I travel a lot and have to make sure I get up on time or otherwise I miss flights, speaking engagements and more, work. Josh posted he was looking for a new travel alarm clock so I thought I would throw my $.02 in the ring.
All of us have different likes and dislikes. Our sleeping habits are as varied as the number of alarm clocks out there. Some of us can get up with a simple beep beep beep and others need a little more jarring. Others need a nuclear weapon to go off to get up.
I grew up on what I like to call a small farm house. I say small farm house because we didn’t have 2000 acres but we did have large gardens, plant corn for animals, raise chickens, pigs, cows and other critters. How I managed to get involved with technology is a mystery to this day. Most people have no idea what it is like to wake up to a rooster crowing on your window seal. This is probably the best alarm clock of them all! The only problem with the rooster is you can’t set him to a certain time 🙂 The rooster is going to crow before the crack of dawn no matter what, and then continue to crow during the day at random intervals.
So what do I use to make sure I don’t miss anything and get up? I happen to carry my alarm clock with me wherever I go. I use my Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC phone. Here is a screen shot of the built-in alarm screen in the pocket PC. You have three separate times you can set and label. One for morning, one for the afternoon nap and another for something else. The days you want it to go off can be customized as well. So for example you can set it to wake up on Thursday / Friday at this time, and then turn off the alarm for Saturday or Sunday.
I have my phone set to vibrate and also play one of the most annoying built-in sounds on the device, the dog bark. I always place the phone on a hard wood surface to take advantage of the vibrating to increase the annoyance. These two combinations of vibration on the hard wood surface and the loud dog bark does the trick every time.
If I have something to do, like a plane flight where I have to get up at 4:00 AM, I will set all three alarms at 5 minutes apart. It is easy to do and the phone essentially never stops vibrating and or barking. For me, 99.9% of the time I am awaken by the vibrating on the table.
Really great stuff and i also love it.
BTW, my favorite alarm clock failed me this past Friday. My battery was almost dead when I got back to the hotel around 9:30 or so. I plugged the phone in by the bed for it to charge, but for some reason the light switch on the wall is what controlled the plug I was using. Although my phone was plugged in it wasn’t getting power and ran out of juice shortly thereafter.
Luckily my internal alarm clock went off and I got up on time for an early meeting. However, this is a note to self. Self, make sure the orange charge light comes on when you plug it in at night.