This would be so cool...
 

If there was a way to tether an alert to an action, for example, if I say OK to a reminder, have it launch the program that I would use to accomplish the task.

I know - it's a lot to ask for. It would be so if we lived in Perfect, which is why we have Walgreens... :)

Regards,
Bal

Not directly. But if you create an attribute (say, Program) and populate that attribute for the item having a reminder with the program to launch (i.e., winword for MS Word, the path of a program or document to open, etc.), then after opening the reminder from the Reminder dialog, you can select the Program attribute in the Item Attributes pane and press Ctrl+Shift+Q (or right-click and choose Open Shortcut with Shift down) to launch it.