brian's blog

From CNet, Microsoft investigates leak of 'Office' videos:

"These videos were produced for internal use and were never intended to be viewed by the public," said the spokeswoman said. "We are actively working to investigate how and why they have appeared now."

I'm not sure why Microsoft seems so upset about these videos getting out. I hope it's due to some obscure legal reason - because the videos are hilarious and certainly do quite a bit to help improve our image as a Cool Company. (Well, at least Xbox, as a brand, has accomplished this, though one could say that's their job.)

Still, I'm glad to see that the awesome Ed Helms college recruiting video has finally been released to the public. People loved this video when we showed it at the info sessions on campus last year.

Remember when I last said that work was busy (oh, over two months ago)? It got worse. Much worse. I now have nightmares of little insect-like email icons flooding out of the cracks of every door, window, and faucet, each demanding I spend my undivided attention on it. Work's become almost like a game, seeing if I can delete more inbox emails in a day than I receive (current high score: 645 inbox emails).

So here are a few quick notes from the past 3 months:

• Been training most weekends for the MS 150 charity bike ride coming up in less than two weeks. Just rode 60 miles yesterday, doing a full loop around Lake Washington. More info coming soon.
• Flew to Toronto for the Canada Day / Fourth of July weekend, hanging out with a few friends at a cottage - went canoeing, hiking, and "treetop walking."
• Went to Minneapolis for a week-long software development conference. It was interesting, but about as exciting as it sounds.
• The American Dad interview still hasn't been posted. I stopped asking about it a while ago - it was too low interest versus all the other high priority features the site has. I need to find out whether anyone will mind (lawyers?) if I post it myself here...
• Saw Cirque de Soleil in Redmond; great show. Much more theatrical and colorful than I was expecting - the stunts themselves were almost secondary.
• My brother's now come and gone as a Microsoft intern. He started on his birthday - I took him go karting to celebrate both occasions.
• I mentored / managed my own intern at work. Woo boy. It was payback time for all the perceived slights I suffered as an intern! (Okay, fine, my internship was actually lots of fun.) Anyway, she did great, and it was a much bigger challenge to effectively manage someone than I was expecting.
• A design firm contacted me to license a few of my Fremont photos (here and here) for a law firm's website.
• Went sea kayaking around Alki peninsula in Seattle
• Went to Vancouver and saw the Mexican fireworks team perform at the Celebration of Light competition
• Just finished deleting thousands of spam comments from the blog...

And last, but certainly not least - congratulations to Markus and Colleen on their recent engagement. Best of luck to you for the next year up in far northern Quebec. You two are crazy. Crazier than foxes, actually - do they even live that far north?