From Lifehacker:
Some people like to let everyone know where they are when they step away from their PC. Most of these people use the screensaver to do just that (or would like to…). But digging through the settings every time you want to change the status message is tedious, so a Lifehacker reader named Jim streamlined the process with a handy script that he invokes with a simple key combination.
I am often drawn away from desk throughout the day, and often without my laptop. I find it helpful to my coworkers to leave a note to where I’ve disappeared to, so I’ve written a VB script called ssController. SsController takes a string and uses it as the text for the default Windows screensavers “3DText” and “Marquee” then launches th ‘saver, bypassing any timeout you might have set.
Once you save Jim’s VB script and set a keyboard shortcut for it, invoke the script and you get a prompt that looks like this:
Type in your away message, hit OK, and the 3DText or Marquee screensaver will launch with the away message set as the text.
Note: Lifehacker report that when they first ran the script, they got an error message about a missing registry key. This was because they hadn’t used either of these screensavers on the particular PC before.
The fix is to go into the Screensave slection panel (right-click on your desktop, choose Properties, then the Screensaver tab) and choose the 3DText saver. Use Settings to set up your font size, appearance, and custom text. Once you save those settings, ssController should work without a hitch.
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