Tag Archives: mouse

I’ve got ninety-nine problems, and they’re all logistical computer stuff

I used to write on my laptop, but after a while, after an hour or two hours, my wrists would get so hot, resting on the computer, right below the keyboard. I could feel the heat irradiating my blood, I worried that it was poisoning my system. So I got rid of the laptop and bought a desktop.

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And it was better, I mean, I didn’t have that hotspot anymore. But working with a mouse was so much different than working with the laptop’s track pad. I guess I took it for granted, what with all of the excessive wrist-worry, just how convenient it was navigating my graphic user interface right there, right below my keyboard, I didn’t really have to move my hands.

What I gained in peace of mind, I lost in convenience. Because even though I tried to give it time, to adjust to the new setup, I couldn’t get a good workflow going, I kept having to pick up my hand and put it on the mouse.

And besides, now I’m basically stuck here, upstairs on my desk. I guess I also took for granted just how comfortable my typing setup was downstairs at the kitchen table. Because I just naturally assumed that writing at a desk would be more of an ideal setup. But it’s not. My wrists are just slightly more elevated. And with all of the moving back and forth from keyboard to mouse, it’s exhausting. I can totally relate to people making up all of that stuff about carpel-tunnel.

And this mouse, it’s supposed to be a Mighty Mouse. Like, it’s just a solid piece with a little ball on it to scroll up and down. But I keep squeezing it the wrong way, even though I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything, nothing conscious enough to actually activate one of the hidden side buttons, but it keeps clicking, it switches between windows, it shows the desktop when I’m not asking it to show the desktop.

So I threw that mouse away and bought a Magic Mouse. It doesn’t have a ball, nothing to get stuck and prevent me from scrolling up and down. And I thought it would have worked much better, but, and I don’t know if it’s the mouse, or my computer, but it’s so laggy. Like, the cursor is so choppy, lurching across the screen. I move the mouse, nothing happens, and I can’t click on anything that I want to click on.

And this keyboard, it’s just not as smooth as working on my laptop’s keyboard. I don’t know how to explain it. Like, it feels like there’s a really heavy spring under each key, and if I don’t hit exactly the right spot, somewhere in the dead center of the key, it’s like, boing! It springs my finger onto the next key, and so I’m just constantly making typos.

So finally I was like, you know what? I can’t do this, it’s just not working out. So I sold my desktop at a loss and bought a new laptop. I’m back downstairs at the kitchen table, it’s really nice, to be able to just write, uninterrupted, not having to worry about all of those logistical nightmares that were plaguing me upstairs.

Only, now that the weather is getting warm out again, I can feel my wrists heating up, just like before. And it feels worse. Could it be worse? Could this keyboard be hotter than my other one? Or is that just in my head?

I reacted a little too dramatically, pulling my hands off the machine like I would something that was really hot, like a stove, like if my wrist accidentally made contact with one of the burners, even though that’s totally unlikely. And when I did that, I knocked my cup of iced tea onto the computer. And thankfully nothing happened, like with the computer, everything still works, which is lucky, because that could have killed it.

But now, every time I type, it’s like the keys are all stuck with dried out iced tea, and so it’s just really annoying, I feel like I’m making even more typos than ever. Sticky typos like hhhhhhhhh or ttttttttttt. I just, it’s really getting in the way of my writing. I just feel like, how am I supposed to get any writing done? With all of these computer problems? What’s the solution?

I thought I saw something

You ever get that feeling like you just saw something out of the corner of your eye, but you’re not sure if it was real or imaginary? I was just sitting at my desk when I swore I noticed some sort of movement, just right at the edge of my peripheral vision. I looked, and there was nothing. But what was it that I thought I saw? Was it real? I have no idea. I don’t want to say it could’ve been a bug, because to verbalize it might make it come true. So I kind of do a quick check behind the desk, alongside the wall. There’s nothing out of the ordinary.

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It’s tough because there’s no reliable track record for this type of activity. I can’t go back and judge this experience based off of past encounters with roaches or spiders. It’s like, every once in a while, I’ll think I see something, and then a minute passes, maybe another minute and, yep, it’s a bug, it’s a roach and it’s running across the floor.

But then other times it’s all in my head. Like when I was a little kid and I still believed in Santa Claus, every now and then I’d swear I caught a flash of red out of the corner of my eye. So I don’t know what to believe. I do know that if I’m not careful, I’ll let my imagination get the best of me. If I too actively seek out every shadow or imaginary movement I think I see, it’s only going to increase the frequency at which I’m seeing these phantom blurs.

But I also know that I live in New York, that maybe half the time I catch myself looking behind the dresser or underneath that stack of plates, it’s because I actually did see something. And sitting back and ignoring it, pretending like I never saw it in the first place, it never solves the problem. Best case scenario, it just comes back out a minute or two later, and now I’ve definitely seen it, now I have to take action and kill it. Worst case, it disappears into the cracks and crevasses of my walls and flooring where it’ll spawn an entire generation of creepy-crawlies.

I hope I’m not giving the impression that I’m living in a bug-infested dump. My place is very clean. But I’d say once or twice a year I’ve got to kill a roach, usually a really big one that’s either trying to find a warm place, or that’s trying to get back outside now that the weather is nice. I definitely see bugs all the time outside. And mice. And rats. Luckily my block is overrun with feral cats, and so yeah, I’d much rather stray cat colonies to rats.

Several years ago I was living at this apartment by my school in the Bronx. That was the first time that I had an actual mouse try to move in. Those little guys are fast, much faster than any bug. And so that feeling of seeing something moving in the corner, once you actually get a mouse cohabitating with you, it becomes way more pronounced. You’ll see that blur of darkness every time you enter a room. And the worst part is, once out of every twenty or so times, you’ll actually see it, like for real, a real mouse.

Then you have to lay out traps, and worry that the peanut butter is going to attract bugs. And then you finally catch the mouse and you have to wipe up all of the guts and everything that explode all over the place when the mouse finally takes the bait. Like I said, I’ve been really lucky that the worst I’ve had to deal with here is the occasional roach.

And a silverfish every now and then. I don’t know why, but silverfish don’t gross me out as much. For some reason they always kind of blend in with the floor, and so maybe it’s just like an optical illusion, but I never see any imaginary silverfish.

OK, I just saw it again, the movement, something creeping around. I’m still not convinced that it’s anything real, because I’ve just spent the better part of a half an hour talking about roaches and mice. If anything, I’d be more concerned if by this point I hadn’t concocted some hallucinatory pests. But still, I’m having a hard time suppressing my urge to start stomping on the floor, kicking piles of stuff. If it’s hiding in there, I want to see it. I don’t really want to see it. I hate when it comes true, when it pops out from one hiding spot and immediately dives into another. I just … I just wish I had X-Ray vision, that I could see any bugs in the walls of under the floors. No, that would be a terrible super power. A curse really. I just want the phantom movements to stop.