There are some timepoints in a person’s life that are so clearly defined as to become transformative.

For me, as a geek, learning about Linux was one of those timepoints. I learned that there was a straightforward way to understand things, and that there was an army of volunteers out there that wanted to enable folks to have the freedom to actualize their desire to use technology in that straightforward way. No more of this physically install the device, then pray that the operating system could detect that it was there, so that you could assign the driver (that may or may not work) to the proper interrupt, etc.

Linux made my life as a “sysadmin” more livable. I began to understand things from a more “fundamental” level. If you can see things as the OS see them, you have a better than average chance to bend the OS to your bidding.

And it was free. As folks used to say, it’s my favorite four letter word.

Another time was when I learned about Evernote. Evernote allowed a person to store all manner of information into a database that had only the barest amount of structure. At first, I could run it off a flash drive, and take it with me to the computers I used. This allowed me to just grab stuff, rather than writing notes of where things lived, and then spending time at my “base computer” putting all the desired artifacts into their desired places. Eventually, it AUTOMATICALLY SYNCED, so there was no reason not to have it everywhere.

And for ~$50 a year, I had more capacity for capturing and storing and organizing materials than I ever had a reason to use.

OK, Evernote went through a lengthy time where a bunch of folks started trashing it, for its (insert here your favorite complaint about modern technology).

My only complaint was that it didn’t have a native client for Linux. Sure, a lot of Linux geeks figured out a way to “desktop-ify” the Evernote web client, but that was unsatisfactory. Too many functions from the native desktop were absent on the web client. And to be clear (if it is not already), I don’t like having to rely on workarounds.

So, when Ian Small (Evernote CEO) announced on his blog (look in the antepenultimate paragraph) that Evernote was coming to Linux, my attention was finely focused. FINALLY! Am I right? Circle Jan 14, 2020 on your calendars folks! That’s the day everything would start to be better!

Yet, that’s a year ago now.

A fine gentleman once told me “Expectation takes all the joy out of life.” I will add my own corollary: Vaporware is the cruelest kind of expectation.

C’mon man… What are you even doing? Fool me once…

Evernote, I don’t even know what to say.