BitcoinTalk

Is my second Transaction working correctly? +Transfer Question

BitcoinTalk
#3
From:
satoshi
Subject:
Re: Is my second Transaction working correctly? +Transfer Question
Date:
The transfer is immediate if you send by IP address.  If you send by bitcoin address and the recipient isn't online at the time, it might take 30 minutes or more to see it.  

Also, the recipient needs to be synced up with the block chain before it'll see the received transaction.  That means the status bar at the bottom needs to say at least 33000 blocks, like "x connections  33200 blocks  x transactions".

Quote
However, once that transaction was complete, a new transaction hasn't started. Or maybe it has. There's only one transaction in the list but I'm up to 131 Blocks under "Status". Is this the way it's supposed to happen? Does it keep processing on the same transaction and generating coins every 120 blocks or so? Or is it supposed to start a new transaction?

The number of blocks of a transaction is the amount of new blocks that have been generated by the whole network after the transaction. Each new block in the chain means new coins to its creator. One "generated" -transaction in your transaction list means that you have generated one block. You're not the first one to find the concept of a "block" a bit confusing on the first sight.

Would it be clearer if the status said "x confirmations", like:
2/unconfirmed
3/unconfirmed
4/unconfirmed
5/unconfirmed
6 confirmations
7 confirmations
8 confirmations

Each block essentially means another node has confirmed that it agrees with all transactions up to that point.