeff fudge (formerly known as your sister rachel) wants you to know:
hell yeah! first lady, PLUS I beat jeff fudge! take that, jeff fudge!

6:48 PM, Jan 28, 2010

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