Explicitly and without apology a marketing vehicle MaryMaryQuiteContrary

Today's announcement of Project Blackbox has absolutely captured my imagination.

When you think through the scenarios...



.. it's easy to come up with ideas on how Project Blackbox can help our customers reap enormous benefits.



And bring a whole new level of innovation to disaster recovery.



And then there are out-of-this-world scenarios. This one gave me a chuckle because I have had conversations at my dinner table about what it takes to get something space flight ready, and I can see that NASA might have some issues w/this one.

:-)

And, of course, who could resist candy...


.
.. when it comes from Thin Guy. Especially this time of year.

But my favorite thing about this initative is the way in which the bloggers at Sun have been reacting to it.

If only you guys could see the email traffic we're seeing in the blogger community, you guys. It's really, really something.

So there's defiantely a lot of conversation going on about this... but I wanted to call your attention to the perspective of a specific blogger, who's use case scenario I thought was especially interesting.

And so, please induldge me as I do my very best to make a polite introduction out here on the unwashed Internet... meet my new best friend that I havne't met yet, Raju Alluri.

mary

I'd like to call your attention to an awesome podcast on Project Blackbox.



Hal Stern interviews Dave Douglas.

They take a look inside this amazing innovation...



Check it out.

mary

Unveiled.

Chris Melissinos, Sun's Chief Gaming Officer, came over this morning. He's such a good guy.

Here's how it went... I live in the same neighborhood that I grew up in. And I stay connected to my high school. Last year I went and gave a talk to the kids. I was a judge in the Tech Fair... things like that.

Anyway, a computer science teacher asked me to connect him w/a Sun techno hot shot to come in and talk to the kids. I reached out to Sun employees in the same metro area as me, seeking a techno celeb to go in and talk to the kids. Never, not in my wildest dreams, did a think that the Mother of All Techo Celebs (and we mean that in a gender-neutral way) would step forward.

That's right -- the Chief Gaming Officer Chris Melissinos said he would do it.

Is that awesome or what?

(Did I mention that more the half the kids at this school are on free or reduced lunch? This was going to be an incredible experience for them. The would never otherwise gain access to this kind of professional. I was so charged.)

Anyway. He came over this morning and we had coffee and light breakfast and chatted about a whole bunch of stuff before going over.



It was awesome.

Then we go to the school. (I get to ride in his super fancy new car. Very nice. :-)

And we sit down with the teacher. It turns out we got lines crossed and we weren't going to get to talk to the kids today, which was disappointing... but we still had a nice talk... and we agreed to come back...



While Chris and the teacher were talking, my eye catches a set of portraits on the wall....



Blaine Pascal (first calculating mechanical device), George Boole, John Atanoff (co-producer of first gen computer), John Von Neumann (machine language creator), John Kennedy (BASIC language co-developer) and....



James Gosling!!!!

(Father of the Java programming language, not that we really need to say that out loud.)

Man, did I get a charge out of that!

I swear to you, it is absolutely staggering when you think about it.

First off, when you think about the fact that I get my paycheck from the same company that employs Melissinos, it's kind of mind-boggling to begin with.

But when you think about the fact that both James Gosling and I both use Sun Rays to log onto the same network every day and get our work done... that he has a Sun badge just like me... And that I can look him up and find out what his extension is and pick up the phone an dial five digits to call him... It's just mind blowing...

The most incredible people work for Sun. It is truly amazing.

Best part is, that there's a way for you to get a piece of this action.

:-)

I really don't think my day could get any better than this.

But you just never know... I think something really big is going to happen at around 12:01 p.m. pacific time today.

Just call me clairvoyant.

:-)

mary