April Fools Day at Google: Technology Evangelist

April Fools Day at Google: Technology Evangelist:

There is a long tradition of April Fools gags in Silicon Valley, especially at Sun Microsystems, where engineers variously built a putting green (with real grass!) in founder Scott McNealy's office one year and another year McNealy unlocked his door to find his Ferrari sports car not only assembled in the office -- it was idling.

Not quite right, but the essence is there.

The putting green is true. It was actually a two hole, as I remember. After that, they assembled an old (but working) junk VW Bug in the office, not a Ferrari. The Ferrari was the next year, when they built an artificial island in the middle of one of the complex ponds and put Bill Joy's car on it (via a ramp they also built -- he drove a Ferrari, which was "borrowed" from his driveway for the hack. And then after that, they moved McNealy's office outside onto the grass, including his phone, electricity and ethernet....

A couple of years later someone tried to wrap one of the buildings in plastic -- "safe" computing, but the logistics got in the way..