A Mickey Mouse operation

My hands were shaking.

I was, I admit, very nervous. This was a very important operation and there was no question of losing the patient. Entry had looked easy and once opened up, the whole exercise had looked simple, but as so often in these cases, it is never as easy as it looks.

I tried to get the isopropyl alcohol onto the switch and not flood the whole PCB - never easy, but it seemed to work. Now I have to wait for nature to take its course. Just leave it there and pray to whoever runs these things for 100 per cent success.

My mouse is ill, possibly terminally, and I had to operate. Not something I'd choose to do in the normal course of things, but well, I had no choice.

It is a Microsoft Intellimouse - y'know the one with the wheel at the front. Ever since I've had it, the wheel has been a bit stiff, which means my finger slips on it, so I have to press down on it a bit harder to make it work, only all I do is switch on whatever it is you switch on when you press the wheel.

This generally causes even more trouble when suddenly the text I'm working on starts scrolling out of control and there is that 'hang on a minute' moment as I desperately try to regain control of whatever is going on in the computer.

I decided enough was enough and I'd try to lubricate the roller unit and make it easier to use.

But I didn't have any lubricant, only some screen cleaner, so I opened it up and cleaned the wheel with screen cleaner. Some of the cleaner got into the switches. This was a bad thing.

Next thing I knew, I had no 'go' button on the mouse, so I was left to navigate around Windows using the keyboard (possible, but not something I would recommend while falling out of an aeroplane). Hence the operation - fill the switch with something like isopropyl alcohol and hope to get it all to work.

All in all, it has been a sobering experience, made more so by the realisation that not only am I totally reliant on the mouse, but also the little wheely bit on the front and this is dreadful news.

I'm not one of these newcomers you know. I started off on mainframes where keying in strings included lots of words spelled the American way (initialize, etc) and lots of 'X', 'Y' and 'Z's. And I can do DOS and I used to use WordPerfect, so I know about hardship and computers.

So I think we should start re-educating ourselves on how to use the keyboard.

Important keystrokes should be committed to memory and we should never be reliant on the mouse again. We should take keyboard driving lessons to get to a proficiency where if the mouse fails we don't worry - we could even spend the afternoon using just the keyboard to keep our hands in.

In the meantime, if anyone has a spare - new - Intellimouse, please, please, please, please send it to me. (Note to the editor: that wasn't too desperate, was it?)

Chris Long is a freelance IT journalist.