Hi Ropey,

Here are some ways you might consider for maximizing happiness in your (not so bad) situation:

- continue to enjoy your family

- participate in an OSS project (as previously suggested)

- collaborate with some social project (helping drug addicts, or teach perl to jobless people!)

- martial arts (I can seriously recommend this one)

- write your own papers/books

- learn one/several foreign languages

- .... and the list might grow to infinity



cheers