Somehow I just think I've made a bad decision. I just signed up to put my personal thoughts on the corporate sponsored blarg site, and I am not one to sit back idly and keep quiet. I'm sure a bunch of people who know me would agree. I don't know why I've not bothered up to this point. I've been posting on Usenet and other mailing lists for years, and with things like google, everything I might have ever written is kept someplace. Yeah, that makes me really happy. I think back to all the stupid posts when I thought *I* knew it all, had really bad days [the kind that makes people think you didn't take your medication], or was just being argumentative to the point of flames, and just shake my head. At least after all this time, I've realized the futility in arguing with folks who already have their minds made up, and just try to help those willing to ask for help or at least consider an alternative. For the most part that's worked. I've met a bunch of folks in person, both inside and outside of Sun, from my dealings with mailing lists such as the Yahoo Groups SolarisonX86 list and while it may just have been a lunch with a guy in Dallas in the West End, or a long phone call from someone in Canada whom I'd never talk to before who thought I was having a really bad day, I'm happy to call those folks friends. It makes me realize how very lucky I am, despite the fact that we don't have much interpersonal interaction without influences of a sequence of zeroes and ones.

But since I just did my first ever presentation, at CEC 2005 in San Francisco, I realized I'm now officially published with something more than a stream of consiousness response in a public forum. With a deck of slides I put together by myself with Star Office, and the requisite head-banging having to learn the ins and outs of Star Present, formatting help from some co-workers and a fair amount of reviews from peers, it's official now. Obviously, the CEC selection panel must have thought I had something important to talk about. So here I am, jumping into the deep end of the blarg. Great, now I have to think about what I say and how I say it. Thank goodness for "Save as Draft" At least if I'm not talking technical, I can write without having to go check the list of "do's" and "don'ts" to make sure I haven't violated rules of the blarg. (And wondering if my English professor from WVU would approve of my grammar. I have a tendency to run-on...) Unless I'm talking about something like how things work, what management is doing (which by the way, is one of the great reorg-ing mysteries of the world) or the big list of "do nots", I hope I can stay below the blarg police radar.

But, other engineers in the company are doing it, and it's a fairly innocuous way for other folks who don't troll mailing lists in the company to see what guys like me are dealing with from a corporate, technical or social perspective. Another way to get published. And as I sit and write this stuff, I realize I'm now going to have to learn HTML, something I've been avoiding for at least 10 years. What's a systems guy to do? I didn't get a degree in English, Creative Writing or Desktop Publishing. My degree is in Computer Science. The stuff in my head is all very technical and process driven, and up to this point, I've never really considered how to pretty it up on a web page. Heck, it's not like there's 10,000 other pieces of technology that I need to learn for my job. And this past weekend, even mangement has admitted they don't know what an "Engagement Architect" is supposed to do, which is now my official job title having originally been re-hired as a "Systems Engineer" after being RIF'd as a Cluster Services Methodology Developer. :-(

So will anyone really care what I have to say? Probably not. There's a bunch of stuff going on in my life that won't appear here because it's not really an appropriate forum for it. But folks will care about the technical content, which according to the blog stats, is what seems to tweak the public's interest.

CLB: may as well start early.

So what's the point of $7.6B in cash if the GAAP rules won't let you spend it because it comes off an asset? I'm really getting tired of that story, especially because I've come to realize all it is, is "spin". As far as I'm concerned, it's just a virtual carrot. It doesn't really exist other than to serve up as good press for the employees to hear at corporate meetings to believe that the company will stay afloat. The constant reorging, rifs, travel restrictions and expense reduction policies only serve as a warning sign. Yes, this is a technology business and the market changes very quickly. Hardware is more and more becoming commodity, and the JES software licensing at $100/head only validates the point. So where is Sun going? Services seem to be a very good way to bring in recurring revenue of substantial margin, but the mantra we hear is that "we don't want to become IBM GS". I look at their stock price and I have to wonder. The model of recurring revenue streams in services works really well if you get the long term contracts, even if the going rate is less. Having to do a couple of weeks at a time only incurs the overhead of creating, funding, staffing and implementing a project. The only thing the $7.6B in cash probably does is stave off someone buying Sun for $6B in cash and floating a $7.6B loan for the duration of procedures. In that context, I wonder what the future will really bring.

Enough rantings of another pony-tailed geek. Later!