For me, one of the most satisfying feelings related to work is shipping software.  As the ship-date gets closer, I get more and more excited.  I think about the new features, about the way they'll work, about what our customers will think of them and about how many of the new features will actually get used.  I have nightmares about shipping software that doesn't work or doesn't meet our customer's expectations.  A lot of things go through my mind:  will the installation work just as planned; is the documentation enough; how should we present the new feature-set to our customers; is the user interface getting too complicated; are the new features intuitive enough?

Right now, we are inching closer to the release of OnTime 2004, the biggest release in the product's history.  We've crammed a ton of new features in the new version - things that our customers have been asking about for some time.  It gets me excited to think that many of their requests will be answered.  It's a strange feeling I can't fully explain, but it's this feeling that drives us to work extreme hours 7 days a week.

We expect to release OnTime 2004 Beta by the end of next week.  There is still a lot to be done, so I better get back to finishing up my tasks.