[Discuss-gnuradio] m-block timeouts, time passed, or pause?

[George Nychis]

Is there any way to get an approximate amount of time that has elapsed 
since a timeout has been scheduled?  Or better yet, a way to pause a 
timer?  This is extremely useful for backoff periods in MAC contention 
protocols.  Where, for instance, the timer is only decremented when the 
channel is considered idle.  The best method would be a way to pause it. 
 The alternative would be to find the time passed, cancel it, and then 
when the channel becomes idle to schedule another timer with the amount 
of remaining time.

After checking mb_mblock.h, I don't think any of this is readily 
available... can either of these can be simply implemented?  If so, can 
you pass along some advice? :)

Thanks!
George