postit notes
 

does anyone know of a postit type program. Something like Ubuntu Xpad.

Which desktop environment? GNOME has Tomboy and KDE has KNotes. There are probably others, too.

Cinnamon

Tomboy should run easily on Cinnamon, as Cinnamon based on Gnome. You could also run knotes, if you don't mind pulling in KDE libraries to support it.

Here's a review of those and some others.

I just use vi.

Left windows key (shortcut for a terminal), vi, enter, i. 5 key presses, no delay while some stupid GUI opens up, and I'm ready to jot something down.

I have changed the preferences in software manager. It was set to search in package summary(slower search).So slow it could not be observed to search at all! Now changed to search as type and it works well. Found the Xpad which is a very simple and can be seen at boot. No need to remember to boot a note pad to find out what you have forgotten!