Mousie, Mousie, who's got the Mousie?

It’s been a frustrating day so far. I’ve been having minor computer issues, which, to the power user in me, are most annoying. For weeks now I have been double-, triple-, quadruple- (and more) clicking my mouse button trying to select anything. I'm using a laptop, and I would use the mouse pad, but I really hate it. I was raised on the mousie itself, so-to-speak, and I find changing that basic hard to manage.

One of my errands after dropping Mom at the beauty shop yesterday was a fast stop at Staples to replace the errant mouse with something that actually worked. Out went my OffSpring optical mini-mouse, replaced by a Targus optical mini-mouse. I’m not yet ready to go wireless with the mouse, but the mini is on a retractable cord, which eliminates tangled messes in the laptop case. Now the mousie problem is no more. The Targus works great!

But even as the mouse issue was resolved, another popped its ugly head up from my most needed office equipment. My old workhorse printer, the Konica-Minolta PagePro Laser (black only) that spews out 21 ppm, is not only incompatible with my laptop (no USB connection capability), but it has a cracked drum that needs to be replaced. Fortunately I have my not-quite-as-old color laser backup (Samsung) that spits out 17 ppm in black and white and 4 ppm in color…when it’s working.

And therein lies the rub! For some reason, I was unable to print anything last night, and had continuing issues this morning. I hate to think I may have to sink money into a new laser printer right now. But if I do, it will definitely be wireless!

So I’m struggling with basic jobs than need doing, most importantly, I need to print off postcards for the project. I’ll just keep fighting with it until I have a month’s worth for both recipients. I did manage after several tries to print off some new business cards, but we won’t discuss how many I had to toss in the round file after jamming the printer yet again.

When I refer to myself as a power user, think keyboards. I had to replace my desktop keyboard because I had used it so much that I not only wore off the Braille bumps on the F and J keys, I completely wore the letters off of the W, E, R, T, A, S, D, B, F, J and M keys as well. I got to the point that if I looked down at the keyboard, I would panic wondering if I had my hands in the right place.

For now, I am not off to see if I can cajole this printer into doing these postcards for me. Time will tell the tale.