Doug’s World

What a day

My decision to come work for Microsoft a little over a year ago has led to some interesting times, and today takes the cake so far. It’s a long story which I don’t have time to tell right now, but there has been some “controversy” around something I did last week. I’ve covered it briefly on the work blog, and here’s a little more detail …

The story starts with some stuff IBM said, and then I reacted a time or two on the work blog, then I also enlisted the help of a guy in Australia, which caused all hell to break loose:

Computerworld: Microsoft said to offer payment for Wikipedia edits

Infoworld: Microsoft pays for Wikipedia edits

IT Business Canada: This Wikipedia entry brought to you by …

Microsoft Seeks Experts to Corrupt Wikipedia Information on Open XML

“Microsoft PR Paying to “Correct” Wikipedia” on Slashdot

On that last one, I posted a comment to confess my role in things.

And so it stands.

I’m not going to say anything about the details here, because the last thing I want is to debate work-related stuff on the personal blog, but I thought some friends and family might find this interesting so there it is. Welcome to my new life as Mr. Evil Microsoft. Hey, it’s a great way to see the world and meet lots of interesting people!

Aidan TV

Nice to see everyone last night, let’s do it again soon …

All-American Alberto

I can’t stop with Condi. Let’s talk about Alberto Gonzales.

He’s the attorney general of the United States, the guy who runs the Department of Justice. When we send people overseas for torturing, his job is to make sure nobody gets in trouble.

I’m looking forward to his briefing next week. I’d also like to watch that Gillo Pontecorvo movie. Megan, how do we do that?

Iraqi Holidays

In July of 2003, the Iraqi governing council convened for the first time. It’s sort of quaint to look back on those times now, when PBS could have a subhead like “Despite the formal introduction of a new 25-member Iraqi interim governing council this weekend, attacks against American occupying forces continued, including the killing of a U.S. soldier Monday.” With a bit more perspective from 2007, we can now see that the attacks against Americans in Iraq had barely begun then, compared to the levels they reached in subsequent years.

Anyway, one of the governing council’s first orders of business was to designate April 9 the official national holiday, and to “abolish six Baath Party holidays celebrated by the former regime.” One of those abolished holidays was Republic Day, July 15, which had historically been a celebration of the coup in which the army killed King Feisal II and Crown Prince Abdul Illah, seized Baghdad, and declared a republic, thus ending 40 years of British colonial rule.

Is there really a democracy growing in Iraq? Are really to believe that the majority of Iraqis feel it’s time to stop celebrating their freedom from British rule and instead start celebrating the day an American flag first flew in Baghdad?

Fish, Murg

Pacific Northwest Drivers

One of the benefits of living in places like Chicago and Spokane for a couple of decades is that I can come back to Seattle and laugh at the way everyone is so helpless in the snow. But it’s not just Seattle. Portland’s just as bad, apparently. (And the comments on that thread are also pretty pathetic, if not as entertaining as the video.)

Condi Rice, My Hero

OK, I’m feeling emboldened. I signed the Amazon petition, even blogged about it, and nobody has really trashed me for being antisemitic. So now I’d like to go on record as being sexist and racist as well. Because I really can’t stand Condoleezza Rice. For so many reasons.

I ignored her at first, because I was busy being pissed about Bush’s stance on Kyoto and the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, Condi was busy doing what she does: photo ops, press conferences, softball interviews with Fox News, and so on. Richard Clarke had been obsessed with Osama, but Condi didn’t see that as anything to worry about, and her boss took most of the summer of 2001 off to work out, clear brush, and play golf. (Is there really any brush left on that ranch? Or is he as bad at clearing brush as he is at everything else?)

Then 9/11 happened, and there’s nothing like a disastrous breach of national security to really jump-start the career of the National Security Advisor. Somehow, the fact that this stuff happened on her watch made her more influential in Bush’s circle, instead of less. Hell, I know a few people who have been fired for a lot less.

Then, exactly four years after taking on the job as token black NSA woman, she took over as Secretary of State for Colin Powell, who had sacrificed his own career on the altar of Bush’s lies by standing up before the UN and pretending Saddam had very scary WMDs all over the place. (Bad move, Colin: most Americans used to respect you, you know.)

Now that Condi’s career as Secretary of State is half over, it’s amazing to see all she has accomplished. She has done so many photo ops, so many press conferences, and so many softball interviews with Fox News. Where does she find the time?

Well, one thing she hasn’t wasted any time on is diplomacy. Here, I’ll list all of the major diplomatic breakthroughs she has led:

Impressive, and just what anyone would have expected from her.

It’s great to see the Donald finally speaking up and just saying it:

“I see Condoleezza Rice - she goes on a plane, she gets off a plane, she waves, she goes there to meet some dictator … They talk, she leaves, she waves, the plane takes off. Nothing happens, it’s a joke, nothing ever happens.” - Donald Trump

If your point guard is slow, you don’t run a lot of fast breaks. And if your diplomatic option is Condi, you don’t negotiate, you drop bombs instead. Actually talk to Syria and Iran? No, no, no, we don’t do that.

I mean, Nixon would never have visited China during the Vietnam War if they were even half as scary or evil or powerful as Iran and Syria. Things were easy back then, before 9/11 changed everything. Besides, Iran and Syria have evil weapons and are trying to build nukes, just like Iraq was. Right, Condi? Bombs away!

Miscellaneous Links

Speaking of puddings without themes, here are a few links I came across today while cleaning out my in-box …

This soldier’s report from Iraq gives us a new bit of pop-culture slang: The Butt-Stroke Mentality

Way back in the 90s, I developed some software to print color-coded bar-code labels. I did it because my client, Ernst & Young, wanted to do this; they were applying lots of color tabs by hand, and this software really saved them a lot of time and money. But when they chose that software for their nation-wide standard in all of their offices, some schmucks came along and said they had a patent on the concept of color-coded bar-code labels. They put fear of litigation in E&Y, and E&Y decided to go with a different system — it was probably the biggest disappointment of my career. Well, last week the Supreme Court made it harder for schmucks like that to protect their bullshit patents. Yeah!

Speaking of cat-fights, a nice bit of back-and-forth debating/fighting/name-calling can be found here: Feminist Blogs respond to Club Culture and Rape Article. With all the actual killing and enslaving going on around the world, it’s nice to see people so worked up over nothing.

And speaking of cats, George sent me a link to a silly cat video. George rarely sends links, but it is pretty silly.

I recently signed a petition to Amazon about their unfair and unprofessional treatment of Jimmy Carter’s book. Then Megan mentioned it, and she had signed the same petition. Here it is. I’m not buying anything from Amazon until/unless they correct this, and I’ve bought a lot from Amazon over the years.

OK, back to cleaning out the in-box. 100 handled, just 800 more to go …

Timing Webcasts

It snowed a little this morning, and the Microsoft campus is deserted. People are cancelling meetings and setting their OOF (out-of-office) messages, and I got the best spot in the parking garage.

Well, truth be told, it’s often possible to get a good spot at 5:00AM, which is when I arrived today for a webcast I delivered at 6:30. We do them early in the morning Redmond time so that people around the world can participate: it’s the end of the work day in Europe, morning in North America, mid-day in Brazil, evening in India, and late evening in Japan. Well, Hawaii and New Zealand get screwed, but it’s always 3:00AM somewhere, right? And it’s hard to feel sorry for those people out in the Pacific Ocean anyway, since they’re all going to survive WWIII. That will be their revenge for the indignity of watching Open XML webcasts in the middle of the night.

Mom, the reason I didn’t invite you was that this one was Microsoft-only.

17 Photos

Molly nagged me into posting a few more photos from Adele’s birthday party, and then I decided to include a few others from the last few days as well, so this pudding has no theme.