Setting Reminders

Guy Friday can alert you about appointments, phone calls, anniversaries, or whatever else you want. Just set a reminder for yourself by pressing the graphical Reminder Button, which looks like a little clock.

As long as Guy Friday is running either in the foreground or background, you’ll be alerted about your reminder, even if you’re using another application. (See the help subject “Technical and Miscellaneous ” for info on how to insure Guy Friday is always running in the background.)

After you press the Reminder Button, the Reminder Dialog will pop up. The Reminder Dialog seems a little daunting at first, but you should quickly figure out how to use it. First, type in what Guy Friday should remind you about. For instance:

“Don’t forget to call Jim about the nuclear detonator I accidentally left in his car.”

Next, tell Guy Friday when he should remind you about it. There’s space to enter a date, which should be in MM/DD/YY format. If you choose not to enter a date, Guy Friday assumes you want to be reminded today (or tomorrow, depending on the time you input).

There’s also space to enter the time you want to be reminded. Be sure to enter “AM” or “PM”, or else Guy Friday may wait until dinnertime to wake you for an important morning meeting. If you choose not to enter a time, Guy Friday assumes you want a “Quick Reminder”—usually within the hour. This is useful if you’re in the middle of something but want to remind yourself to, say, call someone back. You can set the exact Quick Reminder time in the General Preferences. Factory setting is 15 minutes.

If you don’t enter a date and instead solely click the day-of-week check boxes, Guy Friday assumes you want to be reminded on that particular day-of-week coming up. For example, if today is Tuesday, and you simply click the Saturday check-box without typing a date, Guy Friday will remind you on the upcoming Saturday. If, however, you enter a formal MM/DD/YY date for a Saturday next month, Guy Friday will remind you then.

Last, you can specify how often you want the reminder to occur: Just Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Annually. Be aware that if you manually click several day-of-week check-boxes, those reminders form a “set” which repeat however often you specify. 

If Guy Friday needs to remind you about something, but is in the background, it will use the Notification Manager to alert you about what you need to do. I've found that when I’m in the middle of something else, it’s hard for me to stop immediately to do what Guy Friday wants. Of course, if I don’t do it right away, I risk forgetting about it, which defeats the purpose of a reminder system. So, if Guy Friday is in the background when it needs to remind you about something, it will continue reminding you every 15 minutes until you acknowledge the reminder by calling Guy Friday to the foreground (simply click on the Guy Friday status window). This feature can be disabled through the General Preferences. Note that the delay value (i.e. the 15 minutes) is the same value as the “Quick Reminder” delay value, described above.

You can edit reminders by double-clicking the List Reminders window.