"...they don't have to review as many (sic) pantents..." Aye, there's the rub. Fewer patent applications mean less application fees - and perhaps fewer examiners. At the moment, the US government want to decrease the unemployment numbers by increasing government positions, rather than by making economic conditions conducive to greater employment by private enterprises. That decrease works well in the narrative of the incumbent. So we're not getting less examiners.

Here on earth, my sister owns a pizza shop with a charcoal-fired brick oven that runs at about 900 degrees F. When it is shut down for the once-in-three-years-family-vacation, it takes almost two days to coax it back to operating temperature... very slowly, so as to not crack the brickwork!

I'm a seller and implementor of technology services that require 95% coding. I love my silly user requests -- it translates to payment for everything else that I enjoy in life. That's a good thing. Frankly, I've been in a large number of initial meetings where the feedback sounds much like what some posters are saying. But I see that as a communications failure... we try to get some buzz going so that by the time we get to a milestone demo, my customers are more into functionality and rollout, than they care about color of a banner. I've learned to keep it in my pants when they think the font size is "a little off".

Congrats and thanks for sharing!