Rob Wilkerson

Lately, it seems like I've been on a mission to drive out all of those annoying aspects of technology that, for all of their (usually) good intentions, just get in the way of what I want to do. Tonight it was that AOLSystem user that keeps sending me messages when I'm logged in from multiple locations. He's not my buddy. I hate that guy.

My issue is that, like many people, I use one computer at work and another computer at home. I use an IM client both places. I log into the same accounts both places. If, in a fit of productivity or absent-mindedness, I forget to disconnect one client before leaving en route to the other then as soon as I login to the other that AOLSystem guy feels the need to let me know about it. A long time ago (read: the very first time it happened) I decided I'd had about enough of that guy. Today I decided to do something about him.

To ensure that I got want I wanted, the best plan seemed to be to set my clients to automatically disconnect whenever I go idle. If I did that then, by the time I got to work, I'd be disconnected from home and, inversely, by the time I got home, I'd be disconnected from work. Yes, at times I'd be disconnected when I really am just away briefly, but that's not so bad. I'm not available to respond either way, so there's no real difference in my mind between idle/away and disconnected.

To make this happen I needed to make it work in two different application in two different environments.

At Work

I run Trillian on Windows XP at work, so this half of the equation was easy. Trillian has built-in events that I could use to customize an event handler. Here's how:

Set Trillian to Disconnect When Away

1. Open Trillian Preferences > Advanced Preferences > Automation
2. Scroll to the bottom of the panel, click the Add button and select Automation (for some reason the button launches a menu - a usability annoyance that I won't digress into now).
3. In the Program Generated Events drop down, select Events: Away State
4. In Action Type, select Program Action
5. In Program Action, select Connection: Global Disconnect

At this point, Trillian will automatically disconnect as soon as my status changes to Away.

Set Trillian to Reconnect When Back

To reconnect automatically, follow the same process as above, but select Events: Back State in step 3.

Set Trillian to Respond to Remote Connections

At work, I have one other potential moment for AOLSystem to make an appearance. Sometimes I have to login to my desktop machine using Windows' Remote Desktop capability. Since this happens infrequently and for short periods (I can use our VPN connection for most of my needs), I just decided to force a disconnection when I connected via Remote Desktop. Again, Trillian handles this nicely.

1. Open Trillian Preferences > Advanced Preferences > Automation
2. Scroll to the bottom of the panel, click the Add button and select Automation (for some reason the button launches a menu - a usability annoyance that I won't digress into now).
3. In the Program Generated Events drop down, select Windows: Remote Connect
   
4. In Action Type, select Program Action
5. In Program Action, select Connection: Global Disconnect

At Home

Conversely, when I'm at home I run Adium on a Mac. Adium has no such built-in events, but it is fully scriptable using AppleScript. The script I needed was easy enough. Just a simple one-liner:

tell application "Adium" to disconnect every account

Doesn't get much easier than that. Just in case you have trouble cracking that masterfully cryptic code, when the script is executed Adium will be told to disconnect every IM account. Tricky. The real question, then, becomes: How do I trigger my script?

A little digging turned up this screen saver which, to be honest is really more of a screen saver wrapper. Once I select it as my screen saver, its options allow me to select a script to be executed before the screen saver, then select a screen saver to be used and, finally, a script to be executed when the screen saver is cleared. Once installed, I pointed it to my script and...ta da! When the screen saver is engaged, my IM connections are disengaged.

Aaahhhh

In time, I'll probably reconnect Adium when the screen saver is lifted, but for now I want to take no chances. I hope I never hear from that AOLSystem guy again.