I was about to suggest MacJournal since it has the groovy mac-ness of it plus corporate-friendly things like journal encryption, but it's neither networked nor offers a shell component, so you'd either have to depend on VNC or depend on syncing between remote and local.

TASKS might eventually be the approach I need, even though it's overkill for something I really only need running off a laptop.

The big difference is that MJ (and Apple's iCal) deals with responsibilities/deliverables/due dates as a product of a schedule -- in the case of iCal, as a function of schedule and contacts -- while T deals with a schedule as a product of responsibilities/etc. The one who recommended MJ to me has regular classes and meetings on which most of her deliverables hinge (homework, term papers, reports), so MJ's method is relevant. My contract work involves arbitrary deadlines, dates, meetings and contacts which can be defined by my own whim as much as a client's or contact's or lead's prompting. TASKS might be the better choice. If nothing else, it's leverage for me to learn PHP. Now I'm noticing TASKS exports to iCal, while MJ doesn't. Interesting.

I'm going to give MacJournal a try first, since picking it up is lower-impact. I'll keep an eye on TASKS.

MacJournal: http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/