Write Everyday Project #22, Stuff You, Yahoo

Setting aside my dissatisfaction for how little you make writing for the Yahoo Contributor Network, Yahoo has managed to find an all new way to piss me off.  Since 1996 or so, I've maintained a Yahoo email address and with it, a collection of bookmarks attached to that account.  Since the system was pretty primitive in '96, I had to come up with my own organizational setup.  You see, all it did back then was list your bookmarks in alphabetical order.  So I devised categories for my bookmarks like Cartoon, VidGame, and the ever so popular Misc, and added them to the title of each bookmark.  If they updated regularly, I put what day or days they updated in parenthesis after the title.  Ergo, one of my oldest links is "Cartoon Sluggy Freelance (MTuWThF)".  So if it was first thing Monday morning and I wanted to read that day's webcomics, I just scrolled down to "Cartoon" and picked the (M) ones.  Quick and easy.  Its a system that's worked for me for fifteen years now.

And then, at the beginning of September, I lost the ability to add new Bookmarks.  "Yahoo Bookmarks cannot be added to, modified, or deleted until we complete an upgrade.  Your Bookmarks will be available on October 20th."  Fine, fine.  I can still use the old Bookmarks, and I'll just save new ones in my browser until the service comes back online.  Inconvenient, to be sure, but not game breaking.

Today is the 20th, and I logged on to My Yahoo and discovered that my organizational system is completely screwed up.

Look at that hash!  What's more, I can't figure out what the Hell the system is supposed to be now!  Obviously, it isn't alphabetical.  But its not by the date that I put them in, since the first on the list, "Chugworth Academy" is one I added in 2003, but "Abominable" (short for "The Abominable Charles Christopher") is from last year.  Its not by when I visited them last, since Chugworth quit updating in 2009, hence the (Dead), while Abominable only updates on Wednesdays and I saw it last yesterday.  It just seems to be a random mess.

So, I think to myself, there must be some kind of sorting error.  I'll just fix it in the controls and...

Well.  That's certainly inconvenient.  I prefer not to have toolbars cluttering up my browser, but I've been with Yahoo for 15 years, so I guess if there's any one toolbar I should have, that's the one.  Not a problem...

   

No.

No, I will not install IE 9 just to sort my frikkin' bookmarks.  "Do more from anywhere."  What a cruel joke.  

So that's it.  After fifteen years, I'm finally giving up on My Yahoo.  It's iGoogle for me now.  It'll be a pain in the ass getting all the bookmarks over there, but I was due to clean out some chaff (like the long since creator abandoned Chugworth, for example, or all those Buffy and Angel sites I put in there in the early 2000s) and this is the perfect time to do it.  I just wish it hadn't come to this, but some betrayals cannot be forgiven.

Stuff you, Yahoo.