Ponytail of the Week: John Belushi

The ponytail of the week goes out posthumously to John Belushi, star of the Samurai skits on Saturday Night Live.

I remember watching these samurai skits as a kid and thinking that this is the way of leadership-- you brandish your sword, mumble a lot, and everybody knows exactly what you mean.

For my Halloween staff meeting this year I dressed like Belushi and did the whole Samurai bit while my directs did their status reports. I even cut a pumpkin in half while Anil Gadre was doing his marketing update. Poor bastard nearly shit a brick, but we all had a good laugh.

Off the charts

Well, I did it again--Sun just reported another profitable quarter. All the numbers are up, up, up and now it's time to shake things up.

We're splitting our stock 4:1. In this way I will effectively raise our stock price to around $25 per share, something no mortal thought possible just a short time ago.

I'm telling you, we're on a roll here, people! I was so excited today that I dropped my prototype google phone in the urinal.

I looked at the thing for a second, and decided to just leave it there. If it shows up on eBay, whatever you do, don't buy the friggin thing.

Breaking bread

Steve Ballmer came over for dinner the other night. He read about my razor clams and offered to bring over some mighty fine Viña Mein wine made in southern Galicia. There was only one condition; he didn't want to talk business.

He showed up in his Humvee alone, unarmed, and in dull blue shirt. He shook my hand with his clammy paw and grinned like the Chesire Cat. Pretty much what you'd expect.

Ah, but the clams! The acid of the wine worked as a perfect counterpoint to their briny flavor. Ballmer asked if I had a hamburger bun to put them on. I did, and I'm only sorry that I didn't catch the subsequent feeding on tape.

"You know, Jonathan," he said with his mouth full. "You've got class. That's why I wanted to come over here and let bygones be bygones."

I told him that I was glad to have him. After all, our companies work together on a whole slew of technologies.

"So how much for the kernel?" he asked.

"The what?"

"The kernel. The Solaris kernel. We want to bag the whole NT hairball and move the install base over in the next five years."

"Dude, are you feeling allright?" I asked. His face was breaking out in purple hives.

"No, seriously," he said, biting off another chunk of his clamburger. "We want it. We want to license it. We gave everyone on the board Vista machines as a gift last month and now that they've tried it, they want me out of there. I have to pull a rabbit out of my friggin hat!"

His apparent shellfish allergy then proceeded to choke off his windpipe. The paramedics showed up just as he was starting to blow bubbles.

As for the deal, I can't say what happens next. He scrawled something on my hardward floor as he was laying there and whatever figure it is doesn't have enough zeros.

Cooking up a storm

I made the most amazing razor clams the other night. The neighbors just couldn't stop raving about them. The secret is the breading, but I'm not going to give that up here.

I find cooking to be an excellent proving ground for corporate management. And there's nothing like throwing in unexpected ingredients.

That's why I've decided that the time has come to get Sun into consumer products, products that will set new standards for technical leadership and eco-friendliness.

Yes, that's right; Sun is coming to your kitchen.

We learned a lot from our Niagara processors that consume less energy than anything else out there. That was a good message, but these products will do that one better.

In fact, our new products will not only save electricity, they will actually generate electricity!

I can't say any more right now. Our attorneys are all worried that those frigtards at Net App will sue us for getting into the appliance business.

Re-Flex

Sun is really big on this flex officing thing that Scooter started years back. Half the company works from home and has no assigned office or cubicle.

Financially, this policy makes great sense for the company. We spend less on offices and in theory we attract the best and the brightest with our progressive flexibility.

But I have to admit that sometimes I walk around Menlo Chernobyl and wonder where the hell everybody went. There are hallways, courtyards, and cafes with no people. Old posters hang on the walls with corporate branding of the 90's. It's like somebody dropped a friggin neutron bomb and killed off the population.

And yet I know that my people are working. They're just out there, making the company tick while I preside over this deserted camelot.

So out of desperation, I've decided to declare a new tradition. Every day of the week will now be declared Bring your sorry ass into work day for each of our individual business units. And if anybody gives me any shit, they'll get Saturday!

Step right up, Cowboy

So you all probably read that we're going to counter-sue the living shit out of NET APP. I really didn't want to go there, but that Cowboy David Hitz gave me no choice.

I was all set to do what he wanted to end this hostility. As I told you on the CB, he wanted us to make ZFS un-free and promise to use it only on computers and not storage devices. Honestly, I could have lived with that.

But you should have seen his other demands:

* Cut off my ponytail and wear my hair like John Fowler.

* Change the name ZFS to DUFUS.

* Sell our StorageTek division to SCO.

* Pick up and polish Hitz' cowboy boots every Friday morning in my limo.

I'll tell you, these lawsuits tend to go on for years. Net App customers will bail in droves as this drags on and their market share will shrink to the point where their board will have to step in and send Festus out to pasture.

Sad, I know. But this cowboy's story is going to take him to the end of his friggin rope. And if there's one thing them judges can't stand, it's the smell of horseshit in the courtroom.

Ponytail of the Week: Ted Waitt

This PTOTW goes to Gateway's Ted Waitt, the man who blazed the trail for me in the ranks of ponytailed CEOs. As the face of Gateway, Ted made it ok for Mom and Pop to buy PCs because suddenly they "had a friend in the business."

I remember my first Gateway PC. It was this enormous tower system with a tv card. While the thing was loud as hell, it drove my big-screen Gateway CRT TV so I could watch the Food Channel and take notes on-screen at the same time. Thanks to Microsoft Windows ME, I think I got about a week's use out of the friggin thing.

So, here's to you, Ted. The ponytail hall of fame would be nothing without you.

ME to SE

So the news slipped this week that we are going to let Java Mobile Edition wither and push the full Java Standard Edition down to mobile devices. There are a lot of technical and business reasons for doing this, and frankly it's just not a big deal.

But over the weekend, I got a call from Analyst Relations that Dana Garner was ringing alarm bells on this story. I clicked on the link and was shocked at what I saw there.

My God! Dana Gardner is a friggin man!

All these years I've been trading flirty emails with this person thinking he was a woman. Crikey! I lost my lunch right there at the kitchen table.

Time tunnel

My neighbor works at Apple, so the other day I snuck over there to take a look at the new Leopard OS running on his iMac. He showed me the nifty features and we both agreed that this stuff is just light years of anything else right now.

One particular feature has me worried though--it's their backup utility called Time Machine. With one click, you can go back in time and recover any file or document in its various states of revision. The problem? I'm thinking this is going to be a real a pain in the ass for us CEOs.

Imagine that everything is recorded and easily searchable. So today if I pull a "we still expect to be trading at 30X revenue" kind of remark out of my ass, now the analysts will be able to call bullshit before I even finish the sentence.

So I don't think the business world is ready for Time Machine. It's bad enough that my wife remembers every friggin word I've ever said.

Ponytail of the Week: Morimoto

I've decided that this blog needs some weekly features to keep it more grounded than the diatribes on my corporate blog. It's rather chaotic will all those friggin Sun serfs writing to me every day with: "Jonathan, you've got to blog about this and that, blah blah blah."

So here goes; our first regular feature is going to be the Ponytail of the Week.

As you know, I have a passion for cooking. So it should be no surprise that my first ponytail hero is the Iron Chef himself, Masaharu Morimoto. If you've ever seen this guy on TV, you know he chops with the determination of a Samurai.

Truly, this is the kind of guy us CEOs want on staff when it's time to do RIFFs. They don't need a recipe or a plan, it's just straight to CHOP! SALT! CHOP! STIR and then friggin CHOP!

How green is my limo?

You know, when you're CEO of one of the Greenest companies in America, people tend to watch and see if you walk the talk. That's why I'm especially proud of my new Green Limo (GL).

I've always been concerned about the environment. Not so long ago I even rode the Sun shuttle to work every day with the serfs. In fact, I hear they've since converted the thing to organic biodiesel.

But the GL is really something special. As the world's first hybrid plug-in limo, it's effectively carbon emission neutral. In fact, whenever I'm on 101, there's 2.5 less SUVs able to fit on the road.

Looking forward, I think I've sold Google on getting one of these babies for every one of their employees. If that works out, I'm thinking we could just about eliminate traffic and pollution in the entire Bay area!

Phone home

So I guess I need to do some damage control on this Java phone story. I told Scooter to keep it under his hat, and now it's all over the papers.

Truth is, folks, we had to scrap our jPhone plans. We had the whole cheaper-better than the iPhone thing all figured out and then Jobso caught wind of it and cut his prices. So it turns out the thing was not going to be cheaper or better, just opener.

So we're going to hang back in the weeds on this one and let Apple beat the crap out of everybody else. They're trying to solve the wrong problem anyway; what the world really needs is a cell carrier that doesn't suck.

Soccer Mom: 1 Vista 0

Did you ever think you end up feeling sorry for Steve Ballmer? Me neither. But then came this story about the mother of a 13 year old who scolded Ballmer for Vista's all around nincompoopery.

Now, I'm sure Ballmer has a lot to do being the CEO of big, bloated company and all. But ever since that stinker of an OS hit the shelves, he has to go around defending it, even in places where Vista has nothing to do with the agenda.

When you and I do something every day, we tend to get better at it. When Ballmer goes through the daily ringer by a soccer mom on this particular day, the best argument he could pull out of his ass is that they put a lot of value in Vista for the enterprise.

So the next time you hear Mr. B. blathering about Linux impinging on his IP, keep in mind that he basically just trying to change the subject. It's that or the poor deluded bastard actually believes Microsoft has IP worth stealing.

Commodity blaze

You know, I just hate getting into it with the lawyers. Last night they were getting our Niagra II slides ready in Vegas and somebody flagged the title: "World's most Powerful Commodity Chip." So I get the call at midnight while I'm kicking ass at the poker table.

"Jonathan, they're saying we've got to substantiate that, umm, most powerful thing."

"Right," I responded. "Change 'Most Powerful Chip' to 'Most Innovative Chip' and tell them to STFU."

Crisis solved. Trouble was, the guy I was playing against heard the conversaton and then called my bluff.

So I cashed my remaining chips and reached out to shake his hand. I noticed he had was wearing an IBM gold watch.

"Dude, I think you fixed the wrong problem," he said. "Since Apple dumped PowerPC, the friggin lawyers haven't let us call it commodity either."

Dip chips

So now that the news has hit the wires, I can tell you all about our new servers based on Niagra 2. We announced the chip a while back, but now these babies are for sale.

Thing is, I've been talking to reporters all day and I'm kind of beat. Some of the details are melding with this economics speech I've been working on and I'm thinking it's best to wait until my fact checkers get out of bed.

All you really need to know is that we put a server on a chip and now we put that chip in a server. I'm pretty sure Niagra III will be a chip with a server on a chip in a server that we will then put into a server, but that looks friggin stupid when I read it back.

They're tailing me

Crikey! Business Week does a quick biopic on me and the only thing my employees pick up on is the origin of my ponytail?

It's just a friggin hairstyle, for gosh sakes! Do I write about your dreadlocks, comb-overs, and landing strips? Hell no.

The real story I was too embarrassed to tell BW is that I grew a ponytail in homage to my favorite TV character. And let me tell you--Duncan MacLeod wouldn't put up with this shit at his company. No way; he'd be whipping up a serious can of whoop-ass.

Get a grip, people! RIFs aren't over yet and this kind of shit really damages my calm.

Secrets of the CB

There's been some who-ha about how my writing style here is notably different than what you'll find on my corporate blog (CB). This is no accident and I think it's time to share the recipe with you folks.

You see, everything on the CB is written for effect (it's called rhetoric and only learned people like myself have truly mastered it in modern times.)

I'll admit my writing process is a bit unorthodox (actually, my freshman English professor called it unfortunate). But let me shift gears here and show you how it works.

First, you dictate a straightforward essay. Let the words flow and don't worry about things like topic sentences for each paragraph (in fact, I like to save my topic sentence for the end to give things that extra little punch.)

Secondly, you read over your text and insert a lot parenthetical references. Don't worry if your sentences stretch on for one or two hundred words (just count on the sum total momentum of your brilliant ideas to wash your readers downstrean to understanding). Again, just let it flow.

Third, have your web admin insert some photos. Don't give him too much direction (his only job is this friggin CB, after all). Just say, "I want a jack-a-lope in there." Let the frigtard figure it out for himself.

So there you have it (the power of the CB). It takes a special breed to pull it off, and frankly, I'd be surprised to ever see another CEO even try to duplicate it.

Reunification

I don't know if you've already had a chance to read the news, but I recently declared that Sun is going to increase it's focus on storage. It's about time, since we spent $4 Billion on StoragTek about two years ago and things were getting a little blurry.

Now, when some CEOs increase focus, they create a new division, name a new VP, or announce a Billion dollar investment. Not me. I've chosen to increase focus by absorbing all of Storage into our Systems division.

The way I see it, bits are either stored or they're not. It doesn't take an entire business unit to figure this shit out.

So the next time you want to increase your focus on something, try absorbing it into something else. I know it sounds crazy, but soon you'll be like me and have total faith in the power of the corporate subconscious.

Money Talks

AP dishes my salary

There are things in this life that you're better off not knowing. One of them is the salary of your co-workers. There is no joy to found there, only jealousy, disgust, frustration and outright despair.

Sure, you may find that some folks make less than you do, but even the proportion can piss you off. I mean, can you believe they're paying that worthless SOB that much?

Timing is everything, too. We were doing our RIFs this week and I can't think of a worse time for my salary and perks to be splattered all over the business section.

Sure, $7.7 Million is more than some CEOs make, Steve Ballmer included, but it is nothing compared to Larry Ellison's $60 million. No wonder the asshole has that smug look on his friggin face all the time.

Folks, if the Sun board wants to give me a chauffer, plane rides for my kids, and a home security system, that's their prerogative. You should see all the stupid shit I asked for.

The Hoods

The HR people were all wearing their hoods today. It's RIF time and we had to let some people go just to make Wall Street happy.

Like most big companies, we tend to recruit HR folks from the sorority equivalent of the Skull and Bones made famous by President Bush. Their society is so secret that only their supreme acolytes know the real name of thing.

I actually dated one of these protoHood chicks in college. Don't ask me how I know, but she had a t-shirt in her panty drawer that depicted a praying mantis eating it's mate. Fuck, I get the shivers just thinking about it.

Thing is, we need the Hoods when there is dirty work to do. They don't ask questions and they execute without remorse. And when you turn them on each other? It's like friggin girl-on-girl vampire scary, dude. But the next day, it's like nothing happened and they'll show you pictures of their kids at a soccer game.

Frankly, I hate this part of the job. We're making money now, for Christ's sake. So when the analysts aren't looking, I'll sneak the hoods back in and have them see who we can hire back.

Two-facebook

I'm sitting here scratching my head about Microsoft's huge investment in Facebook that looks to be going down. I mean, they could buy dozens of companies for the hundreds of millions that they're plunking down.

And it occurs to me how desperately Microsoft needs something like Facebook to get them into Web 2.0. New generations are spending their lives on the web and they don't need Internet Explorer, LiveSearch, Vista, Word, Powerpoint, or Excel to do any of it.

Could it be that Microsoft staff cruising for college girls saw a business opportunity? Maybe. Did they catch wind that Google is working on something much better? Probably. Time to get out the wallet.

As for Facebook, I just think any company this young ought to beware old married dudes with money. Redmond wants to be your friend, all right. That's why they've got condoms in their pockets. Ewwwww!

Eco and the moneymen

A lot of fake CEOs these days seem to be obsessed with what other people are doing. Not here, let me tell you; at Sun we're too busy working for a better world.

Today we launched our new OpenEco.org site, "a new global on-line community that provides free, easy-to-use tools to help participants assess, track, and compare business energy performance, share proven best practices to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and encourage sustainable innovation."

While I offered to kick things off with a speech on Innovations of the Participation Age and their Quantum Effects on Global Keynesian Marketplace Paradoxical Trend Inversions, someone thought it better to invite Bill Clinton. I watched his talk on the web, and have to say that I came away truly inspired. The man has been reading his Al Gore, let me tell you.

But what struck me most was the intelligence of this great communicator. Not only does he understand the problem of global warming, he understands the politics necessary to get the right things done.

So I'm not going to worry about the fact that Intel launched LessWatts.org a couple of days ahead of us. Carbon Disclosure is for everyone that wants to keep making money, er, umm, I mean living.

Freedom of Assembly

Sun was probably the first company to hold a press conference in Second Life. I forget what we announced there, as I still have nightmares about the various phallic avatars that ended up in the audience.

But now that IBM employees in Italy have chosen to picket the company's Second Life HQ, I've decided to give this 3D shit a second chance. In fact, I've donated a boatload of Linden dollars to the cause through an anonymous source so these freedom fighters can have the best quality signs, t-shirts, and TATs all bemoaning the evils of Big Blue.

The funny thing is that those Italians are always striking about something. In real life, they strike for more vacation, higher hemlines, and cheaper porn so often that no one takes them seriously. But with this geeky Second Life thing, they'll probably get so much attention that IBM will have no choice but to cave and pay them whatever the fuck they want.

You know, naysayers get on me about my Red Shift and Participation Age rhetoric all the time, but here we have evidence that the shit is really going down. And when Big Corporations like IBM can no longer speak with a single voice, all the press releases in the world will be powerless against a couple of disgruntled employees who chose to be dickheads.

Slashed

I want to set the record straight on this Slashtard contention that OpenOffice.org has an uncertain future. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, what kind of headline is "The Uncertain Future of OpenOffice.org"??? It sounds like a statement of fact when in reality it is little more than troll bait.

There are now over 100 friggin million downloads of OpenOffice crawling around out there. That's a helluva user base comprised largely of people who refuse to give Microsoft any money. As the Borg work their way into China, these numbers are sure to grow exponentially.

So Sun controls the code base, is that such a problem? Do you want Beastmaster Bill to slip some Clippy code in there when you're not looking? I didn't think so.

Slashdot is a mixed bag. It's supposed to be a forum for Stuff that Matters, but sometimes I wish these guys would just have a Coke and Smile and shut the fuck up.

The Bio-Boat

I ran into Bill Joy the other day at Peet's coffee. I hadn't seen the man for a long time and he looked troubled.

"It's the bio-boat, man. I just can't get it working."

I knew about Bill's boat project, kind of a floating, self-sustaining bio-dome. He started talking about it years ago, but no one took him seriously.

"The bio-boat? You mean it's real?"

"It's friggin real, all right," he said. "All 158 meters of it. I built all of it, from the hull to the software to the neuro-electronics. Trouble is, there's this one bug that keeps the thing from booting."

I offered to take a look. I mean, the guy founded Sun after all.

And holy crap! He should have called it the bio yacht. And when I got below and took a look at his screen, I could tell what the problem was right away. I changed a couple lines of code around and the system booted like a charm.

"You did it, Jonathan. Thanks a million!"

I kind of got choked up as he sailed off. He waved goodbye and said something about never needing to return to land again.

That's the trouble with us genius types--we're inventing a world that runs for free in a market that is perfectly happy to stop for gas.

Maker's Mark

Every new leader has to make his mark. This differentiation process can be especially tough when you happen to be the successor to someone like Scooter. Without his caustic wit, it seemed fruitless for me to keep up his tradition of slamming our competitors.

So I have chosen an alternate strategy for the express purpose of getting Sun's name out there. At times, the tactics in this strategy might confound you. Things like changing our stock ticker, splitting the stock 4-1, and giving shit away are not in the playbook of mere mortal CEOs. In fact, these actions are just the harbingers of an approaching maelstrom of unconventionality to come.

Like any good uber-strategy, this work of genius needs a name. I'm dubbing it The Power of the Schwartz.

In short, the Schwartz is an energy field that influences all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the business galaxy together. And as it has since the dawn of time, the Schwartz plays a part in nearly every decision made by men.

So the next time Sun does something that makes you scratch your head, think about the great power behind it all. You will become one with understanding.

May the Schwartz be with you.

Strange Bedfellows

It's been a hectic week. I bought CFS, helped AMD launch their quad-core, and turned Sun into an OEM for one of the most reviled companies on the planet.

And people are getting all upset like we committed some kind of sacrilege or something. The backlash got so bad I was beginning to think this time I shouldn't have announced the one more thing as Jobso likes to do.

The moment I knew it was time to face the music was when my kid asked me why I signed a deal with the Borg. "They're evil, Daddy. They even made Captain Picard do bad things!"

While it was easy to straighten out this misunderstanding, it occurs to me that the world looks at Microsoft through a child's eyes. As convicted monopolists, they will always be cast as the bad guys.

So when Sun puts down the gloves and works with Microsoft, naturally it's kind of a letdown. We're supposed to fight the evil, not profit from it.

Look guys, that's bullshit! Something like 65 percent of servers ship with windows on them. As an x86 vendor, we need to give the frigtards in this market what they want.

Does that make us hypocritical? Sure. But as I heard Alan Alda say on NPR today, "The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values."

AMD can thank me later

AMD has been pregnant with Barcelona for a long time, but now that the baby is in the crib, I want to share my own delivery story.

AMD's Barcelona webcast was held at 6:30 pm Pacific time so that participants could join live from all parts of the globe. I was supposed to tape my segment from our studios in Menlo Park.

I got there early and the vibe was all wrong. It was just me, some camera guy contractor, and a little monitor for me to watch. Totally lame.

So I hopped in my limo and told the driver to take me to the Presidio where the real event was taking place. Trouble was, the friggin Giants game had traffic tied up in knots!

I called in to tell them I was running late, and AMD's Hector Ruiz had a shit-fit.

"Wha-chu mean, traffic? We'sa planning dis event for over six-a fucking a-months!"

I couldn't help but laugh because the guy sounded just like Father Guido Sarducci.

"Dude, like chill, OK? Just put me at the end."

So I got there an hour late and the moderator had no clue how to introduce me. He stammered something about the dot-com being the network computer and I winged it from there with a nice history lesson of Sun and AMD. Hector must have had some bad shrimp or something because I saw him run off and barf backstage.

That's the trouble with a lot of CEOs. They just don't have the pizazz it takes to pull off this kind of shit.

Game day

I get pretty worked up when football season starts. Seeing Howie Long and the rest of those morons on the Fox pregame show is like coming home.

And some people don't get it, as if sport isn't something worthy of us Mensa types. What they don't realize is that by watching large men pound the crap out of each other, even the meekest among us can reap the benefits of no-contact testosterone.

And us CEOs need the juice. We have to be decisive, strong, and confident when we call the plays, bukko! Football gets us in touch with that inner Neanderthal so that Monday we're ready to battle.

If I was Larry Ellison, I suppose I'd just load up on cialis and fly around in my MIG while pretending to strafe Santa Cruz. He tells me it makes everything look blue for days.

As for the rest of us, it's more important to embrace our limits and enjoy the talents of those strong enough to play the game. Sure, I'm just an armchair quaterback on Sunday, but when the work week starts, I'm the one in charge of 34,000 friggin people who can beat me up.

Jonathan Hears a Who

In the oft valued-under the
lander of sun
came notions to split the
stock four to one

I, pony-tailed leader shall
declare and state:
JAVA shares are too many
lets con-solidate!

The bankers on Wall Street they've
priced us so low
reflections of profit are
fogged and don't show

As surely as logs with a
maul can be split
We'll jack the shares up
They'll pay twenty for it!

And when the dust settles the
pundits will say:
they were wrong, whod've thought?
pony-tail saved the day!

Rubbed the wrong way

My masseuse said that my tension levels are off the scale. She asked me what's up with that.

"Well," I told her, "Fake Steve has been mocking me about our pending 4-1 stock split. Every time I do a bold corporate move, the iTard gets on me about how stupid it is."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"I dunno. Insecure. Belittled. Foolish."

"And who is this guy, this Fake Steve person?"

"He's an editor at Forbes pretending to be a Billionaire CEO."

"Hmmmm. And did Forbes write about you much before this fake person came along?"

"Wait. Oh my god!" I exclaimed. "You're a genius! Of course! Fake Steve must be a stockholder! By mocking me constantly, he hopes to increase investor awareness."

I felt my muscles relax. Like the Buddha says, it's not so much about what people say, the mud they throw, or who they pretend to be. In the end, it's all about intent.

Bring it, Cowboy!

You know, I was all set to have a great week. How could it go wrong with a couple of days in the Big Apple? All I had to do was schmooze some analysts, shake some hands, drink some good wine, and maybe even check out a show on Broadway.

Well, that was before these frigtards at NetApp dropped a lawsuit on us. And the fact that I first heard about this from an analyst? That kind of shit really damages my calm.

Let me give you the straight poop on this lawsuit. We've made Net Tap obsolete with our thumper storage servers and ZFS. They're toast. Done. Outta here. History.

This doesn't set well with Net Tap. They want keep breathing. And honestly, we feel bad about this. We share a lot of customers and they hired a lot of people that we RIFFED over the last seven years.

I should have expected this from that Brokeback founder of theirs. The bio for David Hitz says:


"Before his career in the computer industry, Hitz worked as a cowboy, where he got valuable management experience by herding, branding, and castrating cattle."

No wonder he has the cajones to take us on. The son of a bitch probably transplanted the biggest pair he could find.

13 Ghosts

OK, I didn't want my true likeness to be out there already, but FSJ posted this picture of me today so I guess the jig is up. The news is out. They finally found me.

Thing is, I almost missed this entry today on the Fake Steve blog because the guy does so many friggin posts every day. Forbes must be one helluva jagoff place to work if you can sit around all day thinking up this shit and even writing a book in your spare time.

I'm going with a new theory; Fake Steve isn't one guy--it's a cadre of writers at Forbes trying to outdo each other.

So here is a character analysis of these Ghost Jobs:

* Only one FSJ likes to use the "F" word, and he posts about once a week.

* One FSJ is a woman who used to refer to herself as a feminist.

* Another FSJ is not only gay, but a Windows user as well. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

* Yet another FSJ normally covers the entertainment industry, but doesn't even own a friggin computer.

So there you go. Touche' you fake iTards--I'm onto your game!

You are who you sell to

A new BCG survey says that many executives are frustrated with their innovation spend. In a nutshell, they want more return on their IT investments.

I've harped on this before, but the guys who gripe about this are the ones who see IT only as an expense. And if you can think back to a job you had that was made hellish because they used shitty computer systems, then you know how counter-productive these bozos can be.

The truth is that Sun doesn't target the kind of customer who looks at servers like they're something to be filled with crap and then tossed away. Let them get their backoffice Huggies from Dell or whomever.

We want to deal with the guys who see IT as a competitive weapon. That's the pack we want to run with. Not only do these guys want to crush the beancounter bozos, they want to take over the friggin earth.

And, with any luck, some of that competitive musk will rub off on my team. I mean, I want fire in their bellies and this tree-humping eco kick they're on right now is damned near sedation.

Solo Summit

I'm back from my ascension of El Capitan, and I have to tell you that it a life-changing experience.

About a quarter way up, my climbing partner got an urgent message on his Crackberry and had to bail on me. I told him not bring the goddammned thing, but that Ellison is one stubborn dickhead sometimes.

The whole point of the climb was that we were supposed to get on stage next week and announce some kind of Oracle/Sun alliance. That way, we could talk about how we "scale" together blah blah blah. Stupid, I know, but it was that or sail around the world with the asshole.

So anyway, I decided to summit on my own. About three quarters of the way up, I crawled into my sleeping bag and slept under the stars. And in the morning when I made the summit, I felt this profound feeling that I could do anything on my own.

So I canceled the Oracle announcement. In all probability, Larry would have just gone off script and announced another NetPC or some frigtard idea like that. And all I could have done was smile as he went on and on about the climb while leaving out the little part about turning chickenshit.

Straight friggin up!

I'm going to take some time off from this blog and climb El Capitan. The weekend is just going to be me vs. 3000 ft of vertical adreneline, baby!

I'm brining a Cantenna, but there's a chance I'll be cut off from the blogosphere. Have a great weekend!

Big Blue is Harshing my Vibe

Today I was going to write about the Participation Age and the Net Effect of having billions of interconnected devices on our Global Infotech-econosphere, but something even more fascinating hit my radar.

Instead, I want to talk about drugs, specifically, the ones that the IBM marketing people must be taking.

I went to IBM.com today just to sniff around. They've agreed to resell Solaris, so I wanted to see what kind of two-faced propaganda they really had out there.

And suddenly, I found myself in a strange world full of bipolar emotions. It started with laughter when I read one of their headlines:

"Out with cables
In with blades"

Ouch! Hey Palmisano, mind if I send that line to Scooter for one of his top ten lists? And is impaling a feature or a benefit?

So I felt compelled to read more and I wound up on this flash site where you can roll this giant ball of wire around a datacenter while you listen to music from David Lynch's Eraserhead. It was unnerving as hell.

So I got out of there by clicking on Success Stories and it says, "ST. JUDE FIGHTS CANCER WITH BLADES" which is only fair, since St. Jude got killed with a friggin axe.

But wait, it gets weirder. When I clicked on Unipart Logistics, it said, "UNIPART LOGISTICS SUPPLIES DEMAND WITH BLADECENTER." My god! The laws of economics do not even apply in this hellish universe IBM has created!

So, let's go back to the topic of drugs since this experience has really harshed my vibe:

It's time for IBM to put out a service bulletin about not taking the brown acid.

You've lost a friend in the business

Today marks a sad day in the annuls of the American computer industry; Gateway Computer has sold itself to the Taiwanese at Acer.

I've always been a fan of Gateway, and it's not just because their former CEO Ted Waitt had a ponytail. No, with their cowskin logo and Midwest values, Gateway was a consummate success story of Americans making computers for Americans.

Companies like Gateway are national treasures. Think about it--the EU has never even had something like this to lose. Sure, they can crank out cars, jets, and cell phones, but they're computing resume is technologically bankrupt. And don't throw Bull/Siemens at me. That's just friggin gross.

I'd like to blame Dell or even Microsoft, but ever since IBM bailed and sold their PC business to the Chinese, the PC business in this country has been one big downward spiral of international mediocrity.

In the likelihood that those class acts Mark Hurd and Michael Dell barely burped at today's news, I'd like to propose a toast on behalf of the American Computer Industry:

"To Gateway. They may have fallen, but they will never be forgotten."

Christmas in August

I am so glad that August is nearly over! Since there's typically an end-of-summer drought of hi-tech news, we always turn up the PR to get the ink while we can.

I mean, look at what we announced this month: sustained profitability, a bunch of eco-innovations, the world's fastest commodity processor, and even a stock ticker change.

And the best news we could hope for comes from the Ballmer's Bowery Boys up in Redmond. Their Genuine Disadvantage Servers have been taking a dump for the last three or four days now. And wow, it turns out their dipshit architecture was a disaster waiting to happen!

So we're going to take it easy for a while with the announcements. That way, when Sun news is all over the wires, maybe even the frigtards with Vista will be able to read about it.

My comic

Preconditions

I got this great new conditioner today. It's like totally cheap, too.

My colorist recommended the stuff, though I didn't like the name at first. "HI PRO PAC" sounds like something HP would slap a "Q" on the end and put on the shelves at Best Buy. You know, that way the customer has a real choice between the COMPAQ PC on the one side and the HP box on the other:

"Look honey, this one has gray plastic on the front."

And it strikes me that Windows boxes are retailed a lot like shampoo. No matter what store you go to, it's the same shit on the shelves.

Another man's folly

I've been getting a lot of flack for the JAVA stock ticker thing. I knew some people wouldn't like the idea, but I had no idea what a violently polarizing issue this would become.

So here's the deal; we are going to continue doing new things at Sun, things that no one has ever thought to do before. This will be our Modus operandi. Some of it might even strike you as pointless and stupid.

But even Fake Steve, who slammed the stock ticker change at first, has warmed up to the idea in the space of a day. Yeah, sure, the stock went up, but just maybe he looked up on his office wall and saw one of those Think Different posters.

So, please just get over it, people! This is not a Democracy--this is Hugo Chavez setting the clock ahead by 30 minutes and just about as relevant to your daily life.

Dr. Java

As you have probably read in the papers by now, I am retiring our corpoarte stock ticker SUNW and replacing it with JAVA. Not only is this a big change in the naming sense, it heralds a new paradign in the stock market itself. More about that later.

I wanted to do this name change back in April, but the board just laughed at me. Well, Scooter did anyway.

"No way," they said. "Deliver on that profitable fiscal year you promised, and then you can call the friggin stock whatever you want."

So I got my way. Everybody knows about Java and now everyone will know about our stock, too. But that's not the best part.

The game-changer of this move is that we're open sourcing the stock as well! That's right. Anyone will be able to use, distribute, and alter JAVA stock in way they choose.

With Open Source stock, slashdot hordes will rise up on Wall Street, pressuring other corporations to trade under the GPL. At the same time, the freetards will be infected with the capitalistic notion that Greed is Good.

And when Linux gets the blame for causing economic chaos, we'll be there, pinky finger to mouth, with millions, no billions of Solaris downloads! Bah wa ha ha ha!!!!

Boring is Good For HP?

Sometimes this industry just bums me out. I don't know what it is--business has been improving at Sun. Server market share, profitability, gross margin--it's all up, up, up.

As CEOs go, I think I am pretty upbeat, the kind of guy you'd invite to a barebque, even. This is no accident; I try to make sure that all my press pics show me smiling.

But this week, it was the news that pissed me off. I was all set to read the story about how boring HP is, but when I get there, it turns out that the reporter thinks it is a good thing for their bottom line.

And I'm like, wait a minute, since when does this country embrace boring? What kind of people are these IT buyers that think HP is the way to go? What books do they read? What color are their cars?

The answers are all around you. In fact, they were at the last barbeque you went to. But if you're like me, you never even tried to remember their names.

Not easy being green

Today we launched our Eco Innovation Eco Initiative offering, more familiarly known as EI EI O. Starting now, Sun will show you how to save tons of energy in your datacenter and lower your utility bills. Even the Republicans love this stuff because it's all about maximizing your profits while, umm, err, saving the planet or whatever.

I'd like to tell you that it feels really good to be part of this. Thing is, they didn't invite me.

They must not have even checked my calendar, because I was like totally clear of appointments all morning.

My initial queries into this have been unsatisfying. "Oh, you know, we save the big launches for you, Jonathan."

Yeah, right. I know the real reason; if there's one thing those tree-huggers hate, it's a speech on economics.

Dodging the $3000 iPhone Data Bill

Talk about a rude awakening, here's a story about a fellow who got socked with $3000 in roaming charges while using his iPhone abroad. Sadly, this kind of thing could have been avoided.

Months before the iPhone came out, I met with Steve Jobs (I think it was the real one, anyway) and tried to persuade him to put Java in the thing.

"Who uses that Java stuff, anyway?" he asked.

"Well, Google, eBay, DoCoMo for starters. Perhaps you've heard of them?"

He frowned, so I went on to tell him that Java is on like three billion devices at last count.

Then he said something like "sue me" but it seemed really out of context. Whatever he meant, I got the drift that we weren't cutting a deal.

But back to this roaming bill thing, I don't know for sure if Java could have helped, but now that they've cracked the iPhone with jailbreak, AT&T bills like this could make Siooma the next killer app.

Red Shift on Red Bull

The press has really been picking up on our Red Shift theory, and I have to say it's about time. Every company should have theory, I think.

In the case of Red Shift, the theory is that people are going to need exponentially more compute cycles to deliver Web 2.0 stuff in the future. Or something like that.

Now you can argue that Greg Papadopoulos is kind of making a leap here. But I had my staff dig up some examples that provide undeniable proof that this shit is going down:

* Twitter, a "global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?" People thought George Orwell was way ahead of his time predicting a Big Brother government that watches your every move. Who'd have ever thought that people would be stupid enough to actually key in the information themselves? This was truly visionary.

* UsedGirlfriend.com "Your personal resource for managing your breakup! We provide several tools to help you get rid of your unwanted baggage and completely avoid that awkward conversation about why it's over." Here again is sheer brilliance. In our always-on, instant message communiverse, the old tried and true method of just-stop-calling-her-baggy-ass probably doesn't work like it did for me back in college.

* MyYearbook.com, which was started by a teenager: "It all started during Spring Break 2005, flipping through a yearbook in my room and realizing it sucked. This is 2005 - why the hell is anyone buying yearbooks anymore?" And unlike sites like Facebook, they use 20 fonts on the same page in order to repel horny old married guys.

So there you have it. Red Shift serves as a leading indicator of the IT needs of the future. Get on the clue train before the teenagers using this shit grow up and start running the planet.