The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Life

What’s happening in my life

  • The top 10 advantages of low-rent living

    Trap

    One of the biggest threats to happiness at work is having too many fixed expenses at home. When you’re completely dependent on bringing home a pay check (or two!) every single month, you’re vulnerable. If work turns out to be unbearable you can’t simply up and leave and take three months without income.

    I’ve chosen low-rent living for myself. At first it was through accident rather than planning but now I would never live any other way. Read on to see how it has made me happy at work – and in life.
    (more…)

  • Vacation

    VacationThe weather in Denmark right now is so good, I just can’t believe. Danish summers can easily be three weeks of rain, distinguishable from spring, autumn and winter only becaus the rain is not quite as cold.

    But right now we’re having real, genuine summer weather, which is perfect timing, because I’m going on vacation for a week which I’ll be spending with my family and wonderful girlfriend in a summer home near the beach. Yay!

    But don’t worry, I’ve blogged ahead, so new posts will appear next week. I’ll be back the week after, ready to finish the Happy at Work Book. With the speed I’ve been going, that shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks :o)

  • Computer troubles. And computer bliss.

    My laptop died last week. OK, OK, if you want to know the truth: I killed it. I swear I didn’t mean to. This wasn’t premeditated murder it was more like involuntary manslaughter.

    Anyway: Perfect opportunity to buy a new laptop. I scanned the market and found big ones, small ones, cheap ones and expensive ones. But I ended up going with the gorgeous one. Just look at it:

    LG Notebook LG Notebook LG Notebook

    I spent some hours yesterday installing Ubuntu Linux on it, restoring my data from a backup and installing all the other applications that I use. Thanks to the Automatix script, that went incredibly easy.

    You install Automatix, start it, select which of the 45 options you want installed, and it goes to work. An hour later, everything was installed and worked. That is quite simply amazing!

  • Happy birthday to m… HOLY COW, I’m on digg

    There’s been a lot of interesting stuff happening the last 24 hours:

    And then something funny happened to my blog. I submitted my post on the top 10 mistakes managers of geeks make to reddit and… well look what happened to my stats:

    Stats

    Yikes. In short order the post got picked up by del.icio.us and Fark, but WordPress was till holding up. Then the post made it to the front page of digg, and the site promptly died :o)

    The best part is that the post really seemed to resonate with people and it got a lot of insightful comments and great feedback. I hope people can use it to create better relations between geeks and managers.

    And now that the site is back up and running I can go back to bed and sleep some more :o)

  • The leaky sombrero

    Me on a nice spring day

    I took this picture of myself the other day – one of the first sunny spring days of the year – and posted it to my photo account at 23. I didn’t realize the full comic potential of the picture, however, until another 23 user nailed me with this comment:

    Spring arrrh..time to bring out the old leaking sombrero :)

    (Thank you Tveskov).

    UPDATE: Oschlag outdoes me… with leaky pants. Think we can start a meme around this?

  • Friday links

    No Cilantro (fresh coriander)Here’s an excellent interview with Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning, safe-cracking, bongo-playing physicist. The introduction alone is great: Feynman explains how a scientific world view doesn’t detract from, but adds to, the beauty of a flower.

    I hate Cilantro (fresh coriander) too. Finally a worthwhile, global cause I can get behind.

    The guy who always wears a name tag and the guy who’s trading a red paperclip for a house are both still at it. That’s life art life-art.

  • Black is the new thrill

    Snowboarding

    The wonderful girlfriend and I hit the slopes in Alpe d’Huez 2 weeks ago and just kept on hitting them. I expected her to improve, this being only her second time skiing. I did not expect her to start tackling red and black runs with total abandon. Gotta be those swiss genes.

    Patricia skiing

    I also did not expect myself to turn into a total off-piste hound. Untill now I’ve been your normal, polite, never-stray-outside-the-slopes snowboarder. Now it’s more like “Hey look: Powder! I’m going over there.”

    Off piste

    The entrance to Le Tunnel

    The steepest slope in Alpe d’Huez is called Le Tunnel. You take the lift to the top of the mountain (at 3.330 meter), then ski down a 200 meter long tunnel they drilled straight through the mountain top. On the other side, this view greets you:

    Le Tunnel

    Yep, I did that. Didn’t even blink :o)

    I had more trouble dealing with what has to be the world’s largest cappucino:

    The world's largest cappuccino

    It’s been great and it’s just as great to be back.

    A special, great big thank you to Traci Fenton for guest blogging while I was away. Traci, you rock!

  • Gone skiing

    Gone skiingAllrighty then, I’m outta here.

    I’d love to hang around, but there’s fresh snow in the alps, and Patricia and I can’t possibly stay in Copenhagen and leave those pristine slopes unskied/unsnowboarded by us. It would be against our religion. This time we’re going all out and staying for two weeks of fun in the snow.

    While I’m gone, I have a special treat for all the readers of positivesharing.com: I’ve snagged one of my all-time favorite people as a guest blogger.

    Traci FentonThat’s right, the one and only Traci Fenton, one of the most determined, energetic, creative, fun, visionary people I have ever met, has agreed to blog right here.

    Traci is the CEO of WorldBlu, a company dedicated to organizational democracy. She is also the woman behind one of the best conference events I have ever attended, the WorldBlu forum in 2005.

    It’s only fitting that Traci should blog here, because we actually met through this very blog – way back in 2003 I wrote about a mention of Traci in Fast Company. Traci saw that and contacted me.

    I’ve also pre-blogged a few posts of my own which will come online while I’m gone. Through the magic of technology… (start spooky voice) it will seem as if I’m still here.

    And while I’m gone, why not read my best article on happiness at work so far: Make your business rich and happy.

  • Tagged

    Mike Wagner of Own Your Brand tagged me for the 4-meme that’s going around. Seems more contagious than bird flu :o) So here goes – trivia about me:

    Four jobs I’ve had

    1. Clueless part-time sales guy at Bilka electronics (a supermarket)
    2. Programmer for Bang&Olufsen. Was there 6 months, never got to program a single line of code
    3. Co-founder and consultant at Enterprise Systems
    4. CHO (Chief Happiness Officer)

    The last two were almost too much fun to qualify as work. They were more in the nature of play

    Four movies I could watch over and over

    1. The Matrix (coolest movie)
    2. Love actually (happiest movie)
    3. Koyaanisqatsi (most beautiful movie)
    4. Life of Brian (funniest movie)

    In fact, it’s best never to quote Monty Python around me – I may be difficult to stop, once I get started :o) Dead parrot, anyone?

    Four places I have lived

    1. Tunis, Tunisia
    2. Las Palmas, Spain
    3. Odense, Denmark
    4. Copenhagen, Denmark

    Four TV shows I love to watch

    1. Battlestar Galactica
    2. Lost
    3. The Daily Show
    4. The Simpsons

    Though our TV is in the closet most of the time and usually only comes out for important national soccer games. You can follow all of these shows on bittorrent.

    Battlestar Galactica is especially good. The season finale last week showed why: Great writing, great characters, great dialogue, and you never know what’s coming next. Lost is almost as good, and more addicitve than crack.

    Four places I have been on holiday

    1. Florida
    2. Cedar Point
    3. Phillipines
    4. Paris

    What can I say, I’m an adrenaline junkie, and roller-coasters are a great way to get that rush.

    Four websites I visit daily

    1. Creating passionate users
    2. Tveskov.com
    3. Google (duh!)
    4. digg.com

    Four of my favorite foods

    1. Spaghetti Bolognese (or simply “bolo” at our place)
    2. Sushi
    3. Burgers from Five Guys
    4. Kellog’s Frosties

    Four places I would rather be right now

    1. Snowboarding in the alps (and a week from now I will be)
    2. London. Cooool city.
    3. Tokyo. Never been there – really, really want to.
    4. Beijing. Never been there – really, really want to.

    Though I gotta say I’m also pretty happy right here, right now :o)

    And four bloggers I am tagging

    Patricia Hansen of Patricia OnLine, if she’ll accept, because she is such a wonderful person. And girlfriend.

    Stephen Shapiro of Goal-free living, if he’ll accept, because I enjoyed meeting him in DC and get a real kick out of the whole goal-free approach.

    Bernie deKoven of Bernie’s FunLog, if he’ll accept, because I truly admire his deep knowledge and practice of play.

    Solveig Haugland of openoffice.blogs.com, if she’ll accept, because I admire her style, her writing and her dedication to open source.

  • A new playmate

    Jodee Bock writes some very kind words about my post on The story so far.

    Thank you Jodee, I’m truly honored!

    A while ago I asked “How do you find your playmates”, and increasingly “Through their blogs” is the answer.