Sure, I can twiddle the date format.
I'm planning to update the status report very soon, probably this evening. Kapil's given me an interim snapshot of the query extractor and I haven't had an opportunity to look it over yet. Ben's putting final touches on the preliminary version of the query dispatcher - he was sick this weekend with a very bad cold and wasn't able to get as much work done as he'd intended. Roberto's very busy with 3.2.5 still (I submitted two last-minute fixes yesterday, which doesn't make his job easier).
Trust me ... if the critical path items were complete, y'all would be the third to know about it (the person completing them would be first, I'd be second).
As far as not having to wander around the file storage module blindly looking for new files, yes, you're right. As I mentioned in an earlier thread Ben and I are talking about putting together a project page that will make it much easier to find stuff, list recent file uploads, recent threads, recent response to this forum, etc etc etc.
It will happen fairly soon. It won't happen immediately.