Gentle alarm

One of my problems is that I enjoy staying up extremely late.  With friends in Chicago, Tennessee, and Alaska, I have a tendency to be up til the wee hours of the morning playing Left 4 Dead 2.  I also have a full time job and have to be up early enough to drive the 40 minutes to get there.  This is a recipe for disaster and I have been getting hit pretty hard lately not wanting to get out of bed.  Gentle Alarm changed this.

Gentle alarm has a built in pre-alarm that plays an alarm 10 minutes before your normal alarm by default.  By playing this alarm set at a low volume, the idea is that it will wake your body out of its deep sleep.  I was skeptical at first so I downloaded the trial (which has a humorous limitation of not playing on Wednesdays.)  So far everyday this week Ive had no problem getting out of bed in the morning.  Another really cool feature it has is the ability play a random song from an artist or an album.  I have found that listening to the same alarm over and over makes my body quickly learn to ignore it and continue sleeping; therefore, this should help immensely.  Finally I will say that the UI is a bit lacking.  It is not the most aesthetically pleasing interface but for something that I primarily use while sleeping I think I can live with that.