Explicitly and without apology a marketing vehicle MaryMaryQuiteContrary

Tuesday Sep 14, 2004



Big disaster on the Sun Ray front.

Yesterday, as I was reaching across my desk to get a package of chips that I stole from my firstborn's lunch box, I knocked over my cup of coffee.

keyboard, doritos, coffee

The keyboard was saturated with second-rate coffee.

I try to dry it off... turn it upside down and shake out the coffee...

Keyboard is fried.

Maybe overnight it will evaporate and get better.

No dice.

Now what do i do?

I moved heavan and earth to get myself on this Sun Ray at home pilot. I even promised them that I wouldn't ask stupid questions if they let me on.

Then I go and do a brain-dead thing like this....

How am I going to explain it to them?

Honesty is the best policy.

Their reply: "No problem. just plug in any old USB keyboard."

Are you serious?

(This Sun Ray is all high tech. I never imagined that the solution could be that simple.)

Got me thinking...

What if, instead of spilling coffee on my keyboard, I had spilled it on the Sun Ray itself? Would that have gotten me kicked off the pilot --the senseless distruction of state-of-the-art technology? How much would it have cost to replace?

So I actually have no idea. (find out. start a Sun Ray at home pilot in your business. call your sun rep today.)

But I am certain it is orders of magnitude cheaper than replacing a laptop.

But that's not the whole story, people. It's only the beginning. 

If I had spilled coffee and destroyed my laptop I'd be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. I would have lost all my data and apps stored locally. So in addition to the very significant cost of replacing my hardware, I would have had to spend hours and hours installing firewall, vpn client, anti-virus and more.

No trivial task.

With the Sun Ray, the network is my computer.

I can (and do) take my employee badge (which has a Java card smart chip on it) out of my Sun Ray

badge outside of sun ray

at home and go to any Sun office;

badge in sun ray

stick my badge in; input my secret password;  and I've got my personal desktop. Within seconds. 

(editor's note: the picture above is actually taken in my home office as i wasn't prepared to drive 45 mins to the nearest Sun office just to take a picture.)

It's an entirely new model.

It's total mobility.

You don't really get what a huge big deal this is until you start living this life. No laptop to carry around. No patches to install. No system to administer.

Back to the problem at hand... the keyboard... lucky for me we happen to have a home computer that has a USB keyboard.

Plug and play.

Back in business.

I just love this.

mary

p.s. the moral of the story: don't steal chips from your kid's lunchbox. bad things happen when you do stuff like that.

p.p.s. chips = krisps for all you British speakers out there.


Comments:

Actually that would be 'crisps'. - Rich (pedantic British English speaker and speller)

Posted by Rich Sharples on September 14, 2004 at 01:09 PM PDT #

More precisely, crisps with a little blue paper twist of salt. (OK, that was 45 years ago.) Or crisps in a range of flavours that would make your head spin. (I bought some nice "Lamb & Mint Sauce", "Roast Beef & Yorkshire Pudding", and "Baked Ham & Mustard" flavoured crisps in England last week.)

Posted by Geoff Arnold on September 14, 2004 at 02:41 PM PDT #

they had the following varieties in Cyprus this summer: feta, cracked pepepr, and tomato. pepper was my favorite. mary

Posted by mary on September 14, 2004 at 03:15 PM PDT #

45 minutes to the nearest office? Traffic wasn't that bad this morning. :)

Posted by Torrey McMahon on September 14, 2004 at 03:35 PM PDT #

Actually you can try the following in the event you really like the coffee'd keyboard: 1. Put it in the dishwasher on low. Leave it in the sun or near some other heat source for a week. Then plug it in. 2. Get some 99% rubbing alcohol and hold the keyboard at an angle. Pour the alcohol over the coffee'd area (obviously you want to do this away from open flame and somewhere where the alcohol can be disposed of... perhaps a bathtub filled with 2 inches of water). Then wait for the alcohol to evaporate and plug it in.

Posted by PatrickG on September 14, 2004 at 04:48 PM PDT #

you gotta be kidding me, Patrick? are you serious? you're just pulling my leg, right? mary

Posted by mary on September 14, 2004 at 05:05 PM PDT #

Torrrey, it just shows you how accustomed i've become to working from home. it's anathema to me to spend time in traffic. i consider it the most monumental waste of time. i can't believe people still commute. isn't that crazy? i'm telling you, this whole Sun Ray/iWork life... it changes you forever... you never want to go back... it's like the thought of typing a term paper on a typewriter. no way you'd ever go back to doing it that way... so i'm over the whole commute thing... i'll never (knock wood) do it again. mary

Posted by mary on September 14, 2004 at 05:08 PM PDT #

That's right--rubbing alcohol is your useful for cleaning circuit boards, at least for those of us who aren't experts with better tools and tricks at hand. I've never tried the dishwasher trick, but I've heard of it many times over. Ditto for sticking dead hard disks in the freezer. Har. Second-hand first-gen SunRays cost about $30-$50USD on the second-hand market. Heck, shipping these things across the border costs more than the Rays themselves... of course, the brand new ones cost more. :-)

Posted by Derek Warren on September 15, 2004 at 12:24 AM PDT #

Just call Sun IT, they will send you a new keyboad... better a SunRay keyboad than a whole laptop where you would have lost all your data :-)

Posted by Bill on September 15, 2004 at 07:19 AM PDT #

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