[DonHopkins]

At Sun, during the dark days of Solaris, when everyone was depressed and wanted to quit, our manager sat down with each of us and asked: "I want to know your happiness index, a number from 1 to 10. You can use any algorithm you want to come up with it, just use the same algorithm each time so we can track how it changes over time."

I had a BS degree in Computer Science, but I was never taught an algorithm for calculating my happiness index, not even in my Artificial Intelligence class. So I had to wing it.

To protest, one of my cow-orkers made "rpc.happyd", a Sun RPC server whose function it was to track the happiness index of the team members over the network, and "HappyTool", a graphical user interface to rpc.happyd which drew a face for each team member, with a slider under your own face for adjusting the face from happy to sad.

Here's a demo of the HyperNeWS version of HappyTool, which I wrote in NeWS PostScript, and which lets you copy an encapsulated PostScript happy face to the clipboard that you can paste into other HyperNeWS applications (like pasting into the customizable clock face to make happy and sad clocks):

https://youtu.be/avJnpDKHxPY?t=13m24s

[mercer]

I might just try this 'use the same algorithm' approach for my short- to midterm happiness. Very interesting idea, and it seems to fit within the zen/CBT approach I've been working on. Thanks!

[shihabmdp]

Great! Thanks for sharing