There was a time, long ago, when you could use e-mail to do a simple thing like invite someone to a meeting. Your message might look something like:
“Hey, Jeff, can you swing by my office next Tuesday at 10:00?”
These days, we have the monstrosity that is Microsoft Exchange, and instead of a message like that I get the following:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
METHOD:REQUEST
PRODID:Microsoft CDO for Microsoft Exchange
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Mountain Time (US & Canada)
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-TZID:12
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:16010101T020000
TZOFFSETFROM:-0600
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;WKST=MO;INTERVAL=1;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:16010101T020000
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0600
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;WKST=MO;INTERVAL=1;BYMONTH=4;BYDAY=1SU
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20040607T220944Z
DTSTART;TZID=”Mountain Time (US & Canada)”:20040615T100000
SUMMARY:Business Development Database meeting
UID:040000008200E00074C5B7101A82E00800000000003D83D8A94CC401000000000000000
01000000054E0A52EE8970245974DE0F6F78FBA84
ATTENDEE;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION;RSVP=TRUE;CN=”David Jones”
ATTENDEE;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION;RSVP=TRUE;CN=”Jeff Schroeder”
ORGANIZER;CN=”Justine Jez”
LOCATION:David Jones’ office
DTEND;TZID=”Mountain Time (US & Canada)”:20040615T103000
DESCRIPTION:N
SEQUENCE:0
PRIORITY:5
CLASS:
CREATED:20040607T220945Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20040607T220945Z
STATUS:CONFIRMED
TRANSP:OPAQUE
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-INSTTYPE:0
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-INTENDEDSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-ALLDAYEVENT:FALSE
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:1
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-OWNERAPPTID:-249075756
BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:REMINDER
TRIGGER;RELATED=START:-PT00H15M00S
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
Wow, what fun. I imagine if I used Microsoft Outlook (perish the thought) I’d get a nice little formatted message where I could click “sure, I’ll be there” or something.
It’s hard being non-conformist.