Well, if you are reading this it means you’ve made your way to the new home of general boy’s pointless, self indulgent ramblings via the redirect on Newtrix, my old blog.

I gotta say… this whole migration thing is quite a caper… and I was worried I’d lose all the old Newtrix stuff. Touch wood, it all seems fine.

Of course, the Google wits have funged around with the templating, giving the blogger, if it was at all possible, LESS control over the look and feel of their sites. Even if I wanted to use any aspects of the old template Blugger wouldn’t let me… so I was more or less ( well… comletely and utterly… if you must know ) forced into hacking one of the newer ones. So what you see here is a bit of a compromise… but anyway… at least that dreadful dog has been given the green dream.

So why the name change you might ask?

I don’t have a compelling answer to that, other than to say I just damn well felt like it. To put a more pretentious spin on it, I wanted the new blog’s name to encapsulate the transience of the human condition, the relentless, and ever accelerating passage of time, and my personal denial of it.

So here it is… your time starts…. now.

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The “Digger” is an image that’s pretty much etched into every Australian kid’s head from about 10 years old. We are told, in a slightly detached, almost comic book way, about how 20,000 Australian troops we dumped in a small cove in a country 8000 miles away, to fight for a King who’d never even seen their homeland.

Later in our teens, a screening of the Peter Weir movie Gallipoli was almost an essential part of the school curriculum ( and still should be IMHO ), and many kids felt that odd mixture of pride and pity for the first time. The film actually shows the battle for the monstrous cock up it was, but saves that shocking reality check for the last 10 minutes. It’s here we are given another powerful, enduring image - that of soldiers writing what they believe will be their last letters ever - to loved ones. In the movie at least, these letters were pinned to trench walls, or secreted into into small gaps gouged out with the tip of a bayonette.

Sometime later, often months after the author had died, these letters found their way back to Australia. These were snapshots of an alien life - descriptions of a dangerous and tragic scene - taken through the eyes of very, very ordinary people. While many of them remained the private and treasured posessions of their intended recipients, many more found their way into numerous publications. Some ended up printed in newspapaers, others were compiled into entire books of war letters. Entire diaries would later be published, uncensored, detailing the reality and brutality of what the writer experienced. They were the Anzac bloggers.

I have no doubt many of the Anzac bloggers felt they had a duty to let people know what was really going on. I am sure many of there letters were quite mundane, but there would have been insight into military machinations, and occasional vivid descriptions of deeply traumatic events. This information would have been at odds with the propaganda of the day, but surprisingly, it often survived censorship. Freedom of speech was, after all, part of the freedom they believed they were fighting for.

In December last year, the Australian Defence Force deleted almost 140 military blogs of Australian personnel serving in Iraq. Anyone who has blogged for any length of time must have an appreciation of how this would feel. Their outlet, the small part of their lives they open up to the outside world, has been shut off. Someone, obviously, doesn’t want you and I to see their part of the world as they do.

I wonder, how many of them are reflecting on the nature of freedom on this historic day. The freedom of the Iraqi people, the freedom of the world from terrorism, the freedom of US Trade.

Lest we forget the ANZAC Bloggers.

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Well, here we are again… another Tuesday that has been ripe for a wastin’. It feels a bit like a Friday to me ( and many other people in Australia with the public holiday tomorrow ), except without the Tequilla… which I must admit I am struggling with ever so slightly. I am perched on the edge of 6 days off… my longest break since Easter last year… so what can I say? On with the time wastin’!

- there was a guy in greasy tracky dacks and a stained tee-shirt standing in the foyer this morning. When I stopped by the lift, he stuttered “w-w-w-w-w-w-w-what floor?”, and, slightly nervously, I offered “fourteen”. He shook his head… “th-th-th-th-th-that’s nn-nn-nnooo good!” and ran up to the next lift with a sense of importance. Turns out he wanted to push the buttons for everyone… to “help” them. SECURITY!

- Dave and I became engrossed in a conversation regarding what qualities in a family member consituted sociopathic behaviour. After half an hours debating we came up with a shortlist, and pretty much had concensus. And then he goes and adds, “but, in defence of sociopaths…”

- any plankton eating pinko who even thinks of suggesting Anzac Day somehow glorifies war, and encourages people to go to Iraq, should front up at their local RSL at 10am tomorrow and request a large, red hot piece of shrapnel be inserted into them. Then, when they are lying bleeding to death in a pre-fabricated ditch constructed expressly for that purpose, maybe they can have a long hard think about the people who made it back from The Somme, and rebuilt their shattered lives, so that dreadlocked, nasally pierced cretins could study Urban Design at Uni.

- have teenage girls become more fixated on murder and suicide than ever before, or is it just a really bad week?

- msn conversation this morning

D: what is it with guys and not worrying about people knowing what they’re doing?
GB: how do u mean?
D: I just got off the phone from (hubby), and I can hear this noise in the background
GB: what noise?
D: trickling water
GB: maybe he was doing the dishes
D: in the toilet?
GB: oh…
D: I mean for god sake I just wldnt have taken the call
GB: uhhh… well I have to confess…


… so that was Time Wastin’ Tuesday. How was yours?

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Sorry blog neglectarinos, the last week has been a bit full on with festivities for Miss R’s Academic milestone spilling over into the weekend, work, work and more work, and some work day re-shuffling with the upcoming midweek holiday shenanigans.

I’ve also not been feeling 100% which is really odd for me. Tuesday my explosive poop chute threatened a peak hour traffic jam, and thereafter I was plagued by poor sleep and a really weird, wonky heartbeat for a couple of days. I am hoping it’s a product of the multitude of disgusting germs flying about the office in TinyTown at the moment, which has had a notable impact on attendence. I feel way better today, but I have decided to lay off caffiene for a week. I want to see if it calms the jack in the box that has threatened to burst from beneath my rib cage these last few days. Let’s see how long that lasts…

Work has also been crazy, and people have wanted to throw money at me for seemingly no reason this last week. Funniest was an author in the ’states wanting an ebook published. Now I know most of you don’t know in any great detail exactly what it is I do, but trust me… what I don’t know about ebook publishing would fill an e-encyclopedia. Nonetheless, I plucked some figure out of my arse and quoted… hoping it wouldn’t be all that hard. Well… turns out it’s about 5 minutes work… which makes the figure I quoted seem… well…. quite obscene in hindsight. I showed Miss R., who frowned and said, “you must have missed something… he can’t possibly pay you that much for 5 minutes work!”. But pay he did… in fact, he was rapt. Funnier still is how he came to contact me in the first place. You see, I kinda snagged a catchy name back in 2000, but I only registered the .com.au domain. In the same year, this self-help author in the US snapped up the .com version, then sat on it for 6 years. Finally last year she set up a redirect to her own website, and guess what? She’s into publishing. Actually, she’s listed on the Mobipocket website as a publishing partner / document conversion specialist. But this author just remembers the name… so he googles it… and finds me. So guess who’s suddenly into ebook publishing? Ha! Take that domain squatting wannabe!!!

Needless to say, the recent flat outed-ness has not afforded me the luxury of even attempting the threatened Newtrix makeover… there’s not even been sufficent time to change the avatar you all despise so thoroughly ( with one exception LOL ). The good news is that I have lined up a 6 day mini-break starting on Anzac Day, and during that time I’ll try and bludgeon blogger into accepting something resembling sensible, intelligable CSS. I have a shipload of work to do over “the break”, but you can rest assured it will be scheduled around swell and tides to the very best of my ability. It also means Time Wastin’ Tuesday is sorta Friday… since I’ll be working in Tinytown. I am still thinking of an angle there…

Probably by the time you read this I will have completed my “rounds” and left some inane, innapropriate comment on your blog. For those that are interested, I’ve also unearthed my musical A - Z, but deliberately left it buried in the archives. What you see may shock you. Or confound you. Or maybe just bore you. Anyway… it’s here if you have nuthin’ better to do. Hmmm… maybe I should have saved that for TWT? Meh… I’m bound to think of somethin’ else.

Have a good weekend y’all, and if you’re in Orstralia enjoy the short week. I know I will!

Tags: general by admin
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Well, while there has certainly been no shortage of desire to waste time, and no shortage of ideas suggesting ways to waste it ( give Newtrix a makeover? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAATT?? ), the General has been hard at work in both offices today. This is despite a rather shakey start to the day, that very nearly had me throwing in the towell at morning tea with some very uncharacteristic and rather unpleasant stomach shenanigans. You don’t need any more details. Trust me on that.

You will be pleased to know I did manage to devote a small amount of time this evening to persusing alternative avatars. I must admit though, I am a little surprised so many people harboured such a deep seated indifference to The General. The name and the image are inextricably linked ( he is a character dreamt up by 80’s new wave band Devo ), and I am really not sure how I can retain the geeb monniker, while replacing that happy, helmetted head.

Apart from that though, what would you have as a general boy avatar anyway? A surfer dude? An obscure simpsons character? An artsy black and white image of my left latissimus dorsi flexing? OK don’t answer that last one. I’m at a bit of a loss myself, to be honest, but I’m also afraid.

What if I select a really cool avatar? Will Nextrix ( or whatever the hell it ends up being called ) suddenly be deluged with new fans? And then how would I ever keep up with the comments? And then I’d feel the need to squander valuable time on returning comments, rather than telling you about how comprehensively I’ve wasted time every Tuesday.

Is that what you want? Is it? Hmmm???

You know you want me to keep my avatar uncool.

It’s the only way this can work people.

That’s TWT. How was yours?

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I love the vast assortment of names people have given their little spaces out there in blogland. In most cases, it seems the name of the blog ( and the pseudonym the blogger uses ) have some special significance to them - as if the name of the blog somehow encapsulates the zeitgeist in which it was born. I know the story behind the names of most of the blogs I like to read… or at least I like to think I do. Sometimes I get the feeling that perhaps the person has deliberately kept something back - either as an in joke known to a small inner circle of close bloggers, or as a secret, higher significance in the name.

To be honest though, the story behing Newtrix is not particularly clever, or inspiring. This blog was born out of the ashes of an old one, after a period of laying low -when the old blog was discovered by someone described in it ( despite deliberate misinformation ). I felt sort of sneaky when I started up again, so the name “new blog… same old tricks” was a sort of in joke among a handful of regular commenters that survived the move. I decided that name didn’t have a great deal of mileage, so I changed it to “dog”, and stuck a dog on the top. Done. On with blogging…

I was kinda fond of the persona in my old blog, and it probably revealed a lot more of the “day to day” me. But that was borne out of a different mood - my frustration with lack of contract work, unresolved issues with a few individuals earlier in my life, and the need to find people who had similar tastes and humour to mine. Oh, and of course, to have a crack at writing. While some of that “thread” continues in newtrix, I don’t feel the need to talk about the sorts of things I did at that time. They are much less relevant to where my life is now.

But even as Newtrix stumbles ireverently and irelevantly toward its 300th post, I am asking if the name and layout really mean anything to me anymore. The whole “same old tricks” thing doesn’t seem to have the same currency it used to. It feels like it’s significance has faded to the point it means little. The name feels transient - and the climate that spawned it has long passed.

Has this happened to you?

Are you still happy with the name you gave your blog way back when? Does it still have a special significance to you? Do you think it always will… or can you perhaps see a time not too far off where it might not?

If your blog was reborn, what would you call it?

What would I call it?

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“I can give you $40 for petrol money”.

This was my presumptous friend’s segway into inviting himself along on my 2007 trip to Bells Beach for the Rip Curl Pro.

Sigh.

I never ended up going this year… plenty of reasons - too much work on, lack of cash, tiny surf, but ultimately, I was sorta glad. Glad to be rid of the awkwardness of having to either a) put up with bringing my presumptuous, loud, friend, or b) lie about not going, or c) tell him I was going and why having him along would drive me insane ( and hence, why I wouldn’t take him ).

It’s hard for me to give you the full story here… obviously. I’ve spoken of this friend before - the one who leads the charmed life of never having worked a day in his life, and when there’s no surf spends his days playing his XBox or PS2. In general, he has no money… but suddenly “borrows” it when he needs his phone card topped up, or a new set of surfboard fins, or anything else that takes his fancy. It’s me who buys him lunch on surftrips, me who pays for petrol ( and never complains about it ), me who drives. Never him.

My reward for this is 4 hours of incessant banging on about what stage he has got up to in some obscure video game, all his “freinds” on his MySpazz page, and all the women he has talking to him all day on MSN and who said what about whom and how such and such thinks so and so ( whom I’ve never met and wouldn’t ever want to ) is such a bitch. It’s not so much a conversation, as a storm of banality.

While the verbal diarrhea spouting from his relentlessly flapping jowls would be enough to make a shy, bald bhuddist reflect and plan a mass murder, there’s also the slightly psychotic behaviuor. We are talking almost Whacko Jacko quirkyness here. In addition, he’ll make grossly innapropriate remarks to teenage girls working in fast food outlets, or complain about “old people” in a stage whisper clearly audible from several blocks away, and baffle anyone new he meets by instantly launching into a tedious, repetitious diatribe about himself… before they have even managed get a word out. He thinks no-one hears him.

You might wonder how I managed to become tangled up with someone who, on the face of it, seems highly objectionable and deeply unpleasant to be around… even for a short period of time. Truth be told, I’m not sure… but I have a dreadful feeling I may just be his one and only freind. And that’s the hard part. You see, despite his breathtaking capacity for self obsession, social inpetitude, and general obliviousness to anything outside his own, tiny sphere, he is undyingly loyal. In fact, he would do pretty much anything for me. Beneath that boorish facade beats a heart of pure gold.

Sometimes I wonder, if I might be the only person in the entire world who puts up with him. He’s like the slightly smelly, yappy, utterly untrainable dog you pick up from the animal shelter that no-one wants. The rusted out bright red Leyland P-76 in the back corner of the car yard with the flakey paint, dodgy brakes, and muffler full of holes. The problem pony otherwise destined for the knacker’s yard.

Sometimes you look at things on life’s scrap heap, and against your better judgment, you rescue them. For your trouble, they constantly embarass you, cost you money, and lead many, many people to ask why on earth you care.

And you can’t explain it.

You just do.

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“That looks to me like General Boy!”

The recognition was simultaneous, I had actually spotted Alice before Justin as he stood beside the car loading it up with groceries. She stood at the rear next to a pram, with the hatch back open. I strolled up and stopped to chat. Had it really been that long since I’d seen them? Last I heard Alice was pregnant, and then they got married, and then went to work in Canada. The kid next to her was standing. The one in pram looked like he soon would be.

I never went to the wedding.

It seems sort of strange now I look back, given how close Justin and I became. Over the course of 18 months I worked alongside him while he laboured on his PhD. My name appears in the thesis, with the word “tireless work” included in the credit. We built up considerable mutual respect for one another, both interested in each other’s fields of expertise but accutely aware of our lack of knowledge of the details. The difference was, I honestly believed Justin could eventually figure out how to do almost anything I’d learnt given enough time to study it. But I could never have anything approaching the deep understanding of his research, and the science underpinning it he had.

We had been working long hours, and he was working through weekends trying to refine the process. The actual experiments themselves took almost no time - minutes in fact - to complete. This was in contrast to the hours required to set them up, and it was not uncommon for some failure to bring an experiment to a halt at the last moment - and you’d be back to square one. Over the last week this had happened several times - after 4 - 6 hours we’d get almost to the point where Justin could start, and something would fail. I was following process - trying to isolate the fault, thinking on my feet, re-engineering where neccesary…  all the while hoping that this time the technology would survive the immense strain we were placing on it. At the end of one very stresfull day, at the end of a very stressful week, I am convinced I did something that permenantly changed the way Justin saw me.

Things at home were not great, but at the same time, I was just starting to enjoy my work after being bored stupid by it for the previous 18 months and wishing I’d never quit my previous job. At that time, work was about the only thing keeping me sane… and now it was doing my head in. I’d kept my frustration under control by hoping something somehow would eventually change - but at 6pm that night I decided it probably wouldn’t.  I became stuck in the moment.

I didn’t completely explode, and a seasoned dummy spitter would no doubt laugh at my poor attempt at “losing it”. But lose it I did nonethess - stomping back to my office swearing, and cranking up a particularly angry Shihad track on my PC jukebox. Justin arrived a short time later to see how I was doing, but as I flicked through diagrams trying to solve the problem I was blinded by rage - and he backed carefully away and left. I wasn’t able to solve the problem and stewed over it all weekend - a weekend that Justin had specifically set aside to run experiments.

The next week some urgent work demanded my attention, and a colleague offered to help Justin out in my absence. They ended up by-passing a whole load of stuff, but they were able to get it all working sufficiently for Justin to do run experiments mid week. When the replacement parts arrived from the ‘States I was able to fix it properly, and once and for all resolve the nagging problem. But even as I worked alongside Justin I felt a rift had opened up, and while he was polite and jovial as usual, I could feel his slight discomfort toward working with me. I continued to help him, but more frequently my contemporary stepped in and soon they became good friends both in and out of work. I remained friendly toward him and Alice as their relationship blossomed, but things were never the same. I heard all about the wedding from friends of friends who’d attended.

Miss R tugged at my arm, reminding me that the movie started in just 5 minutes and we had to get going. I started walking backward, and slightly apologetically, away from them. I said it was great to see them again, and that we must catch up, and that they can find my e-mail address at (website). And they bid us farewell.

And I knew we’d probably never speak again.

Tags: friendship by admin
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I really got into the TWT spirit today, watching the Rip Curl Pro webcast and then clocking up just over 4 hours in the water on a beautiful summer’s day in mid Autumn. It’s crazy here… guys are still surfing in boardshorts… the water hovering at near mid summer temperatures. I’m sure it will all come to a sudden, bitterly cold end… but untill that time, I’m just gonna go on pretending summer never ended. Denial is working just fine for me, thanks.

Anyway, back to reality tomorrow. Office Politics. Moronic motorists. Unrealistic deadlines.
So that was Time wastin’ Tuesday. How was yours?

Tags: Time wastin' Tuesday, general by admin
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