Suggestions from our readers

As I told you, I receive daily thousands of wonderful emails from our beloved readers.
I cannot answer all of them, nor follow all their suggestions and pieces of advice (for instance, I don't remember having played and much less won a multi-billion prize from the Micro$oft Lottery, Ballmer swears they don't have one either!; not to mention the lovely letters from the daughter of the former ruler of an African country that has asked my help to recover the money stolen by her father...).

Well, never mind, I wanted to thank our beloved reader Jim (I won't use his surname, it is enough with the SunId he so gently enclosed in his email), who sent this suggestion:

You need to convince Ellison to spend more time on his yacht so that you can take over the combined company. If done right, there is the opportunity to take a big bite out of the Big Blue Whale and the Toad of the North. A single source for iron, o/s, database, apps, and service is an idea whose time has come again.

Thanks for all the good years,

Well, that is right now what I'm trying to do, so I asked him to sail to the Caiman Islands, as I claimed I never was there before and he seems to have sailed the seven seas.
Jim, I really like how you say thank you. Come to my office when I arrive next Monday, we'll talk about your new position at Oracle.

The only problem of this trick is that while we are away, Jonathan is in charge of the company... Well, what could go wrong?

Sailing Away!

Yes, I'm sailing away, at least for the weekend. I had an appointment with Larry to adjust some details of the merger, so he said "pal, why don't we discuss it off-shore?" I couldn't say no, he is going to be in charge from now on, so I was going to propose him a cancellation with any kind of excuse because of the bad weather in the Bay Area (if it is only 58 here in the coast, imagine off-shore!, not to talk about the wind and the rain...), when I suddenly remembered the yacht that Larry has...

Nothing wrong can happen in a ship called "Rising Sun".
We are supposed to be back on Monday for usual business, but with Larry you never know...
Anyway, with the satellite phone installed in the ship I can instruct Ashok to post my thoughts as usual. Larry is also planning to install a Datacenter in a Box with some Sun Rays, matching the name of the ship, so communication is not a problem there.

All is calm on the front.

After posting our marvelous results from Q3, many of you were expecting the usual financial perspective email from our friend Lehman. So, as it was not coming, I stepped by his office to ask him if there was any hidden reason why he hadn't posted it yet. Fear not my friends, there is no hidden reason nor it is a silence imposed by Oracle as one of the points in our agreement. The reality is that after what happened to Sun, and being called Lehman, the guy is quite worried about his future and as he told me a few minutes ago: "Boss -he still calls me that, I really like it-, I'm terrified about my future, so I'm brushing up my resume and calling all the headhunters in the Valley. I'd better start right now, and maybe in a year or so I'll be earning enough to pay the mortgage".

So, there is no conspiracy of silence. It is just business as usual.

Now excuse me, I have to deal with the transition team. They are claiming the space next to my office, where I used to store the golf clubs. I need them to play with Larry.