…so I write this with much trepidation. Also, I am not a work blahgger. But today? Today? Today? I had a spec review today. We have been eating an elephant at my work since a little bit before I started working there, which is getting to be more years than I am strong enough to count. The part of that elephant that we are currently eating affects our core business and it is really scary to make a change as big as we are working on making. So people are nervous. Are we going to get this right? In truth, we may NOT get every single little detail right the first go ’round but the big changes won’t happen until a whole heckuva lot of parallel testing, etc. has taken place. We do not do Big Bang changes in our business. You would be unhappy if we did. Actually, you are probably unhappy with us at times anyway but I am here to tell you that we really really really do care about your user experience. You do not know how much time we spend nitpicking and agonizing the details of web page field labels or error messages or just general functionality.

I have been at this for six years now and lemme tell you, my spec review today rocked! I can remember being terrified at doing my first spec review. I still get a bit nervous about them. You never quite know what’s going to happen. In one particularly contentious spec review before my time, somebody [I won’t say who but a Russian accent was involved] started rather derisively singing error messages. I wish to heck I’d been there for that!

Today was the best spec review I have ever done. I had to explain several extremely complex pieces of functionality and I did it with elegant text and beautiful diagrams. I think the highest compliment I got was from the LSCHP who said something like, “I feel like I’m on crack but I actually understand this.” (He was NOT on crack.) And W1.5 only made his “that’s not quite right” face when other people had questions. Actually *that* was probably the highest compliment.

Good night. I am celebrating this small piece of success but I am not letting it go to my head. I am a humble person and I believe that life is a river and today was a particularly good day for me at work but who knows what tomorrow will bring.

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