Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated May 26, 2005
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Little Things
I had been having trouble with my compute mouse for some time; it was sticking and jerking, causing me to get frustrated with it. So I asked number two stepson if he had a spare mouse. Indeed he did, but forgot to bring it every time he came to visit us. So I asked a question on the computer problem page on another site I visit quite a lot. Then I got the answer, clean it! The person even told me how to take it to bits, which was something I never knew before. There was me thinking that I was doing well with all this computer knowledge that I had picked up over the past few years.
So after I followed all his instructions, I managed to take it apart and cleaned it as best I could. After I put it back together again, it was still sticking! So I just carried on for the next few days struggling with it, even though it was testing my temper at times. It always seemed to stick right on the edge of what ever I wanted to click on to, and then it would jump right passed it leaving me to start all over again.
Then, a few days later, I was out in my shed where I saw a bottle of turpentine. 'I wonder if that would clean the head on my mouse' I thought. So I took it into the house and took the mouse apart once again. That white film was still showing on the head as well as the two rollers at the sides, yet earlier I had thought that it was a coating to allow smooth movement. So I started to soak this white coating with a cotton bud dipped into the turpentine and was totally amazed to see this white stuff coming off the head and rollers. What I had earlier thought was a coating was, in fact, lint that the mouse had picked up over time and wrapped itself around all the moving parts.
It was coming off in such large lumps that I had to pick it off with a pair of tweezers and throw it away. Then, after it was all clean, I left the mouse to dry a while before reassembling it again. To my surprise it worked so smoothly it was like new again! The only thing that left me feeling puzzled was why was the lint all white when my mouse board is actually black?
Still, not to worry! At least my mouse was working properly again and that was the main thing. To think that I had spent all that time trying to work away with that sticking mouse with all the frustration it caused me, when all I has to do was clean it. I was even thinking of buying a new one at one point - one of those new cordless ones perhaps - but the cost would have been too much at the moment with other bills due in soon.
I could not help but feel a bit silly, really, and I think my pride took a knock as well. As I mentioned earlier I considered myself to be at least computer literate.
The whole episode got me to thinking about all the other times that I felt a bit silly in my past life, which made me smile and cringe at the same time. When I thought back to all the times I got angry with it, shaking it and shouting at it, no wonder I felt a bit silly. It was another example of how just one little thing like that could cause so much bother, yet the solution was so simple.
I suppose it is just like cars in a way. No matter how much your car is worth or how fast it can go, they all depend on one simple thing; air in the tyres! It's true, when you think about it; a car these days is a very complex piece of machinery, capable of travelling at great speed, computer engine management systems and so on. Yet if your tyre deflates at any time your car is next to useless and is going nowhere. Neither are you! In fact, when you think of all this modern technology that surrounds us all these days, you will always find that if one small component breaks down, the whole machine is useless.
A friend of ours recently spent over £1200 on the latest top-of-the-range computer systems yet, if he allows the mouse head to get choked up with lint like I did, then all that system would be of no good to him. So I suppose it is the little things that make all the difference, as the saying goes. One good thing to come out of all this is that I learnt something new about computers and, if I can do that every day, well then, every little helps.
