Allow Me To Expose Myself

So who is this Brad guy anyway?
(and that’s how far I got 24 hours ago)

I have been mulling over this whole personal privacy thing for a while now. You see, back in the late ’90s, I kind of fell into the field of computer security.
I’d been a truck driver for eleven years or so, & with one company (a multinational) for the last six of those years. But I had been on a casual wage for the entire time. I had been put through a number of specialist training courses & was licensed for Dangerous Goods transport (road and air), I had airside security clearance. They’d paid for my forklift ticket. They’d invested a lot of money in me. But when it came to a permanent position, they refused based on ‘Company Policy’.

So I quit.

Anyway, I did a uni bridging course & started an Information Technology degree. At 35 years of age. My previous computer experience consisted of hopelessly failing to figure out what to do with one in 1980 (yes), while working for a seismic oil search company, and playing with a Commodore 64 in 1996 when they were relics.
So, when I got a new computer for my studies, the very first thing I did was unknowingly infect it with a virus from a floppy disk.
So I started learning about viruses & the computer ‘underground’ & eventually got involved a little. So anonymity & privacy used to be very important to me.
I knew that anonymity on the net was difficult, but keeping the privacy of your personal information in those days was relatively easy.
Nowadays, data mining bots crawl all over the web, gathering bits and pieces of information about us to be stored in data wharehouses for the scrutiny of who knows.
So, I figure fuck it. There is no Internet privacy. I might as well get naked too.
So here is a list of trivia about me that you may or may not find useful. Warning. Some of this stuff may be confronting. Not rude. Confronting:

I’m short. About 170cm, or 5’6″ in Volleys.

I used to wear Volleys a lot.

I walk with a limp and have a funny turned out leg. The result of a poorly healed broken femur in ’83-’84. I blame the vodka & my Valiant Charger that had no autopilot and was way too fast for a drunken teenage fool to be driving it.

In my early teens I was sexually abused.

When I was fourteen, I stole my parents’ car and  ran/drove away from home in Brisbane. A mate came with me. Two and a half days later we were caught near Tamworth. We were heading for Perth.

I was in a theatre company. Yep, I was a thespian.

I have a scar on the retina of my right eye.

I have four small tattoos.

If I had a good DSLR, I would probably be outside shooting pics of night creatures & not writing this post.

I love photography.

Sometmes I look younger than I am.

Most times I look older.

I am very unfit compared to  five months ago. This I shall rectify.

I/we lived mostly in our car for a long time. OK, we were homeless.

I’m not a testosterone driven blokey bloke. An afternoon down the pub with Gazza, Bazza & Dazza, talking about football and tits is not my thing.

I like going to the pub  and catching up with Maddy Jazzy and Snotty. They don’t talk about football. Oh, they’re girls, in case you’re thinking ????

I am a Pink Floyd nut.

I also like, in no particular order, & this list is just a sample:
Bliss n Eso
Wendy Matthews
System of a Down
The Seabellies
Missy Higgins
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
Jefferson Airplane
Evil Eddie
Brahms
Rodriguez
The Herd
Clare Bowditch
Florence

I live in a fishing mecca, but rarely go fishing.

I like frogs.

I have just started to go grey in the past four months.

I worked as an IT support officer (The tech guy) at a major Queensland university for nearly six years.

Given tools and a manual. I can strip down and rebuild your car engine.

I was a real hippy (we called ourselves freeks) once & lived in Cedar Bay for a little while (before the aforementioned drunk incident).

I like caving and rock climbing. I haven’t done either for years.

I have two dogs. Jack & Floyd.

I have Brown eyes.

I was once a trainee commercial cameraman.

I was a bed wetter until the day I moved into a flat with my girlfriend. I was seventeen.

As a teenager I once downed so many prescription pills that I lost 24 hours of my life. All I have of those hours are three vague memories that would total a few minutes.

I was a Jughound (I’ll let you Google it).

If this is your first meeting with me, you probably should read this:
August 13 2011

And maybe this October 20 2011

Some of these factoids may become blog posts. Or not.

Finally, my big sister (I have lil sis too. She’s like forty 🙂 ) reckons these eyes look like a serial killers.
I’m not though 😉