Thursday May 22, 2008

    If you follow my personal blog, you probably know that I am planning to move, hopefully by the end of the year, and that I have accumulated way too much 'junk' since even before moving into this large house 12.5 years ago. I have been trying to downsize, and the last week or two I have found a new enthusiasm for it, although I don't know why. It feels good to rid myself of 10+ year old manuals and other assorted papers, and there is plenty of similarly aged hardware to get rid of as well. This week alone, I have gotten rid of 6 boxes of paper recycling. Nice.

    One of the enjoyable aspects is I get to relive many fond memories, as I sort through and re-assess all the stuff I have saved. Sometimes I stumble upon a forgotten gem, and one such gem is the inspiration for this post. I hope to discover other interesting artifacts, and also hope I don't throw away any by accident. In the end, I will certainly need to 're-assess' much of what I am saving now, I am just hoping it won't be before I move in to the new community.

    Not long after I started with Sun, I had the privilege of attending a SunLabs Open House. That is one of the benefits of working on one of Sun's main campuses, amongst other things. I was still pretty green, particularly by Sun standards, where you work with folks who have been at Sun for over 15 years on a pretty regular basis. I saw some interesting technology, but I've never forgotten the 'booth'/demo for something that would later be code named 'Corona'. Corona ended up being one of the first Sun products I got involved with, since one of the sales reps in the partners organization I worked in at the time asked me to get more detail on it for a potential new partner. I've stuck with it ever since.

    So, what is this product/technology? Here is a scanned image of the tri-fold pamphlet I picked up, which I re-discovered in my downsizing efforts.





    For those who don't recognize the technology, this is the Sun Ray technology from it's birth in SunLabs. I find it interesting how it has come full circle in nomenclature. And to think, at the time I was wondering how they would ever get the bandwidth to homes they would need to let me use my smart card at home for the same easy access to my work session. :-)

    Got your own Sun history story to share? Have you held on to some esoteric item from years back at Sun? Let's hear about it. Post a blog entry, and leave the link in the comments below. I know there is more fun...er Sun... history out there.