timeline

“What is the meaning of this strange line in your e-mail signatures?”

The “strange line” is a timeline string like this that I put underneath my mails as a signature for the different phases of my (partial) retirement:

2023-03-22: 0|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~721-----|791

I am currently in the “passive phase” of my partial retirement. It started at 2021-04-01 and will end at 2023-05-31. It consists of 791 days. The timeline starts at 0 and ends at 791 days. The number in between is the current number of days passed, starting at 2021-03-31, related to the date in the first column.

“How is it created?”

The timeline is created by a small Haskell program that you may also execute by yourself by clicking the following links:

standard version (just one line with the current number of days passed)
test version (all lines from all “phases”)

“Haskell? This off-hook pure functional programming language?”

Exactly. In case of interest, you find the source code of the timeline program including additional hints here.

For the insiders: “Where did the old e-mail signature end up?”

The former e-mail signature is archived here.