Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Tales of the mouse

About 6 weeks ago I bought myself what I thought would be a productive treat - a wireless optical mouse. But it was neither productive nor a treat. The mouse had a mind of its own. The pointer would dissappear and go skidding off into a carnor and I'd be clicking away and tapping the mouse and cursing. I tried all the sensible, logical things like making sure there were no machines or sources of interference nearby, bringing the sending unit closer, checking the USB port, etc. No joy. Finally, in deperation and with my mousing hand beginning to ache, I gave up and bought a wired optical mouse.

And what did I find? The wired optical mouse did the same crazy things! This time I knew it couldn't be hardware failure so I started checking out the software. I tried updating and reinstalling the s/w and the drivers and the device manager. No joy! Yes the mouse was clean. It was brand new but I checked anyway.

Today, by accident something I was reading triggered something way, deep in the dusty vaults of my mind and I suspicously tucked away my new and stylish SuSe Linux mouse pad. I got out a sheet of paper towel and started mousing on that.

Problem solved.

::sigh::

The other tale of a mouse concerns the other sort of mouse, the nasty little furry ones. We've had so much rain lately that the mice seem to have migrated to drier spaces. Being on the ground floor and with a lovely convenient space under the front door of the apt and god alone knows what other little cracks and openings in the walls in closets and behind appliances, I started hearing suspiciously familiar noises at night. Then yesterday while I was online, I saw a small, dark body scurry from under the sofa across the floor and under the door. I didn't think I was hallucinating. It explained the familiar sounds. So I went to the store, bought some glue traps and set them out. Twenty minutes later the glue trap along the wall under my desk had trapped its first victim! I tossed that out into a metal can in the garbage room. Problem solved.

Not so fast.....later that afternoon I heard those suspicious sounds again, then walking down the hall to the bathroom I saw another furry little body scurry out under the bathroom door and across the hall to the closet.

Ok, back to the store for a bunch of mousey glue traps. My house is now a mouse-mine field. Death to rodents.

1 comment:

Broklynite said...

We've taken to creating what I like to referr to as "corridors of death" in which from wall to wall we lay glue traps to get the little bastards. This works well in doorways and elsewhere.