Thanks to Mike Wyatt for pointing me to idee Multicolr, which presents amazing sets of photos from Flickr matching color combinations you provide:

Have fun!

Technorati Tags: Flickr, color, photography

On the eve of my favorite day of the year, please accept my wish that the peace of Christmas be with you and yours during this holiday season and throughout the coming year.

Yearning for Peace

We seek for peace this Christmastime
But hear the dissonant clamor of raucous commerce
As the world seeks solace in the glamor of expensive things

We send our youth to fight for peace
As wars within our shores and distant lands loom real,
But grieve when innocents die in the eternal freedom struggle.

We look to government for peace
But see ambitious men and women manipulate puppet strings of power
To feed their insatiable hunger for wealth and fame.

We work for peace in halls of justice,
Battling evil conspirators who exploit and kill and seek addiction of our souls.
But our fair sons and daughters are still not safe to walk alone at night.

We yearn, we fight, we search, we work for peace.
But we cannot find it in the cacophony of commerce.
Not in the clash of war,
Not in the spin of politics,
Not in endless legal conflict.

But we can find eternal peace
In Him who gave his very life and shed his precious blood for us.
The Prince of Peace.

For his words resoundingly proclaim:

“Peace I leave with you, Peace I give unto you:
Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” 
     – John 14:2

Happy Holidays from the Dixon family!

My last working hours yesterday were spent listening to presentations about Sun’s virtual desktop technology.  The first two hours this morning are dedicated to virtual server technology.  Being the word geek I am, I consulted dictionary.com to understand the meaning of the word “virtual”.  I found some interesting tidbits of information.  First, the source of “virtual”:

“from M.L. virtualis, from L. virtus ‘excellence, potency, efficacy,’ lit. ‘manliness, manhood’ (see virtue).”

Does this mean that in today’s information technology world, only real men use virtualization?

Or only that men are really imaginary: “Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact?”

Technorati Tags: Virtual, Virtualization

My colleague Eve Maler (@xmlgrrl) eloquently articulated the feelings of many a road warrior on Twitter this evening:

“When did SJC Terminal C get all these luscious power strips mounted at chair-top height? Awesome. (It’s pitiful what makes me happy.)”

I trust my response to her accurately represents all of us who have spent so much time searching for electrical outlets in airport waiting areas:

“The sign of true techie – appreciation for available electricity!”

Eve’s response:

I noticed they have “power bars” (think “oxygen bars”, in more ways than one) in LAS and DEN…

Yep, Eve passes the test … a true techie!

Technorati Tags: Travel, Electricity, Productivity

The online Wall Street Journal showed these interesting statistics this morning:

Here at Sun, we are often tempted to see the proverbial glass half-empty and draining fast. 

However, being part of a business that generates positive cash flow in a quarter when the financial markets collapse and the king of the automotive industry hemorrhages $10 billion in cash isn’t so bad.

Plus, it’s nice to know Jonathan isn’t in front of Congress with tin cup in hand.

Technorati Tags: GM, Sun Microsystems

This morning at 6am PST, Sun officially opened the JavaFX.com website to launch the JavaFX Platform for developing “Rich Internet Experiences for all the screens of your life.”

The JavaFX Rich Client platform is “A platform and tools suite that offers distinct advantages to Web developers, Web designers, and Java developers that are building rich, connected experiences. … JavaFX provides a unified development and deployment model for building rich client applications that integrate rich immersive media such as audio and video, graphics, rich text and web services. JavaFX allows creative developers to program in a visual context thus helping them to bring their ideas to life quicker and better.”

The JavaFX SDK and related tools are now available for download from the JavaFX site.

I recommend viewing a short video where Sun VP Eric Klein provides a summary announcement.

Technorati Tags: JavaFX, RIA

This week, I have the honor of speaking at the Sun Microsystems “Innovation at Sun” conference, held at the beautiful Seascape Beach Resort on Monterey Bay on the outskirts of Aptos, California.  It is a beautiful day here on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

The view out my hotel room window is spectacular!

Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Innovation, Monterey Bay, Seascape

Welcome to La Jolla, California, the Jewel of San Diego!  I learned this evening that “La Jolla” literally means “the Jewel” in Spanish.

I arrived this evening at the Marriott hotel, and will spend the next three days with Sun’s western region sales team. After taking quite a hiatus from blogging over the past few weeks, I look forward to getting back on line.

I have spent the last couple of days with my Sun colleagues in Canada.  Because of Sun’s position as supplier to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Sun Canada business cards and presentation templates are Olympics-themed.  The back of each business card is shown below.

Go Canada!

Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Olympics, Vancouver

Last Friday was a bad battery day for me. My bluetooth headset battery died in the middle of a conference call.  My mobile phone battery barely made it through that call before it died, too.  My two laptop batteries didn’t provide enough juice to make it through my cross country flight from New York to Phoenix.  To top it all off, when I got to the airport parking lot, my car battery was dead.  Aaarrrrgh! (that is my contribution to Talk Like a Pirate Day).

In this hyper-connected electronic world we live in, we are terribly dependent on batteries.  I did a quick inventory of the battery-powered devices I carry with me on my travels:

1. Laptop (2 batteries)
2. Mobile phone (2 batteries – take that, iPhone!)
3. Wireless mouse
4. Bluetooth headset
5. iPod
6. GPS navigator
7. Laser pointer
8. Security token
9. Pedometer
10. Wristwatch
11. Flashlight

Plus my car, which apparently has a parasitic electrical leak we can’t find. Aaarrrrgh again!

I find it interesting and frustrating that in my lifetime, improvements in battery technology have been only incremental, not revolutionary.  Our world is begging for some monumental breakthrough in energy storage technology that is cheap, efficient and long lasting.

In the mean time, I hope we can at least get some standardization in the devices and cables necessary to charge the batteries we have.  Of the six devices I have that can be charged via a computer USB port, I must use six different cables.  Aaarrrrgh again!

Technorati Tags: Batteries, Cables