Megan and I dropped in at our neighbor David’s house last night (his fiancee Tess is out of town), and I happened to have my camera with me. So I snapped a bunch of pictures, of course.
Anyway, the two shots to the right turned out really weird. I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t playing with the controls, at least not on purpose. But I really like this weird effect and wish I could do it on purpose. Maybe it’s just a case of the flash not going off for some reason and being way under-exposed? Anybody have an idea?
David (he’s the black-haired guy in back in this shot from our wedding) has a Nikon D200, the big brother to my D70. What a camera: even more resolution and faster than the D70, and with a cool feature that lets you set up groups of settings and then toggle between your own custom-defined modes. I’m getting a case of camera lust …
George Bush and Tony Blair held a press conference last week. Here’s a link.
The Q&A is the best part. The final question reminded me of the final question in one of the Bush-Kerry debates of 2004. In that debate, Linda Grabel had asked Mr. Bush if he could name three times he had made a wrong decision, and what he had done to correct those decisions. He had a famously hard time thinking of any mistake he had ever made.
This time around, he didn’t actually say he had made a mistake, but he acknowledged that at least one mistake had happened on his watch. That’s progress, by George. Here’s his answer to the final question at last week’s press conference:
QUESTION: Mr. President, you spoke about missteps and mistakes in Iraq. Could I ask both of you which missteps and mistakes of your own you most regret?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Sounds like kind of a familiar refrain here — saying “bring it on,” kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner — you know, “wanted dead or alive,” that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so I learned from that. And I think the biggest mistake that’s happened so far, at least from our country’s involvement in Iraq is Abu Ghraib. We’ve been paying for that for a long period of time. And it’s — unlike Iraq, however, under Saddam, the people who committed those acts were brought to justice. They’ve been given a fair trial and tried and convicted.
Tony Blair followed up with the observation that “the biggest reason why Iraq has been difficult is the determination of our opponents to defeat us.” You know, just a few years ago people were praising Tony as a great communicator. Seriously.
By the way, in case you missed the news: I have an MSDN blog now, so that’s where I write about Office 2007 and other technologies. If this post annoys you, you should probably be over there. Better yet, post a comment telling me what you really think!
My web site, Mahugh.com, will be 10 years old this fall. For most of that time, it has been about two things:
• sharing photos and travel adventures with family and friends
• protesting various governmental policies and activities, especially those that fall under the broad umbrella of “ways rich people rationalize killing or imprisoning poor people”
But last year, Mahugh.com lost its focus. I was looking for a job, and I thought I should eliminate some of the personal stuff and tone down some of the political rhetoric, to avoid offending potential employers.
Well, screw that. I have a job now, and I also have a work-related blog over on MSDN, so Mahugh.com is all mine again. The Doug that used to do things like post censored photos of dead Americans returning from Iraq is back. Viewer beware.
All I’ve done so far is put an Amnesty International widget on the home page that shows censored material from around the world. But I’ve got a few ideas for where to go from here …
When I realized this evening that Megan had never heard of Bobby Fischer’s impetuous grandstanding, his John McEnroe style of chess, I decided to read her the introduction from Svetozar Gilgoric’s book about the Fischer-vs-Spassky championship tournament in Reykjavik in 1972. One thing led to another, and soon we had the chess set out and were re-enacting famous games from the careers of Alekhine, Tal, Capablanca and others. I explained the moves and the thinking behind them, showing her various possibilities and paths not taken.
Then we played a game. Megan has barely played chess, but she has a combination of studious intensity and reckless abandon that works well against my smug over-confidence. She was ahead on pieces before long.
I attacked with a high-risk gambit, sacrificing both of my rooks in quick succession to enable a mate by my queen. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that she had another option for taking the second rook, which didn’t lead to mate. Or anything. As I write this, I’m scrambling for my chess life. I have a queen, four pawns and a knight in trouble; she has her queen, both rooks, five pawns, a knight and a bishop, spread all over the board and wreaking havoc.
What a teacher I am.
We signed a one-year lease on a house in the Seattle area when we moved here last year. Wanted to wait before buying, to make sure the Microsoft job works out, you know. 
Anyway, the lease includes lawn care. The landlord sends over a crew to mow the lawn every week or two, and that was working great last fall.
But it’s off to a clumsy start this year. The lawn was never mowed in April, and a few days before our wedding (on 4/28) Megan contacted the landlord and he sent over a crew to mow it. A funny coincidence was that Megan’s grandmother Adele had never seen our place, but arrived the day after the lawn was mowed. The next night, Megan’s uncle Grant told me that she (Adele) had carefully inspected the yard when they arrived, and was impressed by how well I mow the lawn. Ha! Haven’t mowed a lawn in years, actually.
That was a month ago, and the lawn hasn’t been mowed since. So I sent this email to the landlord yesterday, with a photo attached:
Hi Matt,
Not sure if there’s something scheduled for the weekend, but just wanted to let you know the lawn’s getting pretty long.
Thanks,
Doug
I received his response a couple hours later:
I will have to fire that guy
————————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Device
Sounds good, but when does the lawn get mowed? Meanwhile, it’s getting prettier every day, with more and more flowers blooming in it.
I posted a while back about a friend of mine, Tad Perry, and the work he does translating Japanese to English. So this evening, I’m at my desk working at 11:15PM (you know, Microsoft hours), and an email shows up from Tad. He had attended my wedding, and apparently felt he had been remiss in not saying a thing or two …
From: Tad Perry
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 11:15 PM
To: Doug Mahugh
Subject: A missive
What Tad Coulda, Shoulda Said at Doug’s Wedding…
By Tad Perry
“Howdy folks, my name’s Tad. I’m an old friend of Doug’s but most of you don’t know me. I met Doug as a teenager in a video game tournament. I won that one.
“So Doug what was it you did with the only money you ever won at Defender anyway? You remember that party. Whew!~ Yeah, yeah, some of you were there, I see you.
“Heheh. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t go there, but when Doug was setting his world record, I was sitting there all through the night watching and witnessing the event by signing a little sheet to prove that he actually did it.
“Heheheheh. But anyway, this my favorite part of all this. What I know about Doug that most of you don’t know. He was the world record holder at Defender, right? Well, the idea of this game is to save humans from certain death at the hands of cruel aliens. So one day, Doug comes into the arcade and says he has Defender all figured out. He says, ‘This game is way easier if you KILL the humans yourself.’ And that’s how he played the game.
“You know, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the sort of outside-the-box type of thinking Microsoft was looking for!”
My favorite part is “the only money you ever won at Defender.” See, Tad was winning a lot of contests in those days, on lots of different games. By comparison, I was a one-trick pony, only good enough to win contests in one game.
You shoulda, Tad.
We showed off Office 2007 at Bellevue’s Crossroads theater yesterday, for a room full of Microsoft evangelists who showed up to watch “The Da Vinci Code.” Click here for more info on my work blog.
Today’s the day: anyone can download a copy of Office 2007 Beta 2. I’ve posted all the links on my Microsoft blog here.
By the way, if you’re getting this in your RSS feed and you’re mostly interested in Office technical info (as opposed to the various and sundry details of Doug and Megan’s life), head on over to my Microsoft blog and subscribe to that feed. I’m putting all technical content over there, with occasional links like this one from the personal blog.
Time for another installment of “pictures we took over the weekend.” This weekend, we went to Spokane to attend Pat and Lisa’s wedding. We also hiked Little Si on the way there and on the way back.
We’ve hiked Mount Si before, but never Little Si. It’s 5 miles round trip, 1100 feet vertical (as opposed to Mount Si’s 8 miles/3400 feet), but we didn’t make it to the top either time this weekend. Saturday we ran out of time (we had a wedding to attend 200 miles away), and then Sunday it started raining hard when we got close to the summit.
Here are some links to photos from the wedding, and from Sunday’s hike. Congratulations, Pat and Lisa!
Megan and I dropped in at our neighbor David’s house last night (his fiancee Tess is out of town), and I happened to have my camera with me. So I snapped a bunch of pictures, of course.
