what was white doing?

Looks as though he's been playing too much antichess :)

He made the common mistake of valuing material over position.

Remember kids, the goal is to checkmate, not to take all your opponents pieces.

So he didn't see the checkmate position. So what? When he saw the knight move, he probably saw that as an attack on his bishop rather than the check that was going to happen. And when the queen moved it was easy to see it as a followup attack on the bishop. He really only had 2 oversights which lead to checkmate. You guys are all making these comments as though you never made any stupid mistakes in your entire career of playing chess. I've had tons of games where I just ran my pieces into death because I didn't see something. I suppose if someone posted one of those games, you would all be laughing at me too, huh?