April Fools at Sun

    Yup, it's that time of year again, and the Internet is abuzz with April Fools Day jokes of various kinds, including Google's, YouTube's, and the first one I saw this morning at Expedia. Some are pretty funny, some well thought out, and others just kinda sad. I always find a laugh to be well worth the effort, particularly during difficult times.

    I'm sorry to say that I haven't seen one prank within Sun today. Over the long history of Sun, April Fools Day pranks have usually been creative, sometimes amazing, and always fun. There was one during the days when Scott McNealy was fond of the phrase "put all our wood behind 1 arrow", and sure enough, he ended up with a gigantic wooden arrow through his office. We have a web resource called Onestop, and many pranks were pulled through it's pages, including amazing new products from SunLabs, etc.

    OK, I'm getting old and can't seem to remember all the details, but one of Sun's execs found his fancy car in the middle of one of the ponds on campus, on a raft or other surface such that it was fine, but not easily accessible. And not long after Sun announce Project BlackBox, there was a video of OpenWork 3.0, built into a shipping container much like the Modular Datacenter. Ah, those were the days. Maybe I was snoozing today and missed it, but it sure would be nice to see some of that old 'Kick Butt and Have Fun' attitude around the Sun family again.

    At this point, the best I can do is try to bring some levity to the rest of my fellow employees at Sun Microsystems by digging up some of the fun old mock ads. Enjoy :-)

Anti-Microsoft Jacques Cousteau style ad

The IT Guy - Episode #1

The IT Guy - Episode #2

The IT Guy - Episode #3

The IT Guy - Episode #4

Posted at 11:15PM Apr 01, 2009 by dragonfly in Geekery  |  Comments[2]