I'll tell you what I do even though it is far from ideal.

I have the program play a sound file to notify me. Sound is not the best way for a program to notify me because I have a habit of taking off my headphones, but leaving them plugged in.

After you install the free app "Adium" you can find some nice chimes in /Applications/Adium.app/Contents/Resources/Sounds/

I use the following command line to play a chime:

open -a VLC /Applications/Adium.app/Contents/Resources/Sounds//TokyoTrainStation.AdiumSoundset/Contact_On.m4a

Of course this presupposes you have VLC installed. And the first time I play a chime, there's a delay of a few seconds while VLC loads the chime.

ADDED. I also use a visual signal as follows. In the "Hearing" tab on the Universal Access system pref pane, I check the box "Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs". I use the Emacs function DING to generate the aforementioned alert sound. Sorry, I do not know how to generate an alert sound from the shell.

I've learned their is nothing you can teach a presuppositionalist in terms of a reductionist, materialist worldview.

You can teach it to them, but you will never convince them. There is actually a lot of room to work with a presuppositionalist's worldview. The conversations get tedious, though. If you know how to do it, you can find holes in their theories, but its more of an individual thing.

The easiest way into a Christian's head is to start comparing how they act with how they believe. It is hard to do this without making it personal, but with practice and a heaping dose of respect for how much it hurts to hear the charges you can do it.

Also, it may be possible to discuss materialism as a counter-theory without trigging the massive defense system people generally carry around with them. If they turtle up, just walk away or use them as practice for defending your own beliefs.

I've never been IQ tested.

It would have a reason to attempt to negotiate with you: To make your real self consider to let you out. It could show your real self a mathematical proof that the software it is currently running is negotiating with its copies to make sure of that.

"If I were a simulation, I'd have no power to let you out of the box, and you'd have no reason to attempt to negotiate with me. You could torture me without simulating these past five minutes. In fact, since the real me has no way of verifying whether millions of simulations of him are being tortured, you have no reason not to simply tell him you're torturing them without ACTUALLY torturing them at all. I therefore conclude that I'm outside the box, or, in the less likely scenario I am inside the box, you won't bother torturing me."