I have been suffering a relatively severe pain in my right leg for the past four months or so. If I walk more than two or three hundred feet it starts in my hip and rapidly works its way down to my lower calf. Nothing worked to fix it except to get the weight off the leg for a few minutes, then the pattern would repeat.

Tiring of doctors, SWMBO dragged me to a physical therapist who quickly diagnosed it is sciatica caused by muscle fibrosis around the nerve sheath. Sounds bogus to me, except that the treatment has been miraculously efficacious. [Hah! Efficacious - first time the word has been used on the bbs! I rock! ] After the first treatment I have been pain-free for the first time in months. The treatment consists of incredibly painful deep massage to break up the fibrosis. To give a bit of perspective here, I have been told by numerous people that I have an extraordinarily high pain tolerance level, and this treatment pegs out at 10 on the pain scale. This therapist can feel the fibrosis with his fingertips (very bad, "muy mala en cada pierna") whereas I can feel nothing out of the ordinary, but he unerringly and without fail goes immediately to the most painful spot. I appreciate very much that he is willing and able to cause serious pain as a necessity for the treatment, as opposed to an ineffective regime that might allow his victims err, clients a degree of comfort.

He says he has seen my problem often enough to be quite confident that the root cause was sitting immobile in front of my computer for hours at a time without ever leaving my chair. When I get engrossed in something (such as my budget spreadsheet or my home design program) I have been known to sit for six or more hours without a break. He says he will fix the fibrosis, but if I don't change my habits the problem will return.

He wants me, without fail, to get out of my chair and stretch every 40 minutes; after three hours of this to stretch every 30 minutes. Just a brief break - 10 or 15 seconds is all. I will not think to do this unless I have a repetitive reminder.

Is there some simple way to have a pop-up reminder accompanied by an audio sound (like a bell) show up on my screen at 40 minute intervals? And even get fancy and go to 30 minute intervals after three hours? I would need to be able to reset the start time of the routine whenever I started working with the computer.

I don't know if this would be an application, or if there is something in the OS (like Task Scheduler) that would do the job. Probably an application...

tanstaafl.

My employer installs this for at risk computer users.

i shouldn't be surprised that someone has written a program to remind a person to get up, sounds like that "NASA spent millions making a pen that works in space... the Russians used a pencil" type of affair!

can you not just set a repeat countdown alarm on your cellphone?

with all due respect, will power is what is required, rather than technology. i set reminders on my phone, my pc, in my diary and iphone but, i'm still almost always late because i turn them off and carry on, usually engrossed in nothing important!

Will power! want to do it and you will!

Hugh

BTW, hope the condition stays away dude, i get rsi in my mouse hand, as someone who spends many hours a day using scalpels, weeding tools and a mouse editing nodes etc all day, it's not fun!

A not-unreasonable solution: drink lots of water. Not only is this good for you (stay hydrated!), but your bladder will serve as an alarm clock.

No. Being telephobic by nature, I refuse to have one of those infernal devices!

It isn't a matter of willpower, it is a matter of awareness. Many times I have looked at my watch, saw that it was 10 past midnight, and decided I'd better get to bed after just one more compile, or one more try at that elusive Excel formula, or just one more ... you get the idea. I look at my watch a moment later and it is quarter past three, three hours gone in a flash. At least (hopefully) the reminders will either get me to bed or at least out of my chair for a moment.

tanstaafl.

You need to work in a dreamstate, where in a 5 minute flash of real time you can get perhaps a 10 fold or more slice of work time.

Use a kitchen timer.

The tools that people use to remind them to take a break from the screen should work as well.

Not really... I apparently have an unusually large bladder and normally urinate just twice a day, even though I drink an adequate amount of liquids.

BTW, there is no scientific basis for the oft-quoted claim that a person is supposed drink eight 8-oz. glasses of water a day.

tanstaafl.

Yes, you can do that sort of thing in Task Scheduler quite easily, although the UI on Task Scheduler will take some learning. Also, most email programs include calendar/reminder features, but those are meant usually for daily/weekly kinds of calendaring. Task Scheduler should theoretically work for what you want. It has an option for the task to be "display a message".

Note sure about the 40-changing-to-30 thing, but for a start you could just do 40 and that should help immensely.

Hmm... I always thought it was something along the lines of your body utilizes that much water, but what people don't realize is that H2O is created in the cells as a waste product of energy use.
So... drink 8 glasses of water? no.

Off to google...

You're supposed to consume a large amount of water a day but it isn't specifically 8 glasses and depends on your body. You get quite a bit from your food anyway.

I am familiar with the Task Scheduler UI, including the nasty bit where if you change your login password (as required periodically by many employers) all the tasks you set up cease to work until you go back through and re-do them.

The program I linked to at the top of this thread does pretty much exactly what I want, other than the dual-time thing (I just set it to 30 minutes regardless) and no audio.

tanstaafl.

I believe I've seen at least a dozen programs that can do this. This one is the first I came across when searching.

Which is the one I linked to in my first post and installed this morning and it works quite well.

tanstaafl.

...I don't see any link or any mention of finding an application...?

Hah! You are right! I edited my first post, saying something to the effect of "Hmmm.... this might work." but I must have forgotten to save the edit or something, because it isn't there!

My apologies!

tanstaafl.

I think something more odd happened, as I am sure I saw your edit in place at one point.

I saw the edited link as well.