How cold is it? Cold enough for Windows to freeze in Times Square. Ha, ha!

I was out all of last week celebrating Thanksgiving with my family, and catching up on all the housework I've been neglecting like cleaning the garage. Many things happened while I was out. Here's a recap:

The Right Stuff for Your Office
ComputerUser.com awarded Sun's Java Desktop System (JDS) one of the 15 best small-business tools. Very nice! We also like it for big enterprise users too. It's just a good looking, simple-to-use interface. Who wouldn't want that?

Dartmouth Collaborates with Sun Microsystems to Develop Secure Technology
Dartmouth's PKI Laboratory will be contributing security features into OpenSolaris. Dartmouth has also been named a Sun Center of Excellence, which is a program we have with universities and research institutes. It basically means we'll work together on joint projects, donate equipment, promote what they're doing, etc.

It also happens that my boss, Glenn Weinberg, is an alma mater of Dartmouth, where he majored in German of all things! I actually tried to get him to wear his old band uniform for the visit, until I found out that the band uniforms are just green blazers/sweatshirts with white pants. I was hoping for something more dramatic, and embarrassing, like what the USC Trojans wear.

Adam Leventhal on LugRadio
Adam Leventhal gave an interview on LugRadio. The show is "irreverent", but lots of fun and Adam did a great job talking about OpenSolaris. And when I say "irreverent", keep in mind that I'm a regular Howard Stern listener.... You have to have a sense of humor about these things.

OpenSolaris at UCSD
In other university news, CSE 120 at the University of California, San Diego, will be talking about OpenSolaris tomorrow. If there's one class you don't want to skip, this is the one!

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris, JDS

California state legislators followed the Senate and approved the bill for same-sex marriage in California! Now the bill is on Governor Schwarzenegger's desk.

It's hard to predict what will happen. The Governor is a Republican, but has always said that same-sex marriage is something the people will have to decide. But did the voters already decide with Proposition 22? I'm sure Arnold is checking the polls hour-by-hour.

If you want to help sway him, send Arnold an email at http://www.govmail.ca.gov or the old-fashioned way at

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capital Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-445-4633

Finally, some good news today: The California Senate approves a gay marriage bill. Next stop: the Assembly.

Whenever I find myself saying, "well now I've seen it all," I'm immediately corrected that no, I haven't. It always gets worse.

First case in point: public divided on evolution. Teaching intelligent design is fair? Who ever said scientific theories had to be fair?? The way it works people is that you run experiments, collect data, and put forth a theory. The best theory that matches the data wins. A better theory may eventually come along, but you have to have better data and better experimental evidence before that happens. You don't put forth multiple theories "just to be fair."

So now I've seen, or at least read, it all. WRONG!

Turns out, Katrina hit New Orleans because the citizens there "tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long." Yes, Girls Gone Wild has the power to direct hurricanes. (Hmmmm.... maybe I should actually sit down and watch that....)

America has devolved back to the 1950's. The only thing keeping me going some days is knowing that a repeat of the 1960's is on its way. I can't wait for the new Summer of Love....

My friend Jason Steinhorn (now at eBay), recently participated in the 2005 World Series of Poker and placed 2nd! Definitely not a bad way to pick up some extra cash, though it's now prompting my partner Darrell to want to become a professional poker player. ("But who would clean the house then?")

ESPN started showing the event this week. (TV listings here.) The best part about Jason is his stare. He calls it "The Zombie" and says it's remarkably easy to do after 35 hours of straight poker, including an 8-hour final table and 3-hours heads-up play. I know it wouldn't work against me though. I know I can crack him up. :-)

We're all pretty proud of Jason. Great work, bud!

I'm just wrapping up my 10 day visit to Beijing. The purpose of this trip was three-fold: Glenn's staff had an "offsite" here; to meet my new JDS team (half are in Dublin, Ireland, the other half here in Beijing); and finally, to visit customers and universities to talk about OpenSolaris.

This is my second trip to Beijing and it's pretty much as I remembered it: Hot, humid, and smoggy. Some of Glenn's staff and family, however, have never been to China. It was fun to see their reactions. Jennie, Glenn's administrative assistant, bought nearly every purse she could find on Silk Street, and had to buy a couple of suitcases to carry them back in. I don't want to say that our shopping got out of hand, but if there is a pearl shortage in China, I know the people responsible.

It was nice to finally meet the remainder of the JDS team face-to-face. You see a lot of names and talk with folks over the phone, but you really don't get to know someone until you sit down for a chat over lunch. Patrick Callahan is a JDS manager who's lived in Beijing for 2 years. His blog tells of some interesting stories about what it's like to be an American living in China. It's certainly a lot different than the world we see as visitors staying in a Western-style hotel.

The customer and university visits were the best, though. There is a lot of interest in OpenSolaris and a desire to learn and participate more. To help with that, our lawyers have translated the CDDL into Chinese, which should be posted to opensolaris.org shortly. There will also be a new discussion board on opensolaris.org opening up this week to talk about using OpenSolaris in China. "Sharing", our buzzword for this year, isn't limited to just the US. It's a worldwide thing.

Microsoft has reversed its decision on the anti-discrimination bill. Although the Washington state legislative session is over for the year, I'm happy they've seen the light and changed course back. Now if Ballmer would only take the same stance outside the US. Discrimination is never right, regardless of which country you're in.

As mentioned last week, Jim's baby has arrived. He now has pictures up on his blog.

Congratulations, Jim and Akiko!

In case you missed it, Microsoft was backing an anti-discrimination bill in Washington until a local pastor threatened to launch a nationwide boycott. Microsoft backed off support and the measure failed to pass the Washington state senate by one vote. After a giant backlash, Steve Ballmer sent out an email to Microsoft's employees explaining the decision. Bill Gates followed up by saying he was surprised by the negative reaction and may rethink their position.

They backed down from supporting an anti-discrimination bill and they're surprised by the negative reaction? Microsoft was bullied by a misguided, hateful pastor? Did I unknowingly transition to some weird parallel Spock-with-a-goatee universe?

Ballmer dismisses the bill as addressing a "broad social issue". He wants the company to "focus on a limited number of issues that are more directly related to our business...." When you're running an international company that services the global economy, then discrimination is your business. Every consumer is your target customer. It doesn't matter what race they are, what their religion is, if they have any mental or physical handicaps, or what their sexual orientation is. Microsoft said they didn't want to offend Christians. What they did was offend Christians, and non-Christians, who find discrimination itself wrong and offensive. To put it in very simple business terms, they offended potential customers.

Maybe this explains in some way why Microsoft doesn't "get" open source. It, like the world, is a diverse community. Participation in that community makes it grow. Diversity makes it stronger.

And Don Asmussen is a genius.

Once a year Scott McNealy gives out the Chairman's Award. This award is given to people and teams that have been recognized as top innovators, process improvement or availability champions. There are a lot of nominations, but the winners are few. To receive a Chairman's Award is a true honor at Sun.

The exciting thing is that this year, five award winners are from Solaris:

• CDDL: An Open Source License for Sun and Everyone Else

• Fault Management Architecture

• Solaris 10 Cryptographic Framework

• Solaris for AMD64

• The Service Management Facility: Modern Solaris Administration

Congratulations to everyone on these exciting projects!

Jim Grisanzio and his wife are proud to announce the arrival of their new baby girl Wednesday night, April 27th. I'll forward a link of the pictures as soon as I get them.

Hey, did you know that Solaris is free... as in kittens?

"Kittens?? Don't you mean beer?" No, I mean kittens!

My partner Darrell does volunteer work for Fix Our Ferals, an organization in Oakland, CA, that spays/neuters feral cats at no charge. This, by the way, is a much better and humane way of controlling wild cat populations than hunting them like Wisconsin wants to do.

Fix Our Ferals normally returns the fixed cats to the wild since they are usually too wild to be tamed, but when they come across kittens that are so young that they can be socialized and tamed, then they clean them up, give them all their shots, and adopt them out. We are now fostering four kittens that will be ready for adoption on April 30th, 2005. There are three boys and one girl (the white fluffy one in the 3rd picture):

For each adopted kitten we are asking for a donation to Fix Our Ferals. So ok, they aren't exactly free, but your donation is to a good cause and is completely tax deductable. [Update]Sorry, but the kittens have new homes now. Thanks for the interest!

Bush got an iPod. I didn't expect him to have the same playlists I do, and thankfully, he doesn't, but "My Sharona"?!? It leaves me somewhat unsettled to think that the man with his finger on the button is bopping to "My Sharona". But then I don't know what kind of music the president should be listening to. I guess I was expecting hymns, or at the very least some sort of Christian rock. Faith + 1 anyone?

I've been asked for some time to start a blog. My standard answer has always been, "What would I talk about that someone like Jim hasn't already covered?"

That worked until this week at OSBC. When I gave my standard answer to Ben Rockwood, he agreed with me, but then added that with my own blog, my own viewpoint will show through. Information and events are repeated throughout blogs, but each one carries the writer's own personal style, their opinions on the matter. It was an argument I couldn't easily dismiss.

So here I am. You may not learn anything new about the industry from reading my blog, but maybe you'll learn something about me.