Oh what a tangled web we weave......

"I've got a real beaut idea," my fellow columnist Basher Brown said a year or so back as we relaxed over a few brandy pots with brandy seven chasers.

I should have known better but my slight nod of the head was all the signal Basher needed to know I'd hear him out, yet again, against all better judgment.

"You know how we always lose a bagful of brass whenever we hit the streets with an issue of The Bug," Bash began rhetorically. "So why not put it out on the Net as well and lose even more?"

Not having the sort of business mind that instantly picks up on real beaut ideas, I let Bash's real beaut idea fester in my mind for the next 12 months. Till about six months back.

"Refresh my mind about that real beaut idea you had last year," I asked as we relaxed over a few brandy schooners with brandy pot chasers.

"What particular real beaut idea was that?" Bash asked, knowing full well which real beaut idea he was referring to. Bash doesn't have a lot of real beaut ideas in the course of any one particular calendar year.

So we discussed once again the loss-leading concept of putting the loss-leading Bug on the loss-leading Net.

"It can't be too difficult," was one of the last things I remembered saying before the Bash and I gave the brandy the toss and settled down to an afternoon of serious drinking.

It can't be too difficult! Gosh, was that only a few months ago? It seems I've had grey hair for years.

Was there ever a time when I slept soundly at night? Having mastered shoelaces long before high school, did I once really believe in all immodesty that I was moderately intelligent?

Reading this third electronic issue of Australia's No. 1 family street paper, you may have trouble believing me when I say that putting The Bug on the Net has been the most frustrating journey I have ever attempted. It's been the information highway to hell, with every twist and turn leading up another hair-pulling blind end. There have been times when I would have gladly taken a mattock handle to my beloved IBM incompatible and USRobotics works 33.6 percent of the time Sportster Voice.

Not one step along the way has gone smoothly. From registering the domain name, to downloading a succession of FTP packages trying to get one that works well, from watching my files take forever to upload with the link invariably disconnecting with 2 percent left; to a default (home page) file always with a mind of its own, sometimes kicking straight in when it's not supposed to, but most times disappearing into the ether despite being uploaded over and over again, day after day after day.

And when a solution is finally found to a problem, logic never seems to play a part.

I got to know the technical staff at Power Up intimately in those early months. I have no fear that our relationship is coming to an end.

I'd have retired to the Bahamas by now if I had a dollar for every time I rang technical support only minutes after the time before with a comment such as "You told me just before to follow this line of action but I did that and now I don't know what to do next."

Or: "You must think I'm the dumbest prick you've ever had to deal with?" I wish I hadn't asked that.

Still, they were always fairly tolerant and accepted that this sort of computer-based activity must be pretty difficult for someone who had to undergo a lobotomy as a prerequisite to working at the Courier-Mail in the late 70s.

And is it getting any easier as my knowledge expands? No. Consider this sample of the complimentary e-mail that has flooded in following the current issue.

you are stupid for using frames. you cut off half of the text. don't do
something that you can't handle

hahahhahahahahahhahhahhahaahahahahahahhaahahahahhaahhahahha

ps why do you use yellow?

see you now !!!!!!!!!

last thing you (sic) web site STINKS

Why do I use yellow? Because it's there? Okay, all those colours are down right sickening and must make it hard to print pages, but I use them because I can. It's one of the few things in Adobe Pagemill that I've got a handle on. Why did I try to use frames in the currrent issue? Good question. I've spent the best part of a weekend fucking around with frames that I know bugger all about, because I thought it'd make the site easier to view. If this appears not to be so, forgive me, for I know not what I do.

While my incompetence must be particularly galling to my various e-mailers and they won't have a bar of the lame defence that I'm just an old hack newspaper journo stumbling blindly along in a foreign and frightening medium, consider this even more frightening statistic - it appears I'm at the cutting edge of my profession.

Many of my mainstream colleagues won't have a bar of the Net. They have absolutely no sympathy for the money and hair I'm losing over this site, demanding instead that I revert to losing money the old way by putting The Bug out in hard copy form. They love the smell of ink on their fingers and I must confess I'm missing it too.

- Don Gordon-Brown