If you want to be reminded of something you have to do at a certain time, use the at command

at 11am
at> mail me -s "Time to leave" -m "Meeting in the office"

This will send ‘me’ and email at 11am to remind me about the meeting.

at 7am
at> xmessage "You have a meeting on `date +%m/%d/%Y`"

This will pop up a simple X-Window box with the message “You have a meeting on 03/07/2006” (if it is the 6th of March of course). The man page for at gives you some more options to setup this simple utility.

Eric Davis