I was sitting in Starbucks reading earlier today and an older gentleman looked at me and smiled on his way past. “Conan O’Brien, eh? Haha.”

Time for a haircut.

This morning, I was surfing around the interweb with a healthy dose of pretentiousness coursing through my veins, when I happened upon this ad.

Seemed innocent enough, until I noticed the word “premier.” Suddenly, all innocence faded from the world. I rushed to Dictionary.com as quickly as my fingertips could take me. Unfortunately, in this case, my initial response wasn’t 100% accurate. While I still hold on to my belief that is an oddly phrased ad, it’s not technically poor grammar. I was thinking that they had meant premiere, but it turns out that premier was perfectly acceptable in that context..

By the time I had fully completed my research, though, I had already thought through my mockery of such a foolish oversight and figured it a waste to not share. The definition of premier that works is as follows:

2. First in status or importance; principal or chief.

Fine, fine. Not how I would have worded it, but technically it works. They are the highest-ranked or most notable of Smoky Mountain Cabin Rentals. (Side note: Are the cabins premier or is it a premier rental of otherwise unremarkable cabins? Or maybe the cabin’s on a premier Smoky Mountain?) All that to say, my mind instantly jumped to this definition:

1: the person who is head of state

Specifically, a Russian head of state. Hence, I expected that the ad should look something like this instead:

I hate when English works against me.

Earlier this week, I was driving home from work and I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Trees are the answer.”  My first thought was, of course, “What’s the question?”

What is the meaning of life?  Trees.  What time is the meeting this afternoon? Trees.  How did you make those delightful raspberry tarts from last week’s poetry reading?  Trees.  What number am I thinking of?  Trees.  How can we reverse the damage mankind has done to Earth since the Industrial Revolution?  Tre- …nah, that’s ridiculous.

Immediately following, my next thought was, “Wait, shouldn’t that be ‘Trees is the answer’?”   Or maybe “Trees are the answers“?  Even “Tree is the answer” would work.  Grammatically speaking, multiple trees can’t be the one answer.  On the other hand, I suppose the concept of trees and what they represent could be the answer. Or simply the word “Trees” could be the answer.  Given the opportunity, I probably would have slightly altered the phrasing to “Whatever our problems are, a large part of the solution involves trees and their various attributes & roles.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve said “[plural noun] is the answer” in the past, along with countless other similarly phrased sentences, and I probably will again in the future. That’s the phrasing that sounds correct to me. I’m just not sure that it technically is correct.

That bumper sticker was a failure.

In our ongoing quest to conquer the free world, we members of Fuor have taken to storming the beachheads on a personal, individual level. At this point, that basically just means blogging, and trying to get our online personas slightly more notable.

While it’s a largely subjective concept, one way to quantitatively track your online fame is to see how high you rank on search engines.

For instance, the super-net guru of Fuor/ninja/best friend, Josiah Platt is the third return you get when you type “Josiah” into Google. It might not sound like a huge deal, but trust me, it is. One that he’s spent a significant amount of time and effort bringing to fuition.

I, on the other hand, am the 99th Caleb. Right at the bottom of the 10th page. Not exactly anything to scoff at, because Caleb is a fairly popular name, but it leaves me lots of room to move up. “Caleb White,” on the other hand, lands me right at the top of the search returns.

Charles is impressively the 10th return on a search of his name. Impressive because Charles Williams is a pretty common name, and it is also the name of an early-20th century British author. One of my father’s favorites, I might add.

Ryan is the first search return with his full name, but searching either just “Ryan” or “Loewe” he’s completely off the radar. But, his site doesn’t actually exist yet really, so that’s not terribly surprising.

Now, dear Brett has some obstacles to overcome. Not sure if it’s a hit on Brett or further praise to Josiah, but when one searches “Brett Tilford” on Google, Josiah Platt is the first return. Brett Tilford.com is, interestingly enough, fifth on the list.

Josiah got a little carried away with his conquering.

Flying back from South Carolina this past Friday, I made a quick stop in the airplane lavatory at the very back of the plane. As I was walking back to my seat, I passed four people with their laptops open. One of them was watching X-Men 2. The other three were playing Solitaire.

3.4GB of processing power at it’s best.

It’s beautiful.