Ever have one of those days?

I started out trying to write up a to do list. I hate paper to do lists 'cause I lose 'em or don't finish 'em and can't remember what I had on 'em when I go to make a new one and end up duplicating a lot of what was on the old one I lost.

Tracking so far?

So I turn to my trusty computer. Here's what I want... a to do list that links to my address book and can be linked to a calendar and can be fed to a Google gadget and can have entries posted from just about anywhere. It's got to be sortable, too. If I enter a name in the address book and a to do item that references that name I don't want to see the name in the Google gadget
... just the to do item.

I want to sit down at the keyboard and type "to do: call joe smith about digging a ditch today," and have the program know enough to put a to do item with a due date of today and a note about ditch digging and a link to Joe's address book entry in a Google gadget I can see n my home page.

Is that asking too much?

I don't mind having to use a hotkey keystroke or two. I don't even mind having to perform a little drag and drop action for sorting and assigning categories. I don't expect it to decipher typo.

I do mind having to learn a complete secret code to enter the information... especially if I can't get a Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring in my box of Lucky Charms.

There are lots that seem to come close:

• Toodledo
• Hands down the best to do list manager I've found. No address book integration I can find, though. Great Google gadget. No way I can find to enter data without switching to the site.
• Stikkit
• Best all around, if a bit quirky, freeform personal information manager I've ever seen. I love this app! Having said that, I cant get things to consistently link and the Google gadget shows everything or nothing... there seems to be no in-between. I can enter from Quicksilver which is also great, but also quirky.
• Palm
• Won't properly integrate with much of anything anymore. I love my Palm... I've got 2 of 'em and had several others, but where the hardware was keeping up, the software slipped. Because of that, I'm sorry to say, I now have a nice, compact eBook reader/solitaire/cheap digital cameraMP3 Player. Not that that's a bad thing to have, but it no longer does what I bought it for successfully.
• iCal/Address Book from Apple
  
• They'll sync and they'll link, but in order to get them to do it right You have to use several work-arounds and bounce from this site to that site to another. I've never gotten the to do's to sync successfully anywhere.
• iGTD
• The once upon a time champ of to do lists has succumbed to featuritis. Now, what was a simple, clean, easy way to manage a to do list has become buggy and unstable, over-featured and underpowered. That, and it never did work well with an address book or sync to Google gadgets.

I remember 2 applications way back when that I thought were the bee's knees

• Expresso for Macintosh
• ohhh yeah... gadgety goodness and eye candy. This PIM wouldn't sync to anything, but it did put a prettified version of your calendar and to do list right on the desktop as wallpaper and it could be accessed with a hotkey. All I can find now are other folk, like me, lamenting the loss of this PIM (and all the rest of Berkeley Systems).
  
• Okna Desktop Set
• This memory is so old I can't quite remember why I loved this program. I seem to remember it doing almost everything including linking to a built in word processor for easy creation of business letters and such. It's still around, but it's for Windows and I am long since a Mac devotee and if the website is any indication of their current coding skills, I'm just as glad it's not available.
  

Are there any developers out there listening? Am I wrong? Will these (or another) app do what I am looking for? Am I doing something wrong?

let me know, 'cause I sure wasted a lot of time trying to get productive today and I can't afford much more of that!