Clickin' Drag

Technology is just great, until it fails you. At work I use a trackball that I bought years ago, but at home we have a small bluetooth mouse because the Mrs. has wrist issues and prefers to mouse with her left hand, and it's much easier to switch back and forth with a wireless device.

On Saturday the mouse, which is three years old, gave out. Actually, it still turns on, but its bluetooth seems to have ceased to work. I have another of those trackballs somewhere (I used to use the same kind at home), but damned if I could find it. So I had no other input device available, which is an odd situation indeed.

Yesterday I made a trip to a nearby OfficeMax. I didn't expect to be able to find what I wanted, and they didn't disappoint me. (Well, technically they did, but I was expecting to be disappointed, so...) They carry one bluetooth mouse, it's made by Microsoft and they sell it for $50. I paid $30 for the dead one, and that's about all it's worth to me.

I asked the upstairs neighbors if they might have a mouse I could borrow, but the only one they could come up with was from a pre-USB Compaq with the old cylindrical type of connector. (I think they're all using laptops at this point, so they don't need modern mice.)

It was weird to spend the weekend unable to use the computer. We have a laptop, but it doesn't have any of my passwords stored, and its screen is too small to use for long periods of time. I have a spare mouse that came with my work computer, which is going to fill in until I can get a replacement, but I couldn't get it until today.