Great SB Weekend

We had a great weekend in Santa Barbara at the Gaucho Reunion. This was actually not just a reunion but quite a bit more.

• Gaucho reunion - first time they have had something like this
• Phi Psi reunion - informal for those who wanted to attend:)
• College visit - yea, Anthony is only a couple years away ...

We ended up with five brother and their families, including the Tabors, Tatums, Rims, Hapners, LaFaves and the Fitzpatricks. With them came kids totaling 13 with ages ranging from 1 to almost 16!

We stayed at the Pacific Suites. This was a REALLY nice spot - close to UCSB, in great shape, breakfasts included, with lawns and a pool for the kids, an evening happy hour and space off the lobby for the adults!

We saw each other in the mornings, went off on our own during the day and met back up in the evenings and late into the night. For those of us with close to college age kids, we did a bit more touring. Most everyone met up at the big BBQ and soccer game. The UCSB mens team are NCAA Division 1 champions!!

Great to see everyone. Great chance for Anthony to see what a college is really like. Great for Nick to begin to think about it.

Highlights - Trip to Maui

There is soooo much to say about our trip to Maui that I will only give some highlights!



On the left is Nick and Anthony at the rim of Haleakala Volcano. In the middle is me on the hike to the blow hole, and the right is Julie at the end of the trail (2500 ft) at Waihee Ridge Trail.

The left picture is Julie at a Kula Lodge on the way to the Volcano in an area called up country. In the middle is a view on the way to Molikini (sunken Volcano) where we snorkeled. And the right is Anthony golfing at the beautiful Plantation Golf Course.

Rock Wall III

I finished the rock wall almost two weeks ago. Just now getting to the blog entry showing the final product. I had some excellent helpers or supervisors:)

It looks even better now having had a week of cool weather and some rain. The plants already look like they are happy and healthy and some are blooming.

It may not show, but I put in a drip system. I connected to a pipe that was already there. It was a single sprayer for the whole area around the tree. It must have been installed when the tree was really small. It is now surrounded by tree roots.

I plumbed in three dripper octopus heads with enough capacity for 8 dripper lines each. Given the number of plants, each has 6-7 tubes connected and running to individual plants. I also added a dripper line for the plants at driveway level.

My New Gig ...

After years at Sun doing pretty much a corporate job - it is time to do something new and completely different. Here is the announcement that I sent out to my organization yesterday. More on this as it evolves (I will be creating a new blog just for this).

Just a couple quick notes - Jonathan below is Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems.; Rich is Rich Green EVP of Software at Sun; Karen a VP and my peer working for Rich; and there was another announcement from Rich that I did not attach.

----

It is with great excitement and a some trepidation that I send this email giving you a bit more on what will be happening with me and our organization over the next few months.

I have been looking forward to doing something very new and different for quite some time now. And the time has come for me to take that bold step and just do it. The something new is to start a non-profit focused on developing the next generation of technology leaders. It will enhance the educational system for high school students by providing the opportunity to define and run Internet based projects using the latest tools, technologies and processes.

When I shared this with my management, both Jonathan and Rich have been very supportive of the idea and want to help make this a reality. As a result, they have convinced me that I can do this while continuing as a Sun employee. They are also very interested in helping me in other ways. They see the benefit that this will provide to the community as well as to Sun in reaching audiences that are otherwise hard to access. There are lots of details still to be worked but I am very encouraged with our discussions this far!

As you have likely already read in his announcement, Rich has decided that he will be combining the Enterprise Java Platform (EJP) and SOA / Business Integration organizations together into a single software infrastructure team under Karen Tegan Pedir. The new organization will be announced and effective in June. Until then, no changes will be made. You are stuck with me for a bit longer:)

Karen and I, together with our teams will stay focused on our mission and roadmaps while we work out the details of this merged organization.

I wanted to let everyone know that is happening now as it is starting to leak and I don't want it to be a distraction. You all are doing a great job. Our releases are coming out a planned, with continued improvement in quality, performance and stability. Our pipeline is increasing. Our bookings and revenue are growing. Our executives are very happy with the progress that they are seeing. And more importantly so are our customers!!!

Please keep at it. I am confident that the changes will be a good thing. I am committed to closing out the fiscal year and will do everything that I can to help make the transition happen as smoothly as possible. I am confident that Karen will be a great leader of this new combined organization. This is the perfect time to do this. We have the products and momentum to have a great FY08!!

Dale

Rock Wall II

Here is the current phase of the rock wall. Looking a LOT better. I was almost to the point where I never thought that I would get it done. But thanks to Greg for a saw and chissle to cut / break up rocks to solve the puzzle, Anthony for moving the unused Rocks and Nick and Julie for moving the bark - the yard is cleaned up and the wall is done.




Next is onto installing the drip system (replace the pipe sticking up with a shorter pipe and add a 8 way dripper head). And adding the plants. The idea is to have some draping plants hang over the front, put some evergreen plants in the middle and something small on the garage side of the wall.

My Beautiful Kids

Just got a new laptop. It is an Apple MacBook Pro with a HUGE screen. Pretty nice. It has all of the cool tools, including iPhoto, iMovie and something called NeoOffice - based on openoffice.org.

The first thing my kids played with was Photo Booth where they took pictures of themselves. Here they are:)

Good Fortune :)

At lunch on Friday got a great fortune (Sun's cafeteria - fortune cookie) that I wanted to share ..

Your Efforts Will Result in Much Profit

There are lots of ways to take this - all of which are positive:)

American Idol and a Look Alike

Most of you know that I am an American Idol fan. Thank goodness for DVRs - with three shows a week, I am sooooo happy not to have to watch all of the commercials.

Before I get to the perfect look alike - I have to give you my favorites this year.

• Blake Lewis is my #1. He is cool, can beat box AND sing. He may not win because he knows he is good and his attitude might cause him problems if he isn't careful.
• Lakisha Jones is next. She is just plain awesome. Best singer of the bunch, but maybe not as strong all around (looks, style, etc.).
• Stephanie Edwards is a close third. She has a great stage presence, style, looks and can sing!
• Melinda Doolittle may be the second best singer, but I don't see her as an idol.
• And Chris Richardson is pretty good.

So there is my top 6:)

Now on to the look alike. I listen to the KNBR morning show with Murph and Mac. They have callers who call in with look alikes. The one that really got me was today when they compared Sanjaya with Mowgli from the Jungle Book. I think it is perfect. You decide:)

Audio Leadership Conference

Sun is now holding two leadership conferences a year. One where all of the VPs are invited in person and all directors electronically (through webcasts or audiocasts) and one where everyone attends electronically. Today was one of the later. So I had a choice. I could sit in my office (home or work) and listen in OR I could go for a bike ride and listen in while getting my exercise.

As you might expect, I choose the bike ride. The conference was from 8:30 to 11:45. I was on my bike at 9:06 and made it home at about 11:40. What a great use of my time and I got a 40 mile bike ride in as well:)

I did run into a couple of problems. As I got into the hills I started losing reception so I had to turn around. I decided to drop for the 15 minute break so had to stop to dial back in. And at one point along highway 9 as I was almost home I lost reception and was dropped so had to dial back in.

But all in all - a great way to spend the time:)

Check out the route that I took if you are interested.

Happy Birthday Todd

It is my brother Todd's birthday on the 7th of March. We celebrated it today as he was in the state:) He came to Sacramento from Utah this morning as part of a prize that was auctioned off to raise money for a local charity. The prize was a dinner for eight by a world renowned chef :). He and his partner Mike owns a very cool restaurant in Ogden Utah called Bistro 258. Check it out!

Anyway - back to the birthday. Since he is about to turn 40, we had to have some fun with his getting old. So he got a package of Depends (adult diapers), one of those things that holds all of the pills that older people need (seven days with four compartments for each day), Tums, Exlax, some over 50 vitamins, and some Grecian Formula.

Oh, and we did get him a watch. But it was way way more fun buying him all of the other stuff:)

Happy Birthday Todd!!

Rock Wall

I spent time this weekend working on a rock wall around the tree in front of our house. It is getting there, but what a pain. It is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. There is a piece that will fit - it is just a matter of finding it. Here are a couple of shots of my progress thus far ...

Couple of days in Tahoe

Just back from a couple of nice days in Tahoe staying in a cabin with friends. Here is a picture taken the first day.

A bunch of us went skiing at Donner Ski Ranch. We met up with some other friends there as well, so there were two dads and six kids. Three were on skis and five on snowboards.

Since the ski area is pretty small, we were able to find everyone pretty quickly. And with the weather the way it was - pretty windy - there were only four lifts open. So we spent most of the day on the front side where it was reasonably protected. We did end up on the back after lunch. It was also pretty protected, but getting there was tough. The top was really windy, and you had to either keep you speed up to get from one lift to the other, push if you had skis or walk if you had a snowboard (which is what I had to do).

The next day we awoke to a snow storm. It started snowing at night and continued for most of the day. So we played games and played in the snow - sledding and building a snow shelter. Here is some clearing of snow in the shelter and three inside. Pretty cool!

Combining Exercise and Gardening

Very quick blog entry this time. Just had to show a picture of Julie combining her exercise with gardening. Check out the nice workout cloths, iPod, butt pack, long gardening gloves and big waste can. Quite a picture:)

Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream

We have gone mainstream with Web 2.0.

Slight digression. For those of you who have no idea what Web 2.0 is. let me give you a simple definition. Web 1.0 was all about static content on the Internet. You could go out and find information. Most of this information was provided by companies. You could also transact on the Internet - buying things from sites such as Amazon and eBay. Web 2.0 is all about the interactive Internet. Rather than information being static and transactional, it is interactive and dynamic. Much of the content comes from individuals and communities. For more information, take a look at wikipedia.org at Web 2.0 .

And one more digression. Technology in general follows something called the Technology Adoption Life Cycle. That is, there are always early adopters and visionaries who are willing to try almost anything. Many technologies never make it beyond these folks. When it does, it crosses what is called the Chasm and moves into significantly greater adoption. That is where we are with Web 2.0.

Now back to Web 2.0 going mainstream. There are a number of reasons I say this. But the most telling is how my wife is now using the Internet. She is not technical, does not write programs, was pretty much like most users of the Internet. She looked up information, used email and did some ecommerce. But recently EVERYTHING CHANGED. She first started listening to podcasts. She found out about flickr from her favorite Creative Mom Podcast and blog. She has become a part of a community.

I offered to help her create a blog. She now has one and it is actually a mashup (a Web 2.0 term which means to combine different pieces of information from different places on the Internet together). She has a picture, an interactive connection to her flickr pages, links to other sites and the blog itself. She put this together with no help from me - she just used the blogger.com capabilities. Check her blog out to see what I mean, and click on her flickr map. If she can easily do this, we are past the early adopters and visionaries!!

There are other reasons as well. Mostly the number of sites that are being created quickly and easily where they are combining capabilities from multiple other sites into something that is usable and more interactive. Taking advantage and creating communities where people of like interest can come together. And leveraging the massive number of Internet users. A few examples below.

• M2 Route - ability to map your running routes. All the site does is overlays on a mapping program your own route. Simple to create but useful if you want to track and share routes. There are lots of sites like this out there ...
  
• flickr - as mentioned above is a great site for pictures, but that in and of itself is no big deal, they have made it easy to tie into other sites as Julie has done with her blog. And you can do your own mashups on flickr like show your pictures easily on a Google map.
  
• digg - a site where users vote on the best articles, and these articles make it to the front page based on number of "diggs".
• friendster - social networking site which is actually way better than the more widely known myspace.
  
• Yahoo Pipes - this is way more advanced, but provides the facility to create more easily complex mashups. It provides a fairly easy set of tools to do this. Not programming but rather assembly.

I could go on and on as this is just exploding. The web is becoming more friendly and easier to use. We have crossed the chasm and are into mass adoption. It is far easier for everyone to use, to create their own mashups and to join and participate in communities. The next few years are going to be really interesting!

100 Things ...

I like the 100 things list so have decided to create my own

1. I was born in 1962
2. In Peninsula Hospital (CA)
3. My mom and dad are Virginia and Ronald
4. When I was born, we lived in San Bruno
5. I am half Italian and half a bunch of other things (Swedish, English, Irish, ...)
6. When I was about 1 we moved to Concord
7. My elementary school was Woodside (we were the Wolverines)
8. My best friends were Alan and Kendell
9. I use to love riding my bike around the neighborhood, no hands, without pedaling, in the dirt, ...
10. I have a brother Todd who is almost five years younger than me
11. Todd and I get along great, although he lives in Utah so we don't see each other much
12. I started swimming on our local team when I was 4 1/2
13. My middle school was Oak Grove
14. My first job was working at the neighborhood swim club, Ygnacio Woods Swim Club
15. I also worked as a gatekeeper and lifeguard
16. I was in scouts until middle school
17. My high school was Ygnacio Valley (the Warriors)
18. I played on the football team
19. I played offensive guard and defensive line or noseguard
20. I made second team all league when I was a senior (as offensive guard)
21. I also swam one year, played baseball another year and ran track one year
22. I met my future wife Julie at the end of our Sophomore year
23. I worked at Concord Pool Center while in high school, where I delivered chlorine to swim clubs, worked in the store, did repairs and went out on jobs
24. I also worked at Pool And Game during high school and summers at college, where I worked in the store and then ran a store in Alamo
25. My first car was a Capri (given to me by my parents)
26. My best friend (other than Julie) in high school was Craig (and he is still a best friend)
27. My parents bought an Apple II
28. I went to college at UCSB (Santa Barbara)
29. I am a founding member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity (rechartering)
30. We built a volleyball court on the vacant lot across from our house (we needed 13 dump truck loads of beach sand - which we loaded by hand - to fill it)
31. I graduated with a bachelors in computer science
32. I started out as a bio-chem major
33. I enjoyed playing on inter mural teams
34. I got married (to Julie:)) the year I graduated
35. My first real job was at Amdahl Computer
36. I played a fair amount of softball and volleyball in after work leagues
37. I left Amdahl after three years and joined Sun Microsystems
38. I got my MBA from Santa Clara University soon after starting with Sun (started while at Amdahl)
39. Our first kid Anthony was born in 1991
40. We bought property and had a vacation house built at Clear Lake (sold before our move)
41. We moved to Colorado Springs in 1992, still with Sun
42. Our second kid Nick was born in Colorado in 1994
43. I actually missed his birth as I was traveling (Austin, TX) five weeks before his due date
44. Our house in Colorado Springs was huge (4200 sq ft)
45. One of our neighbors in Colorado was a four star general
46. We moved back to California in 1996, again still with Sun
47. I enjoy biking, running, swimming, and golf
48. I have completed a number of Triathlons
49. I have raced my mountain bike a few times as well
50. My best golf index was just under 10 (not there now!)
51. I have three bikes (less than I had in the past:), two road and one mountain bike)
52. I am a HUGE fan of "Life is Good" as you can tell from the name of my blog
53. We have a vacation house in Pacific Grove
54. I have had back surgery for a herniated disk
55. I have another herniated disk :(
56. I have just had my first midlife "change" (typically called a crisis, but no crisis here) and bought a 350Z convertable
57. I am a big fan of Tivo (DVRs in general, but Tivo is the best)
58. I do a lot of traveling with work (India maybe 6 times, China once, numerous trips to Europe, etc.)
59. I really like podcasts, my favorite is Buzz Out Loud
60. I LOVE spending time with my family
61. My mom and dad are divorced, but each has remarried and is happy
62. My wife is an artist (she will love this as she is still not sure:))
63. I have grown to appreciate art
    
64. My favorite TV show (other than sports) is American Idol
65. I have two blogs (this one and one at blogs.sun.com)
66. I am left handed
67. Although I eat with my right hand ...
    
68. I eat very healthy - avoid most of the things that are bad for me
69. I exercise a lot, mostly at the Sun fitness center during the week
70. I ride my road or mountain bike on the weekends and usually get a run in as well
    
71. I really like Christmas
72. If I would have been a teacher, it would have been at middle school
73. My favorite wine variety is Zinfandel
74. I am a fan of beer, especially micro-brews on the darker side
75. I am not a big reader, but enjoy it
76. I am not much for sitting and doing nothing, I have to stay active and busy
77. I like cats (and have two of them), have had dogs but am not a big fan of them
78. I am a social introvert
79. I goal oriented
80. I make lists - even on the weekends
    
81. I am positive
82. I can be a bit grumpy at times - mostly in how I say things
83. I have good eyesight (knock on wood)
84. I plan on starting a non-profit to teach kids how real business works
85. I am a Republican
86. My two favorite places in the world are the ocean (Monterey Bay) and the desert (Scottsdale/Phoenix Arizona)
87. I like rocker chicks with raspy voices and fairly hard rock in general
88. I really like the diversity in people and like to focus on what is good in everyone
89. I don't have much tolerance for inconsiderate people or people who are not nice
90. I have never tried drugs (unless you include beer, wine or two puffs of a cigarette)
91. I like wearing shorts, I don't like wearing ties (and almost never wear one - even when I meet with customers at work)
92. I would like to do something in city or state government in the future
93. I enjoy yard work, doing home projects and working in the garage
94. When I retire (for real), I would like to travel (duh) in the US and around the world
95. One of my future trips to Europe will be to buy a car, drive it there on a vacation and then have it shipped home (the choices are Porsche, Volvo (no), BMW, Mercedes and Saab)
    
96. I plan to continue to spend time with my kids as they grow up and have families
97. I want to buy a house, fix it up and sell or rent it out
98. I think that I can do almost anything
99. I do not want to slow down when I get old (because I am old ...)
100. It is good to know that there are at least 100 things that I can think of:)
     

Nice "Valentines" Date

We celebrated Valentines Day a couple of days late - with a date last night.

The main event was a Chris Botti concert at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. But before I get to that, lets talk about dinner.

We don't go to Oakland all that often. Actually, the only reasons that I have been there recently are for a sporting event at the Colosseum (Monster trucks once and a Warrior game more recently) or to visit Craig at his shop - The Outboard Motor Shop / Star Power Marine. So we had no idea where to go eat before the concert. I did a search on the web and found a good list of restaurants, but still didn't feel comfortable with a Valentines dinner at a place that I picked off the web. So called Ken - a guy that works for me and use to work at Forte Software, a company that we (Sun) bought a number of years ago headquartered in Oakland. He recommended a few places and we decided on Oliveto Cafe and Restaurant.

This turned out to be an awesome choice. It is in Oakland, but right on the Berkeley border across from the Rockrimmon Bart station. A bit of a digression. This is actually a very cool area. It feels more like a college town than I would have expected. It was really alive. There were nice specialty wine, meat, grocery and flower stores on one side and a number of cool looking restaurants on the other.

Back to the restaurant. They do a new menu each night. So they include any specials as they create the menu. We took one of these menus home since it was so cool. Todd - expect a copy in email:) They are known for making their own salami and pasta daily. So rather than go with two full meals, we went with a salami starter, we shared a "Polentina with Green Garlic and Parmesan" soup, "Ravioli of Graised cavolo nero, ricotta and Pine Nuts" as our pasta and "Charcoal-Grilled Sierra Mackerel with Sweet Potato Puree and Old balsamico" as the main course. This was all very good - although a bit on the unhealthy side ...:)

We then went to the concert. The opening act was Dana Glover. She plays the piano and sings. You might know her from the theme song from the first Shrek movie - It is you (I have loved). She has a nice raspy voice and was kind of funny in her comments between songs.

Then it was on to Chris. He is really really good. I am not a big instrumental fan, and the trumpet is not one of my favorite instruments, but he is impressive. He mixed it up nicely, had a guest singer who joined him for a few songs, brought you back to his time with Sting and his first professional gig with Frank Sinatra.

As you can tell, we had a great time!

My Day Job

I tend to talk a lot about family and other things outside of work. I don't talk all that much about what I do day in and day out. I don't really want to do that here either:) But here are just a few snippets that might give you a flavor.

I am responsible for a set of products at Sun that we broadly call the Java Composite Application Platform Sute. A suite of development tools and products that allow companies to compose new solutions from their existing IT infrastructure to quickly provide new value.

Some of the common names for this are application to application (A2A), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), Business to Business (B2B), and now Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

We are developing the next generation of these products in open source. The open source effort is called OpenESB. This is the creation of a community that aids in the development of these products. The larger Sun strategy is to open source everything that we create in order to gain the largest possible adoption which will result in a larger customer base and ultimately more revenue!

It is a very fun time to be in this space. The adoption of SOA is growing at an amazing rate. It is no longer a question of if a company is going to use SOA for their architecture, but rather when and how fast.

We were recently positioned in the leadership category by Forrester, an analyst in this space. Here is the press release and full report if you are interested. We are seeing great momentum with our customers and through significant growth in sales and our sales pipeline.

We are growing our partnerships around these great products. The best recent example is an HUGE announcement that we made with Accenture that focused on Java CAPS and our Identity Management solution.

There is an excellent newsletter for customers that we have created called Sun Integration Insights Program. You can sign up for it here. There is also a sample that you can look at.

And lastly ... The company that we acquired that provided us with the core of Java CAPS was called SeeBeyond. Interestingly, wikipedia has an entry for them that talks about the acquisition.

They are located in Monrovia, CA. This is close to Pasadena.

The picture is my home away from home, the Ritz Carlton (only $135 corporate rate:)).

Five minute update

I don't think that I will have time to do a nice update today, so here is a five minute one. Just the things that are top of mind.

• Is it winter or spring. Looking at the weather for next week, rain (or snow in the mountains) almost every day. Perfect - just when I am taking a week off. Oh well, I will find a way to get outside anyway and there are lots of things that we can do inside as well!
• Like playing the Wii. I think I have to buy a game for it. I have been using the game that we rented for Nick. Call of Duty 3. Pretty cool. Even a non gamer like me can play it. The best part is that you don't die easily. Or rather you can almost die multiple times, but as long as you hide for a bit and recover, you are back to full strength:)
• Work is busy and fun right now. Lots of customer issues that we are working. Shipping new releases of our products. Having HARD conversations about strategy. All things that make you think and can / will have a big impact on our success.
• Last night was "Sophomore Guidance Night" for Lynbrook. The whole discussion was around getting ready for college, what classes they should take, when to take the SAT, and so on. Hard to believe that Anthony is 42.6% done with high school.
• The kids are all school and soccer right now.
• Julie is all over the web and new technology.

Life is good!

Is this all part of my midlife crisis?

I got this magnet for Christmas from Santa (in my stocking I believe). It is attached to my file cabinet in my office. It is awesome - exactly how I feel!!

I was looking at it today and thoughts of my a few things that are happening.

I bought a new car. Not just a new car, but a two seater Nissan 350Z. Not exactly your family car.

We are booked to meet up with my Phi Psi brothers in April for an All Gaucho Reunion. This should be really fun to hang out with my bothers and their KIDS.

I plan to soon start up a non-profit. More on this in a few months ...

And I just ordered another magnet. This one is as good as the last one - in some ways better!

Is this all a part of that thing they call a midlife crisis?

What a performer

This may be another one of those - I am a bit behind. But just had a link to this sent to me and had to post. This is Jerome Murat. What an amazing performer.