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Getting Tired of BusyCal’s Screwups

I have a fairly simple (though, apparently not) BusyCal arrangement.

My main computer (Bunny) maintains a few calendars - "Erik" and "Kiddo" and "Chores."
I share all three calendars over the LAN, and the "Kiddo" and "Chores" calendars are read/write while "Erik" is read only.

Bunny's BusyCal also syncs with three Google Calendars with read/write access for golf-related stuff.

My wife has a computer with BusyCal on it, and she maintains the "Carey" calendar which is published to the LAN and read-only. She can make changes to the "Kiddo" or "Chores" calendar. Both of us can view each others calendars, but we can't make changes to them and we don't get alarms for them.

We each sync our calendars (technically the iCal data, I suppose) with MobileMe so that our phones get our calendars as well.

If this were as complex as our setup got, we'd be fine. The above all works well 99% of the time.

The problem comes in when I introduce my second computer - a laptop named Penguin. It subscribes to all three of the same calendars. It also syncs with MobileMe and subscribes to the same three Google calendars. I can read/write everywhere on Penguin that I can on Bunny.

Quite often - far too often - I'll get duplicate or even triplicate (or more) data in my BusyCal simply for opening BusyCal on Penguin. It seems as though Bunny and Penguin can't decide which iCal data to ignore and which to add as "new" despite the fact that it's supposed to be synchronized and BusyCal should essentially ignore MobileMe data except to write it - when it reads the data, that seems to be the problem.

Also, my subscribed Google calendars will often show up as "my" calendars. They'll add themselves to the list at the top of the left side and they'll duplicate the calendars to which I am still subscribed.

That's all a guess, of course. Perhaps BusyCal is just barfing somehow and MobileMe doesn't come into play. Technically I only need to sync my calendars via MobileMe through one computer (Bunny), so I'm tempted to turn off calendar syncing on Penguin to see if solves the problem.

Other than this incredibly obnoxious, annoying problem that has cost me more time and more headaches than I care to imagine, BusyCal is great. 😛

4 Responses to "Getting Tired of BusyCal’s Screwups"

  1. Yes, I have the same issue.

    Annoying in the extreme!

  2. You are in a "loop" the busymac website warns that you shouldn't use 2 computers that are syncing to MobileMe and the same puters to Lan Sync. To void the issue follow this link http://www.busymac.com/help/sync/mobileme-loop.html

    A little more research on the net will turn up a few more solutions.

  3. [quote comment="62766"]You are in a "loop" the busymac website warns that you shouldn't use 2 computers that are syncing to MobileMe and the same puters to Lan Sync.[/quote]

    Yeah, that's how I resolved it. I disabled MobileMe syncing on the MacBook Pro (Penguin). Bit of a bummer that changes I make on the road don't always sync up quickly to MobileMe and thus to my iPhone, but it's a workable solution for now.

  4. I just downloaded the trial version a few days ago. I think it will work for the work / personal scheduling until Apple buys this company and its technology to make iCal a real program. It's a real dog in comparison.