I gotta be straight with you, I didn’t wake up one day thinking, “I need to code my horoscope.” This whole thing started because I was mad. Not just a little annoyed, but steaming, ready-to-quit mad.
Last month, I was wrestling with my annual review. I’ve busted my butt for three years at this outfit. I mean, late nights, early mornings, canceled weekends—the whole nine yards. And what did I get? A flat 2% raise. It was an insult. I slammed my laptop shut, walked out, and just sat in my car, staring at the sky. I thought, What is wrong with me? Am I just fundamentally unlucky? That’s when I remembered my sister always blaming her sign for her troubles. She’s a Virgo too.
So, the challenge I set was simple. I didn’t want the fluffy, flowery, four-paragraph nonsense you read online. I just wanted a definitive: GOOD or BAD. No maybe, no subtle energy shifts, just a simple call. I decided I was going to try and build the world’s most cynical, data-driven daily career horoscope for Virgos.
The Scrape and the Mess
First thing I did was fire up a quick little Python script. Don’t worry about the jargon; it’s just a way to teach the computer to read a webpage. I pointed it at three different major astrology sites. The idea was to pull the text from their “Career” section for the current date. Easy peasy, right? Wrong.
What came back was a goddamn mess. Site A said: “Today requires meticulous focus; avoid rash decisions.” Site B said: “Financial opportunities are bright, network aggressively.” Site C said: “A slight tension in the workplace is apparent, but progress is being made.” You see the problem? Meticulous? Financial opportunities? Tension? None of this translates easily to a simple GOOD or BAD.
I realized I had to simplify the entire universe of astrological junk into two buckets. I had to ditch the idea of truly understanding the stars and just focus on the words, the vibes.
The Simple Keyword Hack
I had to manually build a keyword list. I started spending evenings scrolling through six months of old horoscopes, looking for patterns. It was mind-numbing, but the core idea was to find the emotional lean of the language used. Was it encouraging or was it a wet blanket?
I settled on a very crude, very personal system. It’s a point-scoring method:
- For every time the script saw a positive word, it got +1 point.
- For every time it saw a negative word, it got -1 point.
The GOOD list was words like: Ascend, Money, Bonus, Green Light, Success, Promotion, Launch, Thrive, Opportunity. You know, things I wanted to see.
The BAD list was: Hurdle, Tension, Conflict, Slow Down, Caution, Review, Delay, Obstacle, Frustration. Basically, the stuff that makes Friday afternoon suck.
The final rule was ironclad: If the total score was 1 or more, the answer for the day was GOOD. If it was 0 or less, the answer was BAD. Simple. Brutal. Unflinchingly stupid. My script would add up all the points from the three websites, divide by zero, and call it a day. (Just kidding, it just adds them up.)
The Real Reason I Wrote This Crap
I got the script running. It actually works. Every morning I get a text message that just says Virgo Career Luck: GOOD or Virgo Career Luck: BAD. It’s almost a religious ritual now. It tells me today’s answer, and I usually scoff and go do whatever I was going to do anyway. The real twist, though, the reason I committed this ridiculous amount of time to something I fundamentally don’t believe in, is because of my old boss, Greg.
I spent five years under a guy who literally ran the entire department based on his own stupid horoscope. Greg was a Leo. He wasn’t subtle about it, either. Every morning, he’d read his forecast, and if it mentioned ‘power’ or ‘authority’ or ‘bold moves’, he’d go on a reckless rampage, signing off on huge, unvetted projects, and demanding impossible deadlines from the team. We were running around like chickens with our heads cut off.
If the stars mentioned ‘reflection’ or ‘retreat’, he’d lock himself in his office and ignore every single email, letting urgent stuff pile up until we were all drowning in late responses. This wasn’t just a minor quirk; it was the foundation of his decision-making. He literally told a client once that a meeting had to be rescheduled because “the stars aren’t aligned for financial negotiations.” We lost the contract. We all watched the department slowly, painfully crumble because of his absolute faith in this junk.
I got out of there just before the whole thing imploded. But that experience left a mark. It made me realize how much people cling to this external stuff when things get tough. I built this script as a kind of private middle finger to all that nonsense. By making the answer so simple—GOOD or BAD—I stripped away all the comforting fluff. It’s a daily, stupid reminder that if you let something this arbitrary run your life, you are going to crash and burn, just like Greg did. Your luck today? It’s whatever you make it.
The script just happens to be running in the background, keeping score, and confirming that the entire premise is ridiculous. But hey, it delivers the simple answer. No fluff, no fuss.
And for the record, today the script said: BAD. Guess I’ll wear a helmet.
