I’ve been working to get up to speed with tech/languages/tools on several small projects that I hope to talk more about in the coming year.

Looking forward to a great 2011!

The coolest innovation I’ve seen so far … Spring Roo.  But, Spring Insight looks very promising, as do technologies like GemFire.

Great!  Fantastic! Wonderful!

But … could we have made $2 million?

The essence of the question was not really whether we could have made twice as much profit as we did, or even whether we could have made more.  Rather, it seeks to draw out some analysis on why that dollar figure was made, if the things we’re doing are right for our target audience, if we are doing the right things, and … whether any of that is related to our stated mission, direction and goals.

Several years ago I consulted on a project creating a system to capture reviews of medical charts of deceased patients who may have been eligible for organ donation.  The information gathered was used to do a sort of post-mortem (no pun intended) analysis of the organ bank’s processes and procedures.  This information was further used to determine if current processes and procedures were sufficient, or if changes to procedures could have resulted in more organ donations, and, in turn, would have benefited additional patients waiting on organ recipient lists.

From that experience I learned it wasn’t enough to speak of numbers, such as profit, revenue, etc, as the primary means of  measuring success.  In the organ bank example, it wasn’t enough to simply count the number of successful organ donations procured.  The deeper analysis was used to measure success; whether more organ recipients could have been helped.

“We made $1 million profit last year” doesn’t necessarily speak to whether we are meeting our mission and goals as a company.  It doesn’t speak to whether we are doing the right things, or whether what we’ve done is sustainable.

Such deeper analysis is critical to a company’s success, vitality and sustainability.  Such information should be communicated to employees within the organization, right along with profit, revenue, etc figures, to help guide future innovations and process improvements that can ultimately translate into more dollars (and sense!) for your organization.

While some re-tweeted it, others had questions about what I found comfortable or why I might feel that way.  So, I thought some explanation and background was in order.

I developed and maintained Java applications for about 6+ years, and got my Java Programmer Certification (SCJP) in 2002.

But I’ve been doing Ruby and Rails development for the past 18 months, and Adobe Flex for about 2 years, concurrently.  The majority of my time has been spent with Flex, so, I’d put my Ruby experience at about 5 months and Rails experience at about 3 months — and, other than my own playing around and learning efforts, that experience has consisted of writing Ruby scripts to accomplish some task, or adding functionality, etc to models, views and controllers, along with RSpec tests.

Wanting to get a handle on Rails vs Grails development, I decided to sit down and work through the creation of an app from start to “finish” in both platforms/environments.

My tweet was based on my feeling after having created a new app in both Rails and Grails — rather than about the language (Ruby or Groovy, respectively) that I was comfortable writing in. I created a simple CRUD form with a backing model (Rails terminology)/domain (Grails terminology).

I’ll grant that I haven’t gone very far, and created something very rudimentary, but Grails seemed easier and faster to get to the point I wanted.  To lay this out, I didn’t have to install a database (HSQLDB comes with the Grails download), and didn’t have to begin by creating tables in my database (I’m using SQLITE for my Rails environment, just to have something light for my comparison and prototyping) in order to build out the model and the form/view.

I guess the “comfortable” feeling was that I liked being able to start to prototype and layout my application without having to commit myself to a database design like I felt I had to do in Rails (even though I could change it as I went in Rails, and use migrations to adjust things).

So, that’s some of the explanation. Being “Day 1″,  I’m admittedly in the very, wee-early stages of comparing the two here … so I might later discover some things that are easier on Rails because of the upfront database work.  But right now, I just was kind of amazed as how dirt simple it was to get something “real” going in Grails — and that was what I tried to express in my tweet.

Since Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts, all the pundits have come out and said it is a repudiation of the last year of the Obama presidency.

I don’t think it is.

Instead, I think it is a repudiation of the do-nothing, foot dragging attitude of those in Congress.  President Obama last year admonished the Congress to pass heath-care reform; to stop the stalling and banter, and get it done.  While closer, they still haven’t gotten it done.

And that is the signature issue that people are judging Congress on.

Still the problem lies with us, the voters, too.  Those who are satisfied with what their elected officials are doing often fail to make it into the voting booths to support what is being done.  Those who are dissatisfied raise their voices louder and louder, making it to the polls in droves to make the changes they want.

In an interview yesterday with George Stephanopoulos, President Obama said “the same voter anger that swept him into office in 2008 carried Brown into office”.  And that is exactly right!  Voters who overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008, we upset with the status quo — they wanted a change.  And that change has yet to come to Legislative Branch of the United States Government … the branch responsible for making the laws.

Most Republicans want to say it is the “tax and spend” policies of the Obama administration.  But those charges are nothing new!  They charge Dems with “tax and spend” policies ever single election … and when people put them into office, the give tax breaks to big business, executives, and high income workers, while giving a tiny pat on the butt to the middle and low income workers.  At the same time, they cut services to those most in need of it, and shift any extra money to their own pet projects and departments.

The GOP standard is simply to “cut and run” — cut taxes on their “base” and run away, leaving those in need to fend for themselves.  In the case of the federal government, we saw under President Bush, that more and more responsibility for services was pushed down to the States … and now they claim that it is the fault of the individual State leadership for budget deficits and increased spending and need for more revenue.

The bottom-line is that Dems need to work with their majority in Congress, to set straight again the near decade of irresponsible “cut and run” policies.  They need to show the American people that their policies will work — instead of wavering and cowering and being afraid of whether they will win the next election or not.  Doing the former may be problematic in the next election, but it is a certainty that doing the latter will ensure that they will not win the next election.

Ebersol is not alone.

The International Olympic Committee sent a message to the USOC with Friday’s humiliation, one that Swiss IOC member Denis Oswald called “a defeat for the USOC, not for Chicago.”

The head of the USOC has now resigned because of this, and more and more people are coming out to relate that this was a problem with the USOC, and not Chicago or the Obama’s or Oprah Winfrey, etc.

Those who want to point to Chicago, President Obama and the First Lady, or Oprah Winfrey, simply haven’t understood the real source of the problem, that led to New York getting only 19 votes four years ago, and now has led to the end of talk of a 2018 Denver Olympic bid.

The average family spent $1,787 on insurance premiums in 2001; today, over $4000. Average health care costs per family were around $5,000 in 2001; compared to nearly $12,000 today … and projected to be as much as $25,000 7 years from now (2016).

The largest and fastest rising costs employers face is health care … and a reason that each year more and more are dropping coverage, or passing larger premium increases on to their employees…

What are you getting for that? Richer insurance companies … as insurance company profits have increased 400% since 2001. And, while we spend more, we fall further behind the rest of the world in outcomes … for example, now 29th in infant mortality, as opposed to 24th in 1998 (even Cuba, with high poverty) does better than us.

When it comes to health care, it really is … life and death.

(Check out Oct 7th’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and a “special comment” on health care that he devoted his entire show to. )

Extreme-right wing-dings like Americans for Prosperity, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity (among others) applauded the vote … glad that President Obama had not been able to woo the International Olympic Committee.

However, right along with it, they were applauding an effort that would have meant tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of jobs.  Of course, if jobs were created, then they might lose their foothold in berating the President over unemployment.

They say they are standing up for the American taxpayer … but the Olympics would have brought money and tourism.  The fact is that no Olympic games in America have ever lost money.  Just looking at the last 3 games hosted here …

Los Angeles made $250 million in 1984;  Atlanta made $10 million in 2002; and Salt Lake City made $101 million in 2002.

The wing dings are too busy playing politics to worry about such facts.  And that is sad.

They aren’t looking out for you, America.  They are looking out for themselves; their own jobs.  If Obama wins, they are out of a job.

They want President Obama to fail in the war on terrorism — which means America remains at risk.

They want President Obama to fail on employment and recovery — which means that millions of Americans can’t find work, can’t care for their children, can’t get the education and health care they need, and maybe can’t afford to live in their homes or keep food on the table.

They want President Obama to fail on health care reform — while tens of thousands die each year because they are uninsured, and/or have been dropped from coverage by insurance companies that took thousands of dollars from them every year when they were healthy.

So who are they really rooting for, America?  Seems that they support the terrorists, the continued failure of the economy, the ability of insurance companies to make millions while people die … and ultimately, the continued economic troubles that hurt millions upon millions of American families.

Unfair, you say?  Then stop hoping and pushing for the failure of the efforts of this administration.  Stop playing politics as usual that seeks to demonize the guy in the White House, without calculating the cost.

That is what American sorely needs.

Some may argue that we’ll be paying for it the rest of those children’s lives … but then couldn’t the same be said of any child welfare? And what about those in prison for crimes that will keep them there for most or all of their natural lives?

No.  I think the money would be better spent on services that teach women how to be better moms (and men to be better dads); and help them move to self reliance and subsistence.

That would be much better than tricking them into believing they were not mothers — mothers of deceased/murdered children.