Evernote was going to announce “Something that will change the way you interact with Evernote, and, maybe even, change how you think about Evernote.”  There’s was even going to be a real press conference, and you could win a spot at the big do in San Francisco.

I almost got excited (me being a diehard EN user, but who is stuck at version 3.1 because 3.5 is too crippled for me to use).  So, when the big day came, I actually tracked down the announcement, instead of waiting for it to pop up in my feed reader.

<sarcasm>Wow, Evernote now has an app store.</sarcasm>  For apps that somehow work with Evernote.  Some of them I had already heard of.  Some of them I had actually tried.  They’re actually advertising one app that continually fails for me – every time I sync, it loses my notes.  To be fair, I tried out one of the new apps that I hadn’t heard of.  Well, I tried out the free version.  Whoa, the quality of that app was like something I would make – and I don’t even have the hardware to create iphone apps.  And really, if I’m in a list app, do I really need some kind of chiming noise every time I add a line?  I uninstalled that puppy within 10 minutes.

I thought I might be being a little harsh, you know, kind of like a jilted lover.  But based on the comments I’m seeing on the Evernote user forum, and on the announcement itself, I’m not the only person underwhelmed by the announcement and new functionality (which you can’t turn off by the way).  The Evernote staff seem happy that the tech blogs are writing about it, but you know, those crazy screwed up celebrities are always in the news, and I don’t see it really helping their cause.

Take, for instance, the new places you see in a standard Save/Save As dialog in Windows 7.  Out of the box, this is what I see on my Windows 7 box:

Libraries?  What are libraries?  And where is My Documents?  Argh.  Add to that the fact that I’ve actually tweaked my places settings on my Windows XP box, and I’m completely stumped when I get to this set of choices.  When I do save/save as, I don’t want to have to carefully navigate – I want to go somewhere specific, usually My Documents, or perhaps a special directory.

When I first tweaked the Windows XP installation, I used the instructions at Make Use Of – specifically the “Hacking the Registry” portion.  Basically, you mess with the

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\

key in your registry.  After a bit of searching online for a solution to the problem in Windows 7 (surely it would be hard to do now?), I decided to try out the registry hack.  Guess what – it worked like a charm.  Yes!

So, if you want to customize your places – picking five useful locations instead of Windows 7’s dubious choices, check out 4 Easy Ways to Customize Common Dialog Box on Windows XP.

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3.  Well hello there world!

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s been a LONG time since I last posted.  In fact, it’s been so long that I’ve let my web hosting lapse and had to move the blog somewhere else.  I’m starting here again fresh, with a brand new, minimal (yeah, it’s the cool word these days) look.

I’m thinking about dipping my toes into blogging again – I can’t promise anything.  Those of you who have read me for a while know that blogging was one of my procrastination tools – not in that it enabled me to stop procrastinating on my PhD thesis, but in that it enabled me to procrastinate ;)

A lot has happened since I dropped off the face of the planet.  Finished my thesis, graduated, got a real job, moved, and bought a house.  Working a full day for the man and taking care of the house etc. basically sapped all of my time.  Something had to give, and that something was the blog.

However, every now and then, I get the urge to share, especially when I’ve figured something interesting out in my personal system.

Anyway, here’s to a new round of blogging, catch you later!