[Remind-Fans] Using remind-files as todo-lists

[Tim Chase]

On 2018-04-13 08:17, Dianne Skoll wrote:
> Tim Chase <remind at tim.thechases.com> wrote:
>> once I send a card on (say, March 26th), I want to mark the task
>> as "complete" (however is best/easiest) so that I no longer
>> receive the "send card" notifications, but still see the birthday
>> on the calendar on Apr 14th.  
> 
> I believe you're over-thinking it.  Why not just edit the reminder
> when you send the card, to take out the (send card) text?  You can
> also remove the ++7 while you're editing.

This was sorta what I'd been doing, but then I need to remember to go
back in and edit/restore the entries back for the following year.
The hope was for a one-touch-per-event solution.

> Also, $T is the trigger date which will always be April 14.
> You probably want to use today(), and I think you have the 0, 7
> reversed... should be 7, 0.

Ah, that today() thing was a big part of the issue.  With that advice,
the solution I finally came up with that works adequately for me is

 REM Apr 4  ++[iif($Uy>2018,7,0)] MSG %"Mom's birthday%"% %b% 
 REM Jun 14 ++[iif($Uy>2017,7,0)] MSG %"Dad's birthday%"% %b%

All I need to do is increment the year in which I most recently sent
the card (vim makes it easy to increment a number with ctrl+a) and
save/quit.  So with the above, come June 7th, I'll start getting
reminders to send a birthday card to Dad.  Once I do, I update to the
current year as my way of marking it as done, and then I don't get any
more nags, but it still reminds me on the day-of as well so I can
call, and it also automatically starts nagging me next year without
any restorative action on my part.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction,

-tim