Requiem for a mouse

Saturday morning my sisters said the computer wasn’t working. It seemed to be hanging on the simplest functions, and I was worried that the hard drive was going out. I tried different things, as you do, and realized that the problem was that even though the point function on the mouse was just fine, it had lost its ability to click. Thus ends the long saga of my special mouse.

My first two terms of college, I took a typewriter. Personal computers were still pretty rare. One roommate had a word processor and that was impressive. After a break for earning money, serving a mission, and earning more money, I returned to U of O for Spring ’95, and found that the situation had changed. PCs were becoming essential, and I was going to have to get one. As fall approached I went to Circuit City and purchased a Compaq 486 running Windows 3.1. This was a generation behind, but that made it cheaper.

Off I went to school, and all was going well until after a few weeks the mouse quit working. I called tech support and they said they would send out a new one, but what they ended up sending out was this remote control device that supposedly had mouse functions but was not working well—besides, I wanted a mouse. Rather than call back I walked over to the campus bookstore and checked out the offerings. I had no technical knowledge to go on. I still needed to be price conscious, but I thought getting the absolute cheapest ($5.00) one might be a bad idea, so I got the second cheapest, a Logitech. (I think it was about a $11.00, but definitely not more than $15.00.)

It worked great, but I didn’t really think about it much at the time. I finished college, took various jobs, and eventually landed at Intel, where I started to become more tech-savvy. I saw how frequently one could have problems with a track-an-ball mouse, but I never had problems with mine. Maybe this is why when Julie (who was now also an Intel employee, but I had gone from contractor to hired to laid off and then back to contractor) got a new HP through an employee program, well, it was a good computer and nice to have an upgrade, but I kept using the mouse, letting the HP one go with the old system. The Logitech kept chugging along.

Time went on and I built a PC (the clear acrylic case monstrosity), and as I was selecting all of the sleek new components I did buy a new mouse, but I couldn’t bear to switch it out, so I kept using the Logitech.

When the hard disk on the clear one started to go, and it was reinforced what a pain that case was to work with, it was time for an Antec, and I built an even fancier new computer. Sure, it could have made sense to change out the mouse, but at this point it was kind of a challenge—how long could it actually keep going? Well, that was 2007, I think, so I guess about two years.

That brings its total to fourteen years. Do you have any idea how long that is in technological time? Microsoft has released seven operating systems (assuming we count NT, which was not usually used on PCs, and 7 which is still not in large use, but still). Back then, people still used 5 inch floppies, printers connected through a parallel port, and USB didn’t even exist. People frequently had computers without even worrying about an internet connection. (The web started really becoming cool about three years later, if I recall correctly.) I can’t remember how large the hard drive on the Compaq was, but in 1998 or 1999m, I remember thinking how cool a 1 Gig hard drive would be—anyone care for a 200 Gig drive? Because that’s kind of small now. Shoot, you can put 1 Gig on your keychain and it’s nothing. The processors have changed so much, I don’t even know how to express it in a way that does it justice. Gordon Moore probably could. Also, the mouse outlasted Circuit City.

Julie’s first comment on the new mouse was to express pleasure that it had a wheel, because that makes it easier. Well, that is a fancy new invention, like optical mice with infrared wireless connections. Sure, my mouse was not fancy, but it was a trooper. It has seen me through a 20-page term paper (Historigraphy of the Buffalo Soldiers) that required an incomplete and bled over into the next term, my only ever A+ essay in French (on Moliere’s Dom Juan), and created the page layout for the History Department newsletter.

That mouse has navigated through submitting well over a hundred job applications while I was unemployed, helped me enter over 7500 names into Personal Ancestral File, and played way more games of Freecell, Minesweeper, Spider Solitaire, Diamond Mine, and various Netives applications than any productive person should.

With that mouse, I have written a novel, six screenplays, a children’s book, and the first episode and bible of a television series, as well as countless letters, blogs, and journal entries. Sure, there was always a keyboard there, but I am very much a mouse girl for navigation and commands. (Not to mention all of Maria’s chat and Facebook use, which is very mouse-intensive.)

So, it’s an impressive achievement, and there’s a part of me that feels like it deserves honorable burial, and more of me that gets—Hey, it is an inanimate object, and should be recycled. However, I do appreciate good craftsmanship and durability, so the real resolution is that Logitech has me as a customer for life (over the course of which I could purchase as many as four more mice).