On Friday afternoon we had a go-live for our new homepage. I’ve been part of a dozen or more of these, either big design changes or big code changes or both. It’s a unique feeling, the adrenaline rush of something new while a dozen old things break. Friday was a solid two hours of post go-live fire duty.

The design is not mine, but I was part of it. My main tasks are the more technical features like searching, phonebook, quicklinks, etc. Even though it’s not my design I still take the feedback harder than I should, owing mostly to my general need to please every one all the time. While that’s a generally foolhardy goal on a personal level, it’s absolute insanity to apply to a website.