Super Alarm II
Super Alarm II by David Leithauser & Anthony Stuchel

Introduction

Have you ever been working in Windows and suddenly realized that you had gotten so involved with what you were doing that you lost track of time and missed an important appointment or a TV show you had wanted to watch? Have you ever gotten so involved that you forgot to take a break and suddenly realized your eyes were hurting or your body was all stiff and sore? Do you sometimes forget important dates, such as your anniversary, and end up in hot water later? If the answer to any of these questions is YES, Super Alarm II can help you.

Super Alarm II is a program that lets you store messages and have the computer pop up these messages at any given time and date. You can specify a one-time event that will occur on a specific year, month, and day, or a periodic event that occurs daily, every weekday (Monday through Friday), weekly (same day each week), monthly, or annually. You can also specify the time of day you want the message to pop up, or have Super Alarm II simply display the message the first time you run it on the set day. If you specify a particular time of day, when the appointed day and time arrives, Super Alarm II will pop up the message. Of course, you must be running Windows and Super Alarm II for this to happen, but Super Alarm II can be minimized to an icon and you can be running other Windows programs at the same time. If you are not running Super Alarm II when the appointed date and time of a one-time event arrives, Super Alarm II will inform you that you missed the appointment the next time you run it. (It does not do this for periodic events, since it will remind you of the event the next time it occurs.)

Select one of the topics below for more information:

Main Menu

Setting Alarms

Break Reminders

Responding to an Alarm


Main Menu

Alarms

Set Alarm

This option allows you to set a new alarm. If you select this option from the Alarms menu, Super Alarm II will display a window with many parameters that you can set for your alarm. See Setting Alarms for more information.

View/Delete Alarm

This option allows you to both view and delete an alarm you have set. When you select this option, you will see a list box containing a list of the dates and times of all your alarms, and at least part of the message for each alarm (some messages may be too long to list). You may delete an alarm by double-clicking on an alarm in the list or by selecting the Delete button. You may delete all of the alarms in the list by selecting the Delete All button.

Break Reminder

This option allows you to turn off and on the break reminder and set break reminder conditions. See the Break Reminder for more information.

Set Correct Date/Time

This option under the Alarms menu allows you to set the computer's internal date and time so the alarms will go off at the right times. On most systems, this sets the clock so it will be right even if you turn the computer off and then on again. When you choose this option, you will first see an input box to allow you to input the correct date. The current date is the default. You can input the date in any reasonable format, such as 12/1/95, 12-1-1995, or Dec. 1, 1995. You will then see an input box for the correct time. Input the time in a reasonable format such as 3:30 PM or 15:30. The clock will be reset and start running as soon as you click on the OK button.

Start Minimized

This option allows you to tell Super Alarm II to run minimized (as an icon) when you first run it. You can still restore it to full size by double-clicking on this icon. This is handy if you move Super Alarm II to your Startup group so it automatically runs every time you run Windows. Having Super Alarm II always run when you start Windows means that it is always there to remind you of appointments, and having it start minimized means that it is not in your way while it is doing that. The Start Minimized feature is a toggle switch. When you click on this selection in the Options menu, it turns this feature on if it is off and off if it is on. A check mark appears beside this option if it is turned on.

Stay On Top

This option, when activated, causes the Super Alarm II to stay visible on top of other programs so you can always see the time displayed. The function is toggled on and off by clicking on "Stay On Top" in the Options menu list. A check mark will appear beside "Stay On Top" if the option is currently active.

Exit

This function in the Alarms menu exits Super Alarm II. Remember that Super Alarm II cannot remind you of appointments (trigger an alarm) once you have exited the program. However, when you select the Exit option, Super Alarm II will scan all the alarms in its database. If you have any alarms set for the current day at a time later than the time you exit the program, Super Alarm II will sound those alarms.

Help

Help on Super Alarm II

This option displays the index to the Super Alarm II help file (this file).

About Super Alarm II

This Help option displays the Super Alarm II program information.


Setting Alarms

When you select the Set Alarm option from the Main Menu, the Set Alarms dialog appears.

The first parameter you need to set is the type of alarm you are setting. The types are one-time, daily, weekdays, weekly, monthly, or annual. The type of alarm is selected by clicking on a radio button. It is important to set this parameter first because setting this parameter changes some of the other choices available to you.

Another parameter you can set is the time of day to display the alarm. You can click on the  "On program startup" radio button if you want the message to pop up immediately when you run the program on the day of the alarm. If you want the alarm to go off at a particular time of day, click on the "At time" radio button. This will enable the slider bars for Hours and Minutes, which you can move to set the time displayed in the alarm time box. You can also simply type a time into the time box if you prefer, but using the slide bars insures that you input the time in the correct format.

The procedure for setting the date for the alarm will depend on what type of alarm you have selected. If you selected a one-time event, you will be able to select a month, day, and year for the alarm. You can do this by moving the scroll bars for the Day, Month, and Year or by typing the date in the date box. If the alarm type is daily or weekdays, there is no option for setting a date because there is no specific date for these event. If the alarm type is weekly, a set of radio buttons appears to let you select the day of the week for the alarm. If the alarm type is monthly, a slide bar and input box appear to allow you to input the day of the month for the alarm. You can input the day either by sliding the bar or typing the day in the input box. If the alarm type is annual, an input box and a slide bar for month and for day appear. You can input the month and day of the alarm either with the slide bars or by typing it in directly.

You can set the sound that Super Alarm II makes when it displays the alarm. You can set this to none (a windows pops up but there is no sound to get your attention), a simple beep, or a WAV file. If you select the WAV file, a file selection window will be displayed to allow you to select which WAV file to play for that particular alarm. The file selection window has a Test button to allow you to hear what a file sounds like before you select it.

For some types of alarms, you can set Super Alarm II to show an advance notification as the day of the alarm approaches. (This is not available for daily or weekday events.) For example, for your wedding anniversary, you might want to have Super Alarm II notify you a week in advance so you have time to buy a gift before the big day. If you set an advanced notification, Super Alarm II will display a notification that the alarm is coming up in addition to showing the alarm on the actual day. This advance notification always happens when you first run Super Alarm II on that day. For example, suppose set an alarm for June 20 of each year at 5:00 PM with a 10 day advance notice. Super Alarm II would display an advance notice of that alarm on June 10 when you first run Super Alarm II on that day. It will also display the alarm at 5:00 PM on June 10. If you  do not run Super Alarm II on June 10, it will display the advance notice on the first day between June 10 and June 20 that you run Super Alarm II. It will only display this advance notice once. For example, once it has displayed this advance notice on June 10 it will not display it again on June 11, 12, 13, etc. Of course, if this is an annual event, it will display the advance notice next year on June 10 and the actual alarm next year on June 20.

Last (but certainly not least), you can input the message to be displayed when the alarm is activated at the appropriate date and time. This is the only setting that you must use the keyboard for. Select the message input box by clicking on it with the mouse or by using the TAB key. Then type the message you want Super Alarm II to display when the alarm is triggered. The message is best kept reasonably short, but should be long enough and clear enough to remind you of what the alarm is for, especially if the alarm is a one-time alarm set far in the future or an annual alarm. Typical messages might be "Dental appointment with Dr. Smith at 3:PM" or "Today is your wedding anniversary" or "Time to take your medicine". Note: Do not press the ENTER key while typing the message unless you are finished. Pressing the ENTER key activates the OK button and signals that you are finished setting an alarm. It does not advance you to a new line in the message box. Messages should be one paragraph or less, so there is no reason to use the ENTER key to break a line in the message anyway.

Once you have set all the alarm parameters, you can press ENTER or click on the OK button to save the alarm in your alarm data base. Pressing the Esc key or clicking the Close button will cancel the entire alarm you are entering.


Break Reminders

This option allows you to turn off and on the break reminder and set break reminder conditions. The break reminder will pop up a small window that says "Stop. Time to take a break" at set intervals. You can then click on the OK button or press ENTER to erase the box. This option is designed to remind you to take a break every once in a while to prevent eye strain, muscle fatigue, and carpal tunnel syndrome. A check mark will appear beside "Break Reminder" in the Alarms menu list if this function is currently turned on.

When you select this option under the Alarms menu, a Window will appear that gives you the options for the break reminder. The first item on this window is the On/Off box. Select the appropriate radio button to turn the break reminder on or off as you wish.

Assuming that you turn the break reminder on, you should then set the time between breaks. This can be set by moving the slide bar to set an interval from one minute to three hours.

You can also select the sound played when the break reminder appears. This is very similar to setting the sound for an alarm. You can select no sound (not recommended!), a beep, or a WAV file which you can select.


Responding to an Alarm

When the alarm goes off, it will display a window giving you the alarm message. If the alarm was triggered when you first ran Super Alarm II, there will only be an OK button at the bottom of this window. Click on this button or press the ENTER key or space bar to clear the message.

If the alarm sounded at a set time, there will also be a Snooze button as well as the OK button. Under the snooze button is a slide bar and a display that shows the snooze time. You can move the slide bar to set a time for the alarm to snooze and then click on the snooze button. The alarm will disappear, but will pop back up again after the selected snooze time. This feature is provided because a timed alarm may pop up at an inconvenient time, like while you are on the phone or while you are doing some very important work on the computer. You might not want to stop what you are doing to respond to the alarm immediately. On the other hand, you do not want to simply hit the OK button, which would pop down the alarm and it would not come back up again until the next time the alarm is programmed for (if it is a periodic alarm). If you hit the OK button and then get involved in what you were doing when the alarm went off, you might have forgotten all about the alarm by the time you are finished. Setting the snooze for a reasonable time and hitting the snooze button provides you with a reasonable way to allow you to finish your work and still be reminded of the alarm.