I enjoyed the OP's story too - thanks for sharing.
I'm one of those people who don't like the OF interface, but not enough to abandon the app. I especially don't like the pop-up inspectors, and dislike that the only way to "select" a task is to super-accurately click on the little button on the left; I'd rather the task, after hitting the Return key, be in some kind of 'inert' state that I could actually click on and re-arrange. Others around here articulate these things so much better than I do though!
I kind of wish OF had an interface similar to Papers:
http://mekentosj.com/papers/
I look at that and like that the amount of screen real estate I assign to the program doesn't change; it's contained within a single window (unlike popping open the inspector). I envision the tabs across the top being perspectives, the window on the right being the perspective view, and it changing based on what you're doing, being resizable, and even completely retracted.
Oh well, just thought I'd pass on my thoughts on the interface. ;-)