daynemay

That’s it, Dell. It’s over between us. And it’s not me, it’s you.

I’ve bought at least four laptops from you guys over the years, and I’ve had hardware trouble with every single one, but it always worked out OK in the past – every time, you won me back with killer customer service on getting the problem fixed. This time though, not so much. Yes, this situation is more complicated – I bought the system through a third party (Catch of the Day) in Australia, and have since relocated to Canada. But you know what? That shouldn’t mean jack. Catch is (to my knowledge) an Australian outfit, and despite the distance and the time difference, their customer service has been awesome (thanks Raymond!).

But you guys, on the other hand, are a giant corporation with global reach, and you can’t get it together enough to honour a warranty in one place that you sold me in another? I’m sorry, but that’s just not good enough. You won’t be seeing another cent of my money, and I’ll be encouraging others to vote with their wallets too.

Dear Empire Theatres,

For just how long should I not press the back button or close my browser?

(Click for animated version)

Regards,
Dayne

I find Dropbox handy for working on files from different computers. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically storage space accessible over the internet.

On the free plan, you can get 2GB of space. If it sounds like something you could be interested in, and you use this referral link, we’ll both get an extra 500MB.

In the interests of you making an informed decision: about a year ago, there was a security-related kerfuffle with them. As I recall, it was a misunderstanding more than anything, but you can read about it yourself if you want to know more.

Marcia and I have relocated to Halifax, Nova Scotia, after I got a job with NTT Data (“NTT Data, formerly Keane Canada”, as you’ll hear, if you ring reception). Things at work are going reasonably, as far as I can tell after two weeks. The people seem great, I can say that much. So that’s a win.

In other sweet news, our recent rental application has been approved, too. In two weeks time, we’ll be moving into a sweet pad on Barrington St (downtown, about a 10-15 minute walk from my work and the place Marcia is currently applying). The last place I lived within reasonable walking distance of work was in Brisbane^[1], and during weather extremes in December and January, I’d walk shirtless to save sweating all over everything. I doubt that will be a danger in this case.

Finally, Marsh is in the late stages of a rigorous interview process, for a job that seems like it will be pretty good. I don’t want to say too much on this front, as nothing’s confirmed, and it’s her tale to tell anyway, but things are looking pretty good so far.

So that’s the state of things for us here in Halifax.

(Easy) movie trivia question: the title of this post is a line from what movie? Strictly speaking, the apostrophe wasn’t in the movie, but the spelling of “fax” was the same (i.e. it was “fax”, not “facts”).

_{[1] Actually, this is false. After I typed this, I remembered that our place in Bangkok was about the same distance from work. But I enjoyed the “hey you guys, the seasons are opposite!” gag too much to take it out.}

Congratulations to my cuz, Lok Seeto, who is – as far as I know – the first to reach 10507 pushups in the competition.
I, meanwhile, am still dicking around in the high 2000s – Lok has blasted me. Top work, mate!

Hey all. I’ve just scored the vanity Facebook URL http://facebook.com/missionrecall for my webcomic (Mission: Recall, funnily enough). It took 25 “Likes”, and Danielle and Aleysha just put it over the line. Thanks to everyone who made it happen, and special thanks to those two – it’s been sitting at 23 for a while now.

OK, the previously bandied-about competition is on like some kind of large, simian video-game character.
If you’re keen on doing push-ups until you’re no longer keen on doing push-ups, then I’m your Huckleberry.

Facebook event here: 10507: The push-up competition.

Thanks for the bandying-about, Reubs.

Not long ago, I happened to look up push-up world records, and in short order, I was blown the fuck away by the notion of people doing over 10,000 push-ups in one session.
I’m under no illusions about my ability to replicate that kind of feat, or anything even remotely like it. But it would be nice to ramp up the number of push-ups I can do.
So this morning, I had the following idea:
A competition (between me and… you, if you’re interested), to see who can do some agreed number of push-ups the quickest. I want the number to be high – more than 100, more than 1000, more than I (we) can do in one big weekend push. I want it high enough that, if I want to win, I have to commit to incorporating push-ups into my routine, rather than taking a few days out of my routine and just going push-up-crazy^[1]. I’m thinking 50,000, but I’m open to negotiation.
This being 2011, I think it only just and fair that all pushups be filmed and uploaded to Youtube or something, too – not exactly riveting viewing, but it would be something to point to after the fact, and could open the field to things like challenging someone’s form, or whatever.
Finally, I’m not even going to consider starting this until after Marcia and I arrive in Canada in October.
Your thoughts? Anyone interested? Suggestions on how to run/score/whatever it?

_{[1] Yes, it’s a real thing. I think I saw it in the DSM-IV}

Results are in. I ran a 1:09:18 in the 2011 City2Surf. I’m more than happy with that.

I’m hitting up the City2Surf in Sydney this Sunday. My times over the last couple of years have been decent (for me), but both of those were coming off the back of training for the Gold Coast marathon. This year, training’s been a lot less serious. It remains to be seen how badly this will affect my time. I’ll find out Sunday, I guess.

Aside: I just looked up my times over the last couple of years. They are (net) 1:14:41 (2009) and 1:06:54 (2010). I don’t remember being that fast (for me) last year. Ordinarily I’d put it down to a dodgy memory, but I know there’s another Dayne May out there, who also runs a bit. He did the Gold Coast half in 2009 and full in 2010, and caused a bit of confusion among my friends. I wonder if I’m claiming his time here. If so, sorry Dayne!

Uh, yeah. So that was a big ol’ load of crap all those months (14!) ago when I talked big about getting back on top of that whole blogging thing.
I won’t embarrass myself with any similar proclamations now.
I will, however, point out my latest project (and partial excuse for that lapse), Mission: Recall – “a webcomic of poorly remembered pop culture”. In reality, this means “single frame gags based on the fact that actors play different characters in different movies” – e.g. James Earl Jones is (the voice of) both Darth Vader in Star Wars and Mufasa in The Lion King, so I’ve “confused” the two in the comic Our kingdom. It made sense to me at the time.

I’ve tried to get all the usual foolishness going – there’s a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a t-shirt shop Ambitious? Definitely – but I’ve sold 7 so far, and only 5 were to myself. Admittedly the other two were to the little woman and to my sister…

So anyway: go check it out, be appropriately confused, or entertained, or whatever. Follow, Like, tweet, subscribe, promote, abuse or react to it as you will. All suggestions welcome.

…from me, and from a surly-looking Santa Claus channeling Dr. Evazan. All three of us wish you a happy holiday.

A public statement of intention demands an equally public acknowledgement of failure, so here it is: I did not run the Tan Ultra last weekend. My excuse – that I’m in Perth, and the Tan Ultra was in Melbourne, almost 3500km away – is just that, an excuse. Had I been sufficiently serious, I could have found a way (to the start line at least, not necessarily the finish). But I didn’t.

Firstly, no, I’m not planning to only write about running here, but I’m doing a fair bit of it at the moment, so you in turn get to hear a fair bit about it. Feel free to ignore every word.
As I’ve mentioned, I signed up for the terrifying (to me, at least) Tan Ultra. A common component to the ultra training programmes that I’ve seen is the “long run sandwich” – weekends with a long run on both days. Up until this weekend, the biggest sandwich I’d done was 90 minutes on Saturday and 3 hours on Sunday. That’s pretty big (again: to me, anyway), but this weekend stepped things up to 4 hours on Saturday and 3 on Sunday.
Saturday: I was interested to see how I’d handle 4 hours, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. Four hours is longer than I’d ever run in one go before, but it turned out pretty much as I expected: painful, not unbearable, great to have finished. I managed 43km, as best I can tell (shout-out to the footbridges missing from Google Maps). The “marathon as training run” aspect made for a nice ego massage on Saturday night, and (I’m sure) some pretty boring conversation for those lucky enough to be around me at the time – and now you!
Sunday: After Saturday’s effort, I wasn’t enthusiastic about another 3 hours, but around 4:00pm, I forced myself out and did another 34km or so – nine laps of Prince’s Park, plus there and back, from home.
I’m kind of in awe of these numbers, so if I sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet, that’s why.
I’m still pretty wigged out by the idea of 100km in 12 hours, though. 43km one day and 34km the next is a lot different from 77km in one outing, let alone 100km. But I can almost picture a world in which I can do it. It looks a lot like this one, except with much sorer feet.