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.