Of Junk and Jewels

It seems that despite the crisis I've just won a travel to Dubai. I'll try to keep on posting while abroad, but you know how are those foreigners, and besides that I'll have to manage with jet-lag and so on, so who knows...
As I was telling, I've just won a trip to Dubai, to a technological fair, or something like this, and it seems that the Dubains (is it said this way?) are eager to see me (as you can see in this article: I'm the jewel, the most important asset in this year's event. Using their words: " the most prominent global leader ").
Of course, you do not need to read the rest of the article to get a context or something like that. The only thing you have to know is that when they talk about junk they are not talking about Sun's shares, although we have a value of less than 5 billions in the stock market... I could buy all the shares I still don't own with my chairman salary... whahahahahaha....


By the way Jonathan, it only took me three hours to reserve the tickets through the AMEX corporate travel page (could it be because they use Micro$oft IIS as web server...?). Is it a trick to dissuade employees to reserve travels and cut costs? I assure you it works... but not with me, I worked with 1440Kbits modems... oh, nice old times...

Salary Raises and $11M CEO's Pay

I have to warn all the people at Sun that come to me asking for a salary rise: I cannot give it to you.
The main reason is that I'm not the CEO anymore, I'm the Chairman, so it is not my responsibility to decide about rises (fortunately for me, I don't have to fight with the employees). The other reason is that we already spent all the money we had for rises, although we invested in just one man... Yes, you are right. We decided to reward Jonathan for his stunning management of the company during this year, so we raised his salary to $11M.
Again, Jonathan is a sample to all our employees. The stocks are at a historical minimum, the company didn't meet the objectives imposed by Jonathan itself, so he decided to restrict his rise to a mere 44% in relation with his past year compensation package. So, this is a sample for all of you working for Sun: don't dare coming asking for a 12, 7 or even a 4.5% of salary rise to overcome inflaction. We need to restrict our expenses, and the people working for us are the first ones to give a sample (I said people 'working for us', not US; of course Jonathan's chauffer is not included in the people to give sample either).
So, when thinking in asking your boss for a salary rise, remember Dante's words: Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

Farewell to a star.

Yes, he was a real star, but not only in Hollywood, he was greater as a man, and he was the man my mother in law was in love apart from his husband, and without my father in law being jealous (he also admired Newman). I will not include here his biography, I just leave here the link to Wikipedia.
We will miss you.

John DellVorak attacks again

I've been reading this funny story written by John Dvorak ( or DellVorak from now on).
John, in a past post in my blog I asked you to stop having those things for breakfast, but I see you must have doubled the dose instead...
Please, John, don't oblige us to do the same we had to do in the past when you started saying nonsenses about Apple. I still have Jobso sore about you, and he just offered me to send Moshe again to pick you up, you know what I mean...

Maybe we, Sun, should enter in the consumer market -and not only with the Blu-Ray and Java-, as I read in an article in the blogosphere or in the private jet magacine, I'm not sure, I'll comment on that someday around here, but this is just ridiculous.

It is true that I always wanted Sun turning in a more "Dellized" company, as you can read in previous posts, but this means that customers could buy the iron (the small one over all, even the medium size), directly from our web, in the way Dell does it, instead of using 12 people to issue an offer of less than $5,000, as we do now (and analysts ask Jonathan where our margins are!!!!).

I didn't even considered Dell as a company that could buy us, they are not in the poll list!!!
Although they have the money to buy us.. Well, today even Caldera (are they keeping the name?) could try buying Sun according to the shares price...
John, again, reconsider your attitude...

A way to solve our crisis (if there is any at Sun)

I've order... I mean, asked, Jonathan to have a look to our legal situation to check if we can become a financial corporation instead of what we are. It seems that the government has plenty of money for saving that kind of business (and I thought that we were on the capitalist side of the Cold War, and now it happens that Bush acts like a Marxist! -and I'm not talking about Groucho, although some people think that all this plan is just a comedy-).

Anyhow, if Jonathan plan fails, I already have a B-Plan: We are going to sell mortgages as a way of paying the computers we sell to our customers. It's easy, we sell the iron, then the customer acquires a mortgage to pay the computer, using the very same computer and some other assets from the customer to assure the payment of the debt. Then, you may think 'what happens if the customer doesn't pay?' We get the computer back, and keep the money already payed by the customer.
Then again you may ask: 'What if the value of the computer has decreased and is lower than the debt of the customer? The customer may decide not to pay the debt and buy a newer computer to someone else -or even to Sun again- for less money then the remaining debt'. Yes, it is possible, and this is what assurance companies are for: we are launching immediately, together with Sun Finance, Sun Assurance, so we are going to assure our own mortgage and finance operations with customers. This way all the money remains at Sun at last.

You may then think: 'This is crazy, if customers stop paying, not only Sun would be in dire straits, also the new insurance company will be as they cannot fulfill the debt generated by customers that don't pay their debts. What are you going to do then?'
Easy: the same that Freddy Mac, Fanny Mae, AIG, Merril Lynch... That is why the Federal Reserve is creating that emergency plan for: to buy high risk mortgages and funds (those not payed by the customers, for instance), and assume the debt generated by those naughty (and sometimes even poor) customers. If they are doing it for the financial system, for those who won billions by doing risky business -that are leaving in exchange a black hole in debts-, why are they not going to do that for Sun or even for your mortgage or your medical debts? It would be unfair to rescue those that provoked the major crisis since 1929 and not to the rest of us who pay taxes (well, Jonathan and me do pay taxes in a remote island in the Caribbean, but this is another story).

New Corporate Drink

We are changing our cafeteria offerings and Corona will not be served any more. The reason is obvious, we are serving 'Cerveza Sol' (although I like Corona, Sol tastes similar and the name says it all by itself about the reason why we rather it !!!).
And not only is more corporate, it's cheaper...

Today Mike Lehman came to show me the results forecast for this quarter...
and I'm thinking if my decision is correct or if I should be offering something stronger to our employees (and myself...).
By the way, I've just realized of something about our CFO that is scaring me really bad: Is he one of the Brothers? Oh my Gosh!!!! We are screwed!!!

Ashok, tequila will not be strong enough... order something more appropriate.

Making money from free software!!!

We are the best, We are the best, We are best!!!!!!!!!
(Quoting Barbara Gordon in her last speech at Sun in front of hundreds of engineers, five minutes before running to Ballmer's company...). The good news are we have sold several million dollars (I know the exact amount, but I'm not allowed to say it; for sure it is more than one million, as it is a multi-million dollar deal).
It seems that the ERP leader company Stèsud S.A. (sorry, I guess the whole site is in French; I have to ask Jonathan when did he learn French, as it was a phone call he made to the CEO the one that closed the deal; I hope he didn't offer too much discount...).
I know what you are thinking, I didn't know that company before the deal, but if our press release says they are the leading ERP company in the world, I buy it (that's how we ERP in Belgium...).

Next step is sending hundreds of our sales reps to try selling our friggin iron into the customers' ERP installations sold by Stèsud. At last, this is why we are giving software for free, to turn it into a commodity, so we can sell expensive iron, the real added value we can provide in the business so far, not like Dell is doing. Mwahahahahahaha!