Ballmers eccentricity can be exemplified in one sentence, taken directly from Microsofts official transcript of the session: "Now, weve got some other competitive actions coming back, and well talk about slates and tablets and blah, blah, blah, blah...." Yes, Steve actually said he was going to talk "blah." And he did. Interestingly enough, this part of his speech was tackling the iPad, and how Apple had "done an interesting job of putting together a synthesis and putting a product out," and completely owned a market that MS probably wished was theirs. In fact we know this to be true, since Ballmer noted "they sold certainly more than Id like them to sell, let me just be clear about that."Anyway, check out the word cloud at the top there. Its from Ballmers long introduction to the event, constituting some 13,000 words--quite enough to get a flavor of how Steves words came out. What can you see? Immediately were reminded that MS is almost a one-trick pony, and that trick is called Windows. That word came up 39 times in the first part of Ballmers speech, compared to just 13 appearances of "Office" and 12 for "Xbox". Interesting, no? On the other hand, Steve used the word "thing" 46 times, as in "lets talk about this thing" and the word "think" 34 times. "People" are also things Ballmers fond of, as that word showed up 37 times.Other stand-out words are "kind," "consumer," "going," and "got." Whats conspicuous by its absence are words like "success" or "positive" or "great" or "well"--indeed there were only nine "good"s used during Ballmers segment. Is MS really not performing well, or is Ballmer merely not happy about the state of things? Youd be forgiven for thinking that, but there are also remarkably few "bad"s, no "fail," and just 3 "quit"s. In other words, Ballmer was treading a very neutral road, in terms of his language--neither being overly enthusiastic or revealingly critical. For fun, contrast Ballmers words with Steve Jobs ones from the big D8 conference in June. Sure, its a different context, but Jobs said words like "well" and "going" and "want" and "like" a lot. Almost as much as he used the word "people." So while Ballmer "blahs" and "thinks" "people" "kind" of "get" "windows" "things," Jobs is "going" to do "well" for "people." If you were being super-insightful, you may even see these words as a window into the two different CEOs management styles. Just maybe.To keep up with this news, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter....