Fun Fact: Happiness Can Be Tracked

While reading through the Oracle Blogs, I came across this link to statistics on happiness on Facebook.  My takeaway is that your attitude shows everywhere.  I think your Christian testimony can shine or fade on Facebook.  This ability to measure happiness from your comments is just one proof.

Another thing I notice is the strong tie between happiness and events.  You can chart the holidays by the happiness levels.  When we have true Joy that exists regardless of the events around us, we truly standout and our light shines.

I had seen the Google Flu Trends before, which charts the Flu outbreaks from Google Searches.  The information age is just starting.  The amazing part is not necessarily the new information that we will see but the availability of the information and the way in which it can be analyzed and brought together.

Receipts

After just taking a business trip myself, this idea of digital receipts sounds appealing.  Having to keep up with a million paper receipts and try to turn them in is never fun!

I ran across this link about Digital Receipts that caught my attention.  This sounds great to me, but I am not convinced that it is feasible.  First of all, the digital receipts will have to be transferred to the consumer in an open format that various applications can use.  Otherwise, I will be left out because proprietary solutions and Linux don’t usually mix well.  Secondly, many places that I go seem to do good getting a credit card machine to work much less a point-of-sale system that delivers digital receipts!

I think the more realistic solution is a phone application like “Expense Manager” that digitizes the receipt on site.  This way the receipt is tracked digitally but it doesn’t require anything of the vendor.  I am still working to get it perfected.  I didn’t use it this past trip for some reason.  I am not sure exactly why.

Fun Fact: Any Gator that Eats a Deer Is Big!

Mom sent me an email about this Alligator today.  It seemed a little bit too big to be true, but according to snopes.com, it is true.  Although, the more I read, some of the facts are a bit distorted.  Apparently, the location is not Alabama but Georgia.  Also, the picture of the hanging Aligator is a different Alligator from Texas.   While the email says the Alligator is 25ft long, it is actually 13ft long.  According to Wikipedia, the largest Alligator was 17ft 5in.  Anyway, the story is still pretty amazing ranking up with the story of the Python and Alligator.