Welcome to the Marry Blogger! Due to a life change and a new job, I am no longer actively posting here at TMB. Please feel free to look around and read here, all of the links are still active, or may direct you to my other website. If you would like to read the LATEST from me on Life, Marriage, and Faith, please visit Stupendous Marriage! Thanks
Today, I decided to do some writing at the local library. Sometimes you just have to get out of the house. The library computer lab has rows and rows of computers. And this particular computer has an old roller ball mouse.
This mouse is hurtin. What I mean by hurtin is that it makes me hurt to use it. It stops on the screen, I have to roll it several times to get it to go where I want it to…I have to do crazy gesticulations…and raise it up, shake it…as if that is going to help the thing perform better.
Then I turned it over and remembered it’s one of those roller ball mouses. When they get dirty around the roller ball – they stop working.
Now I am sure the nice librarians have much more important things to do with books and reference materials and the Dewey Decimal System than to come in here every once in a while and clean out the roller ball mouses (uh — mice).
So I turned the thing over, and took the roller ball out. Like I suspected, the roller ball mechanisms were covered with goobers (I think that’s the technical term).
Built up goobers on the mechanical system that makes the mouse work. It’s just happened over time. Lots of use, lack of cleaning.
The mouse still works. But it misses things though. It needs extra coaxing to do what it needs to do, it needs some more finesse – it actually takes more work to do the simple work that it needs to do, but hey – its not trashable. Yet.
Amazingly, after five minutes of working on removing the goobers with my fingernail…I decided to not go ask the librarians if they had any alcohol (they looked busy staring intently over their horned rimmed glasses)…I got the system de-goobered.
And hey…the mouse works!!! It’s actually doing what I need it to do! It responds when I move it, it highlights and selects amazingly.
All because I took five minutes to work on it…
I paid attention to where it wasn’t working, and I noticed the problem areas. I took the initiative and cleaned up the mess. I worked at it…and you know what…it wasn’t that tough. It didn’t take that long. And it’s working amazingly well for just the short amount of time that I put into it.
Hmm.
How’s your mouse and rollerball working today?
photo by CourtneyP
