looking for applications: timer/stopwatch; alarm

[Cheryl Homiak]

1. does anybody know of a console program that can serve as a
stopwatch/timer?
What I want to do is start the program when I begin a particular task and
stop it when I'm finished or have to quit. I'd also then like it to have
the option of being
cumulative--i.e., if I stop what I'm working on before I'm actually
finished and then go back to it, I want it to start keeping track of my
time on the task where I left off when I start the program again. These
aren't necessarily computer tasks I'm wanting to keep track of time on,
though in some cases they might be, but I'd like my computer to act like a
stopwatch/timer with me only having to start and pause or stop it instead
of having to use a regular stopwatch.

2. Does anybody know if there is a console-based program that will allow
me to set my computer to function as an alarm clock? Of course, I know I
can find a sound file and set something up in cron, but I wondered if
there is a program out there. I am using grandfatherclock and saytime with
crontab to announce the time and play westminster chimes, but
grandfatherclock doesn't have an alarm function per se--well, I don't
think a grandfather clock would probably have an alarm anyway.
Any info on either of these two items would be appreciated. am using
debian unstable and did run apt-cache search and various words related to
these ideas. Anything I found looked pretty much like it had to be used
with X, with the one exception of the possibility of using "remind" for an
alarm clock function.


thanks.


-- 
Cheryl