One of the greatest concepts of community software and web 2.0 is tagging. The simple idea of adding meta data to content. No taxonomy. No index. Just simple, meta-value.

I am not sure if this blog is another form of tagging or just another web fad, but I have been tagged. Yes I am sure you have seen by now many a web folk have been tagged and as such must wax poetic on five relatively unknown facts about themselves. Many have been tagged; Jonathan, Hal, Volker, etc. now it is my turn. Who tagged me you ask? Well due to my tardiness, many. It started with Mary Cay Kosten and then on to the Diva's and Volker. Now for a bit of encouragement through embarrassment. Of those that have tagged me, it is my pal Mary Cay who has not quite come out into the sunlight to share her ideas with the world (her blog is only internal). I know she has ideas to share and I can understand wanting to work out her blogging neophyte-ness internally first. However, now it is time to shine light on this outstanding woman executive, Mary Cay, come on in, the water is warm! It is time to make your mark in the blogosphere.

Ok, so on to the task, five personal facts about myself.

1) I am adopted. I know, how could any parent give up such a handsome nerd? Well needless to say, I was provided with adopted parents that enriched me with the freedom to investigate and experiment, sometimes with less then perfect outcomes. You will see from another fact below, this freedom inspired an un-quenching need for information and tinkering. I believe this was the underpinnings of my geekness. I appreciate the fact that I was never discouraged, even when it meant that I disassembled a perfectly functioning household appliance, automobile or device and built some other completely useless (in my parents eyes) contraption. Thanks Mom and Dad!

2) I am an enthusiastic amateur adrenaline freak. This essentially means that I love any sort of adrenaline rush, but I generally suck at it. How can you fail as an adrenaline freak? Well you can crash, a lot! Those that know me away from work may know that from time to time when I mountain bike, ski, motocross, race, etc I tend to crash. I used to have a saying that if you didn't come home bloody then it wasn't much fun. Well I have given up that saying for extra pads and braces. I still crash but it does not hurt as much. My brain thinks it is still in its teens, but my body feels like it is near retirement. I have broken several bones, some of which I never quite made it to the doctor to repair, dislocated a knee, torn MCL and ACL (several times), bumps, bruises and cuts. All in the name of a little fun - ohh and the accompanying adrenaline rush. So the next time you see me walking by and you wonder why I have a continuous limp, you will know why.

3) Movies and music please. Yes I love movies and music. What kind of movies? Any movie that has a start and a finish are tops in my book. Love them. If you give me a few hours of time (beyond work, my family and such), I will most likely use it to watch a movie. So if you must know, my blog often takes a back seat to movie watching. What kind of music? Here I am a bit more specific. I like just about any kind of music except one; country music. Is it degrading to the word music to precede it with the word country? Anything else; rock, R&B, rap, classical, new wave, trance, pop, techno, world, etc. I love it all. If you must know I have over 20,000 songs in my library and purchase new music at a rate of at least an album or two a week. The long tail has done wonders to music lovers as we can now experience music beyond what Wal-Mart and other giants think we should enjoy.

4) I have the knack. No not the band (although I do have the Knack in my library), I mean the knack to fix things. The years of taking things apart things apart, building news things and simply tinkering to figure out how things work, has left we with a general ability to fix just about anything. I have had nicknames like MacGyver, Gadget and such due to my love for fixing and tinkering. It has paid off well and it is a rare day indeed when I am forced to call on someone else to fix something. Fun for me is building, creating new things out of seemingly useless components. So next time you are stuck in the middle of no where with a broken toaster that you need to turn into a solar powered aircraft, you will know who to call.

5) Last but not least, I love being a Dad. For anyone that has kids, I don't think I need to go into much explanation. Suffice it to say that nothing in this world brings me more pleasure then spending time with my Son.

I hope you have enjoyed this little peregrination into my world.

Now on to the fun part of this. It is my turn to tag five people. I tag Chris, Peter, Baty (will give Jim a reason to do a second posting), Jason and Giuseppe.

Technorati Tags: Dirtbikes, Geek, Movies, Music, Web2.0

Some of you may have heard recently about Sun's focus on what we call "Redshift". In fact, here is a presentation that Greg gave at our analysis summit earlier this year. You may think that with terms like Redshift and Sun that we would be talking about astrophysics. Well there is a small relationship, more later.

Redshift is simply a term we use to describe the shift we see in a set of customers, applications, infrastructure, etc. that are not served by Moore's law. This essentially means that there is a set of problems that are not solved by the every increasing capacity and capabilities of traditional computing. Those set of problems that are served by Moore's law are every increasing their focus on efficiency of computing. Those that are not served by Moore's law (Redshift) are constantly consuming more and more. More storage, more bandwidth, etc. For example, have you ever seen a high performance computing (HPC) program ever say, "no thanks, that is way too fast and much too large for problem". No, they consume what our industry can give them. HPC is not the only area. More and more network based services are not able to get the bandwidth they would like, the storage capacity they would like, the computing cycles they would like.

We see networking computing ever expanding. More users, more applications, more services. Just as the universe is ever expanding (thus the Redshift relationship). The Internet, its users (now the programmers) are every expanding, Redshifting.

I thought you might enjoy this video I found "Shift Happens". Some good data that shows we are by no means at the end of utilizing the Internet and its network computing capabilities.

Technorati Tags: Geek, Redshift, Sun, Technology

Looks like IBM may be having more problems yet "to come". An article in the The Register this week shows a slide from a recent IBM presentation that lists the date of Power 6 to ship in the future, or "to come". I am not sure how to parse "to come". Does that mean they can't figure out when they will be done? In any case, interesting news.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Technology

I was in Russia this week visiting a few of our customers and meeting with the team in Moscow. As with many of my visits, I once again found a Sun team that was energized and excited about their growing business. Thanks to Victor and Chris for hosting me!

One of the customers I met with this week was ЛУКОЙЛ-ИНФОРМ (Lucoil-Inform). Lucoil is one of the largest oil companies in Russia and they held a press conference announcing their success in putting their new ERP system into production. They invited Sun to attend the press conference and talk to the press about our technology, products and how we worked with Lucoil and SAP to deliver their solution. I included a picture from the event. There was a lot of discussion about the implementation, architecture and operation of Lucoil's data center. There was a great piece of video produced from the event showing the press conference and some video of Lucoil's data centers. Thanks to Mr. Alexander Pruzhinin and Lucoil for your business, a successful partnership and a great press conference.

If you can read Russian and want to know more, follow these links:

• http://www.spbit.ru/news/n12517
• http://www.cnews.ru/news/line/index.shtml?2007/04/05/244095
• http://uralpolit.ru/pfo/perm/05-04-2007/page_55639.html
• http://www.osp.ru/news/2007/0406/4110328/?rss_feed=646050
• http://lukoil-inform.ru/main/content.asp?art_id=2657

Technorati Tags: IT, Russia, Sun, Technology, Travel