If you've ever wanted to log into iChatAV and immediately change your status as away, here's a simple Applescript to do it. It will ask for your away status message and launch iChatAV for you. Simple, but does what it's supposed to do.
display dialog "Please enter your away message" default answer ¬
"" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
set msg to the text returned of the result as string
tell application "iChat"
activate
end tell
tell application "iChat"
set theMessage to "" & msg
set status message to theMessage
set status to away
end tell
[robg adds: Open Script Editor and paste the above text in. Save the script as an application, and then double-click it in the Finder to run it. Alternatively, you can download it from the author's website.]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050615154858714