Personal Status Bar

I don't work because I want to. I work because I have to. That being said, I could very well become Peter Gibbons and do nothing at all every day, just sucking up a salary and leaving people to wonder why I haven't been fired yet.

The one thing that keeps me going, besides the fact that I'm terrified of losing my job (and thus a monkey of The Man) is the idea of setting and reaching goals - my job has certain requirements, and when I achieve them, I feel good about myself.

With this handy-dandy device, most of you could, too! The Personal Status Bar is a small bar of LED lights, perhaps 100 columns of four. It comes with velcro sticky tabs so that it can mount to computer monitors, desks, et cetera.

Simply plug it in to your computer (USB port preferred), and a menu pops up, with two lines: Goal and Input. Enter your goal (say, five sales). Each time you make a sale, press the spacebar and your Personal Progress Bar will announce to you and the rest of the world that you're that much closer to your goal.

For complex goals and inputs (say, 15,000 dollars raised for charity x), type the appropriate numerical value into the input box, and it will automatically be normalized to an appropriate percentage increase.

Available in several colors, including the classic grey frame with blue lights, for you Windows installation addicts.

Premier versions would include speakers, so that you could have it play some sort of triumphant sound when you reach your goal (old Windows "Ta-Da!" trumpet, anyone?), and would also be compatible with popular PDA OSes, for portability.

Also available in a self-enclosed version with a 10-key pad for those who want to count muffins baked, weeds tossed, zits popped - whatever.

Inspired by a [bristolz] anno: //In fact an application that just displays progress bars is something I'd buy.//