[ale] bash commands

[drifter at oppositelock.org (Drifter)]

I keep reminding myself that I don't begin to know what I think I know! :(

I am about to upgrade this box, finally from FC 13 to FC 14.
Ought to be simple enough.  I have the CD, which I think will do a clean 
install onto a software RAID.

Prior to that I really ought to have on hand a list of all the installed 
packages.

So I created a file <app_list.txt> on the Desktop and then tried this:

yum list installed | ~/Desktop/app_list.txt
and got back this

bash: /home/kilpatms/Desktop/app_list.txt: Permission denied

WTF!

So I checked the perms on the existing (empty) file and they were correct.
Then I tried the same thing as root, expanding the ~/ and got the same 
response.

So, How DO I make yum throw a list of the installed packages to a text file 
rather than to the terminal?

Sean