Cha-ching!

In the first months of Poker Copilot, every sale was a cause for celebration. To ensure I celebrated as soon as the sale happened, I set up “You have a sale” e-mails to trigger an SMS to my mobile phone. It was pretty cool to get an SMS whenever I got a sale. At first.

As sales increased these SMS messages deprived me of a good night’s sleep. The majority of my sales occur in the US evening, while people living in Europe (such as myself) are sleeping. Multiple SMS messages throughout the night stops being fun really quickly. So I disabled this system long ago.

Today I set up a more humane, non-sleep-depriving alternative. When my computer is on and Mac Mail is running, any “You have a sale” e-mail now triggers a thoroughly satisfying cha-ching noise.
I didn’t think at first that Mac Mail could do this sort of thing, but indeed it can. In Mail’s Preferences, there’s a “Rules” panel which allows for all sorts of event-driven interaction:
Here’s how simple it was to set up my cha-ching! rule:

It’s rewarding, when deep in thought trying to track down a bug, to hear the sound of money arriving into the virtual cash register.