I heard from -t this morning. Her DH had to go to NY related to bringing his company's data center back up so she is alone at the moment. She has to get out of the hotel she is in and is contacting friends.

This whole situation is so heartbreaking. It tears me up to watch the reports. It's emotionally overwhelming.

ita: [link]

Do other people use clocks that care about the day of the week?

No. Every night when I go to bed and set my alarm, I check to see when it's set for and adjust (my alarm time varies depending if I'm going to work an hour late or not, and if I'm gonna eat breakfast at home or get it in Evanston). So I really don't know when I have to get up until the night before.

Damn, Tom, that's ugly. Useful, but ugly. I can't believe that " it can’t possibly be the first time someone has thought of this" even needed saying. I mean, it can't be, can it?

I'm lucky in that I wake up anyway, but I have a paranoia sadly uncoupled with the slightest OCD tendencies (or maybe I'm O and not C) about making sure at least one alarm is set, just in case.

Useful, but ugly.

Reminds me of the early versions of ... something. You could cover it with a tastefully painted cloth box and call it a paperweight, I guess.

ita, is your PC in your bedroom? It looks like there might be some programs you can download, here: [link] I thought I hit on something at Amazon, but it let you set alarms for weekdays, weekends, or everyday. It didn't seem to have the flexibility you're looking for. And yeah, someone should have thought of this long before. Our clocks are digital now, for goodness sake. My VCR can be set day by day long ahead of time.

Damn, -t's in my thoughts, and I wish I could teleport her up here. We have a kind of spare bed (sure, it's in the basement with the spiders and we're using it for storage, but we could clear it off!).

Im toying with the idea of getting a pay-as-you-go phone/plan from T-Mobile. Anyone have any experience they want to share, or an alternate recommendation that I could get up and running by Thursday morning?

Dana, I've been on this since December. As long as you always remember to refill by the deadline, you're fine.

What there should be is an alarm clock with a wireless network connection so you can program your alarm clock from your computer and tell it what MP3 to use to wake you up.

They've declared martial law in Orleans Parish.

As long as you always remember to refill by the deadline, you're fine.

If you don't refill by the deadline, you lose unused minutes, right? Other than that, are there any issues? Like, I use up all my minutes. I don't buy any for a while. Then I buy some new minutes. Are my service/number still good, or does the phone have to be in constant usage?

is your PC in your bedroom?

Yes, but I turn the screen (with speakers) off at night -- otherwise I can hear if it tries to connect to the internet to get my mail and fails.

I froogled "daily alarm clock" and one of the links was this, which scares me. I think I'll go have lunch and try again.