Depending on how you listen feedback can make or break your work. As long as outside opinions are just that, and not strict enforced rules, I find the additional input on design quite valuable.

I want to know where you guys are heading

back to this,
I sometimes wonder if the metrics tools people are somehow forced to use (in the context of measuring an app or a website) to validate their thinking is necessarily a good thing.
Building something is mostly about your view. Granted it helps to get feedback, but as so many people might say, sometimes you need to stop listening and go with what you feel. It can be dangerous and scares me sometimes, I'd like to try for a possible project of mine and see what the end result might be if I'd do it my way without adapting that much the feedback received.

As soon as our next big push is stable I can consider that last question. Unfortunately one big project at a time is all I can handle (but I'm a fan of lucrative, I just know my limits).

ps. Arnold Waldstein got me to setup a subscribe by email on my blog (simple feedburner option). It's a good idea for your blog as well (I'd subscribe by email)

Speaking of Rails, if you haven't seen it yet, you should check out the speech by the creator of Rails that I included in this post on my blog recently. It's about how to make money online.

Also, allow me to plant a seed in your head. Have you considered taking a short breather on the opus you and Tyler are working on and knocking out something completely unrelated but potentially lucrative — a quick, lower-tech, e-commerce project? I have a few ideas.

I wish I had the time and energy to consume texts as rapidly as yourself. I'm backlogged with about 8 books, two of which are refernce tools for Ruby on Rails

That was an exaggeration, but the point of it was that, in a large organization like the Navy, most people aren't smarter than those at the top, so the system is designed to maximize the input of the geniuses, and minimize the input of the non-geniuses, by replacing individual initiative with procedure (to the extent possible) at all but the highest levels.

That is, of course, an imperfect system, because in big companies as well as in the military, there are some smart folks at all levels*. I actually have an idea for a business that would tap into the intelligence and creativity of those at all levels of a company, but it's in the queue.

Long story short, the system that most companies follow is imperfect, but not necessarily broken. You chafe, because you are too smart, creative, and ambitious to stay in your cube. Where you need to be is either running your own business, or working at a place like 37 Signals where they apparently eschew the typical corporate system.

*E.g., there was a fellow at a temp financial planning gig where I worked a few years ago who had a bachelors degree from Wharton, and MBA from NYU, and a CFA. Doing the same job I was doing, and not doing it as well, judging by the performance evaluations (probably because he resented his underemployment).