Personally I think Bill Richardson would have been a better choice. Adds the foreign policy cred without all of Biden’s baggage.

I’m using a 1G iPhone with v2.0.2 OS

• Bluetooth - OFF
• WiFi - ON
• Push - OFF
• Fetch New Data - 30 min
• Location Services (now OFF to see if I can improve till next update)

Please hurry Apple.

I’m not going to argue the merits of the case but I’m curious to know if anyone else thinks that this decision might be interpreted to mean that physicians no longer can say no to anyone for any reason.

Let’s start at the beginning. Sometimes integration of a Mac in the corporate environment is a bit difficult and takes a bit of ingenuity. This is especially true when dealing with Exchange. The current versions of iCal and iCal Server are CalDAV and iCalendar compliant. Only Outlook 2007 is said to be CalDAV and iCalendar compliant. Previous versions of Outlook are not compliant and don’t play well with other calendar applications. Here’s the actual time zone (TZID) spec and the spec for how it should be formatted. You can see by looking at it that the TZID that Outlook produces is non-compliant.

A quick Google search shows an article or two that explain this very well.

I’ve found that there are at least 3 different types of invites that can be sent by Exchange/Outlook.

1. METHOD:REQUEST - This is the usual email requesting that you attend a meeting.
2. METHOD:PUBLISH - This is essentially a publication notice for an event. It doesn’t ask you to reply.
3. METHOD:CANCEL - This is a cancellation notice for an event.

Additionally, I’ve found that the emails that contain these invites are formated in at least 3 different ways. Sometimes the calendar event is within the body of the message and is encoded with Content-Transfer-Encoding in either 8bit or quoted-printable. Always the .ics file is attached.

My script does the following:

1. It parses the message to either extract the calendar data from the body of the message or from the .ics attachment.
2. It then figures out if the invite is of type METHOD:REQUEST, METHOD:PUBLISH or METHOD:CANCEL.
3. If the invite is one of the first 2 types. The time zone is fixed and the event is imported into iCal. You might have to select into which calendar the event will be imported.
4. If the invite is of type METHOD:CANCEL then the script will locate the corresponding event and set it’s status to cancelled.
   • You will have to manually delete the event. It will appear in iCal to have a white strike-through font style.
   • Repeating events all seem to have the same UID (Unique IDentifier). I don’t know why. Every repeating event will be thusly marked as cancelled. You will then manually delete the specific event and manually run the script again while the cancellation message is selected. This will reset the remaining repeating events back to confirmed. Yes, I know this is a bit of a kludge but I don’t have a better method.

My script, now re-named iCal-Invite-Fix.scpt, will need to be customized for each Exchange server from which you receive invites. There are 2 properties at the beginning of the script they are ical_tzid and myCalendar.

• ical_tzid is the time zone of the Exchange server in proper format.
  • This means no spaces. Spaces are replaced with the underscore ‘_’.
  • For instance, I’m in Southern California and the correct time zone should be written as US/Pacific or America/Los_Angeles. You can find this information by selecting the time zone drop down menu in the upper right corner of your iCal window and select Other.... If you look in iCal’s upper right corner for the time zone menu bar the last example will appear as America/Los Angeles. In the script you will need to replace this as indicated.
• myCalendar is the name of the calendar that normally receives the events. It is needed for the cancellation to function.

Save the script and either set it up to run from a mail rule or as I do call it from the System AppleScript menu. You will need to save the script in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail/ folder. Create this folder if it doesn’t exist.

To set the script up to run automatically you will need to create a new Mail rule as follows.

1. Mail -> Preferences -> Rules -> Add Rule
2. Description “iCal Invite Fix”
3. If “any” of the following conditions are met:
   • “Any Attachment Name” “ends with” “.ics”
4. Perform the following actions:
   • Run AppleScript “~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail/iCal-Invite-Fix.scpt”
5. Click “OK” and then “Apply”

You can also run the script manually from the system-wide script menu. To install this menu. Open up the /Applications/AppleScript/AppleScript Utility.app and check the Show Script menu in menu bar box. If you put the script in the folder location indicated above it will now be visible when Mail.app is the current application.

Download the iCal-Invite-Fix script.

Please let me know if there are any problems or you need help setting this up. The script was not entirely my creation and credit also goes to others. I’m quite certain any errors are likely mine.

Updated: Now produces CalDAV-compliant TZIDs, no quotes.

I’ve also fixed the script so that it runs successfully from a rule.

Note: The ical_TZID property cannot have any spaces. Replace all spaces with underscores “_”. In iCal America/Los_Angeles will look like America/Los Angeles in the iCal dropdown menu.

Let me know if there are any problems.

As always you can download the MailExchange2iCal-TZ-fix script here.

The following was written by Lewis Napper, a self described amateur philosopher from Mississippi . He ran for a senate seat in 2000.

“We the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt ridden, delusional, and other liberal bed-wetters. We hold these truths to be self evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim they require a Bill of NON-Rights.”

ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV, or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.

ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone — not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc.; but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.

ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.

ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes . (This one is my pet peeve…get an education and go to work….don’t expect everyone else to take care of you!)

ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we’re just not interested in public health care.

ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don’t be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.

ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat, or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don’t be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won’t have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VIII: You do not have the right to a job.. All of us sure want you to have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful. (AMEN!)

ARTICLE IX: You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to PURSUE happiness, which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.

ARTICLE X: This is an English speaking country. We don’t care where you are from, English is our language. Learn it or go back to wherever you came from! (Lastly….)

ARTICLE XI: You do not have the right to change our country’s history or heritage. This country was founded on the belief in one true God. And yet, you are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, or no faith at all; with no fear of persecution. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is part of our heritage and history, and if you are uncomfortable with it, TOUGH!!!! GET OVER IT !!!

As the Happy Hospitalist says:

Here’s my position. It’s time to let the cuts stand. Congress should not reverse the 10.6% cuts that began in July 1st 2008. And here’s why: The financial mess we are in now is entirely a result of third party interference of the doctor-patient relationship.

He’s absolutely correct in the assessment that the doctors are to blame. If only we didn’t prostitute ourselves by signing some of these outrageous contracts it might be better.

I say let the cuts go through. Then soon, both doctors and hospitals will soon realize that they cannot afford to take care of patients for the contracted rates and might actually grow the brass ones to cancel all of their contracts, including Medicare.

I’d love to be able to deploy push email and push calendar to my users.

I was looking for a simple way to rewrap, unwrap, increase the quote level, and decrease the quote level of any selection of text. I found that there were several good shareware programs that did this, and many other things. But I was really looking for a simple one-trick pony of sorts. So in the usual fashion I decided to roll my own. What I did was create a single shell script that when passed a parameter will do what you want to whatever is in the clipboard. It then replaces the clipboard with the changed text.

I call the package quote_changes. Go get it.

After you unzip it, put it in ~/Library/Scripts/. Activate your system-wide script menu from the AppleScript Utility.app.

The scripts are all meant to be in the same folder. The scripts that does all the work is change_quote.sh. The usage of the script is as follows:

$ change_quote.sh increase — will rewrap the text on the clipboard and increase the level of quoting (>). The additional scripts in the package are simply calls with the appropriate parameters. The full usage is

$ change_quote.sh (increase|decrease|rewrap|unwrap)

If anyone has any problems let me know. I hope others find this useful. Enjoy.