Warren Buffet often jests about his boring investments. The eight companies we focus on at Blogging Stocks were chosen based on investor interest -- not because they are the best ten stocks to own.

In some ways that makes them the un-boring set. I started to wonder if they could be ranked by their "boring factor," and just for fun, decided to track them periodically to see how they do in this regard. Naturally this is quite subjective so I'll explain my rational with each ranking from most boring to the least. The share prices are from the Friday close, August 25, 2006. The price-to-earnings P/E ratios are trailing figures. Here are the Blogging Stocks eight:

• General Electric (GE) $33.84, P/E 21.52: GE is huge, slow, relatively stable and not getting anybody excited. It has now been unexciting for five years. Jack Welch's leaving, his retirement package and his wives providing most the news for GE. That may be an indicator that it is due for some excitement as it has continued to build shareholder equity. From the perspective of most boring, this would be the place to put your money.
• Wal-Mart (WMT) $43.88, P/E 16.00: Wal-Mart has almost been as unexciting as GE except that it has more law suits, employee and customer controversies and has been in the news everywhere it goes as it tries to open up new stores and new markets.
• Microsoft (MSFT) $25.85, P/E 21.49: I had to give some thought about about whether MSFT of TWX belonged in the third slot. Decided MSFT still has done little to get the market invigorated. Talk of buybacks, and Zune and Vista are big yawns right now and XBox still bleeding cash.
• Time Warner (TWX) $16.42, P/E 17.37: AOL constantly being in flux, Carl Icahn buying up shares and pushing the board to consider breaking up the company, the buy-out of Adelphia and the expansion of its cable assets -- all trumped MSFT to take the 4th slot.

Every day can't be a gangbuster, especially in the yawning spaces between earnings releases and new product news. Today was a sleeper, with only a little news on a little deal made by Skype, and a little drop of $0.44 for the trading day. eBay closed at $34.49. In after hours trading since the bell, the movement is a whopping one penny.

As one message board poster said, "this stock is getting boring."

Sometimes, though, boring is good. "Boring" can mean any number of things from "decent long-term value" to "calm before the storm" to "buying opportunity." What do you think?