When not on the clock forMacworld , I can commonly be found somewhere in the vicinity ofthe Oakland Coliseum , cheeringthe family - townspeople nineon to triumph after victory — at least until the annualautumnal fizzle .

Nevertheless , it ’s just a few weeks until pitchers and catchers cover , so trust spring eternal . And with that frame of mind , I sit down this weekend to add an Oakland Athletics schedule to my iCal calendar to begin the procedure of planning how I ’ll be spending my nights and weekends from April through , Lord willing , tardy October .

The only bother with my design : there were no A ’s 2006 iCal calendars to be notice anywhere . Not at Apple’siCal calendar subroutine library , where — as of this writing , anyway — the only A ’s calendar available is one for the 2005 season . ( And I already know how that one works out . Confidential to White Sox fans : it ends well for you.)iCalShare , an independent site where I grab most of my sports - related calendars , did n’t have one either ( at least , not when I was seem for one this weekend — more on that later ) , nor didiCal World . Of naturally , iCal World does n’t seem to have addedanybaseball calendars since the end of the 2003 season , so it ’s not like A ’s fans should take the snub personally .

If anything , putting together and publishing my own iCal calendar for all the world to admire and use of goods and services gave me a few insights into why more hoi polloi might not be barrack to whip up their own calendar . To wit :

•It ’s a flake of a drudgery . An intact time of year ’s worth of baseball games means 162 separate calendar entries , each with unlike start times , against unlike teams , and in different city . Perhaps there ’s an Automator action or AppleScript that I could have conjured up if I was go to make a substance abuse out of this iCal business , but for a one - time - only calendar , it made more gumption just to keep reach Command - N until my index digit begin to misplace feeling .

•A calendar Lord ’s work is never done . Several of the entree on my calendar still have the dreaded “ TBA ” depart meter , I ’ll have to go back and update that once the Boston Red Sox get around to deciding at what clip of the twenty-four hour period they ’ll deign to face the A ’s in mid - July . I ’ve also had to go back and update my calendar to include home - game promotions and giveaways because I think it ’s important for the creation to eff when the first 10,000 rooter will meet a Huston Street bobblehead doll ( Sunday , April 16 against the infernal and sinister Texas Rangers ) . There ’s something to be said about keeping things current for the sake of completeness , but that does n’t make it any less of a bother .

•All your workplace will credibly go for naught . So after spending all this time prepping and proofing my calendar and upload it to .Mac , I go over to iCalShare to show my work to other corresponding - tending Mac substance abuser … only to discover thatsomeone beat me to the punchby just a few minute .

So it ’s easy to see why some hoi polloi might think , “ Bag this shared calendar jazz . I opine I ’ll spend the afternoon playing World of Warcraft or else . ” And is it that big a deal if they do ?

I reckon that it sort of is . Yes , iCal has a hatful going for it — namely , that it ’s costless ( or , to be more accurately , free with the cost of buying Mac OS X ) , and it has third - party software Creator accrue all over themselves to add export feature film that incorporate their programs with iCal . But another one of the program ’s strength is the fact that you’re able to go out to the World Wide Web and discover pre - fictional calendars that fit your interests . If those calendars become knockout to find , then iCal becomes just a small less valuable .

Which impart us to the next question : so what should be done about it ? And my carefully reasoned , well - thought - out response is : I really have no estimate .

I suppose some of the burden for keeping iCal vibrantfalls on Apple . Yes , I know it ’s a basically spare diligence , and , no , I do n’t expect Apple to hire a full - clock time drone whose exclusive job obligation is to churn out assorted iCal calendars from sun - up to sun - down . But a little more attention to iCal might go a long way to keep this surprisingly useful petty program at the vanguard of Mac users ’ minds . At least seek not to limit the occasional major revisions to the program to landmark operating system update , thus ensuring that any revisions to iCal will get lost in the shuffling .

But other than that , my musical theme well has run ironic . Maybe you ’ve fix an idea on how to come to pastime in beget public iCal calendars … or maybe you do n’t see why it ’s deserving the bother . In either means , I ’d know to hear from you since I ’ve got about 363 24-hour interval before I require to begin work on my 2007 A ’s calendar , and I ’d love for someone to save me the oink work .