Annoyance Of The Day: Power-Greedy Wireless Optical Mice!

The computer I use at home is rather nice. Pentium 4, 80 gig hard drive, lots of capacity that won't be rendered obsolete for at least a year and a half. There are things I dislike about it as well, with the lettering on the keyboard becoming illegible (the H key is totally blank), the gradual invasion of spyware into the central components of the system code, and being hooked up to dial-up internet that peaks at 40KB/s on a good day!

Nothing irritates me quite as much as our optical wireless mouse however, as every once in a while (i.e. every couple of weeks or so), the batteries run dead, meaning you have to stop what you're doing, pop out the non-functional units, and get some new batteries from the cupboard. It's not always that easy though, as my little sister uses her digital camera ALOT, meaning that the spare batteries are often not there when they are needed. When this happens, you're forced to keep pressing a green button on the bottom of the mouse, which temporarily overrides the low battery cutoff, every 30 seconds or so!

Aside from that little pet peeve of modern life, I've been busy today. I went through some of my ergonomic bookmarks this morning, and printed out some checklists that will go well inside my ergonomics field manuals. Later on, I'll be going to town to get a lithium battery for the camera my Mom has lent me for the duration of my trip to Michigan, and on the way back, I'll be getting some American currency so that I can pay tolls on the interstates down in the States. December 27 might be a bank holiday (Christmas falls on a Saturday this year), so I don't want to take any chances with that!