They almost had me going, until I read this part...

Project 2002 was going to be Microsoft's breakthrough opportunity, moving the software from desktops and smaller-business units into the world of big-company project management. To upgrade his own Project software, he needed new project team members -- people who knew how big companies ran big projects.

MS is still aiming at the BigCos, instead of producing a smaller, leaner version for the huge number of folks who want to steer a project, but don't have the luxury of changing vendors or personnel mid-project. If they could do that for about US$100-150, I think they'd have a winner.

As it is, I'm getting a sense of polishing the sledge-o-matic that is larger than Gallagher's, and costs more in time and effort for most folks to enter project data into than it will save in helping to track progress.

[hand-blinked via Volker, but the spilt spleen-juice is all mine]

10:08:25 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this    

I've been struggling with some Applescript issues that should end up helping me save some sanity in riding herd over a few thousand files I have wrangle a few times per year. I have decided to munge the Last Modified dates of the files, so there are patterns for groups of files, and changes can be easily seen and hunted down for more info.

Here is my script for processing files, it should be saved as an application, without the startup screen. This will make it a droplet -- just drag and drop files to be processed onto it, then. It is based on William B. Davis Jr.'s Touch script, which is copyrighted 1999. All the heavy lifting was done by him, and the crappy stuff is mine :-)

on open (docList)
  -- Initialize variables used
  set theDate to ""
  set myDateString to ""
  set myTimeStamp to ""

  -- Prompt for date to use
  tell application "Finder"
    display dialog "Set the Last Mod date to what value?" & return ¬
      default answer "mm/dd/yyyy"

    -- Create new date string to be used, with special time stamp.
    set myDateString to (text returned of result)
    set myTimeString to "12:34:56 PM" as string
    set newModDate to (myDateString & " " & myTimeString)
  end tell

  -- Must do this outside of the Finder tell blocks.
  -- Coerces the new date string created above into an actual date.
  -- In Applescript a date must be a number, not a string, and dates
  -- have a peculiar coercion syntax.
  set theDate to date newModDate

  -- Change last modified dates of all files  (AND all folders, too!)
  -- to use the new date created above (The Daring Fireball clued 
  -- me in as to how to make this happen.)
  tell application "Finder"
    repeat with theFile in docList
      set modification date of item theFile to theDate
    end repeat
  end tell
end open

Now all I have to do (all, he says) is figure out how to make something similar to act on folders, so they also have the same arbitrary date. That way I'll be able to have all files associated with a particular release have the same last mod date... {Update: Done. See below for my savior.]

Anyone know if/how this can be done with folders under Mac OS 9.1? [Update: John Gruber, aka THE Daring Fireball certainly does... And he shared how, too. ;-) ] That's what I'm running on the work boxen, and I'll upgrade the OS when something breaks, not just to see what a new OS might break in my work processes. I need to generate clean postscript files from Framemaker, and my house of cards is still upright. I think. *touches wood*

9:06:10 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this