Tech Support

I'm not a huge fan of working with computers, and I'm not that good at it. I have, however, faced a fairly huge number of annoying computer problems in my life and spent some time and effort sorting them, so at least some of the time, I can get things going back on track in a little while, usually with tremendous frustration (I believe that only the children and the computer are capable of making me mad, and both are quite good at it in their turns). Ironically, a fair proportion of my work involves computers, including even some programming (GRRRR), which may partly explain why I've gone from being very relaxed all the time to vaguely stressed out most of the time (change in the stress in my life since relaxed time = more computers + teenagers - wonderful wife --- sorry about this nerddom, I'm a mathematician, so I think like this sometimes). Actually, both my wife and I depend on the computer for our work now, and so a problem with it is a serious issue (not to mention the fact that kids these days have to use computers extensively for homework, even their textbooks are online!). I hate being the "tech support guy" for the family, mostly because I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but I win the "most qualified" and "most willing" awards and take it on because it needs to get done.

Our computer has been having an interesting problem lately, not including the nine viruses the kids got on there by trying to download pictures of Japanese cartoon characters (fixing that was a day of my life traded for tremendous frustration). That problem was with the mouse, and "recent" is a loose term because it seemed to be an intermittent, recurring problem. Basically, the cursor would jump erratically in a vertical direction, making it unusable. Then it would get stuck either at the top or bottom of the screen and just stay there (I assume it was jumping "higher/lower than the screen goes"). After a while, it would settle down and the computer would be usable again. It's done it on the small scale probably two dozen times in the last year, and it did it on the large scale three times in that time period. Each time it went large scale on me, I'd do some research (try researching stuff on the web without using the mouse -- it can be done -- and tell me that computers don't piss you off sometimes, seriously). Interestingly, I couldn't find anything about this problem. Infuriatingly, the mouse would tease me by giving me control of the cursor occasionally while doing this research and then flipping out again just at the instant before I'd try to click anything, like it knew and wanted me to be angry. I'd reinstall the driver (without using the mouse... again, an exercise in raw fury, particularly when it would give instructions that included "click here" when it damn-well knows I didn't have access to the mouse cursor or buttons to click with).

This weekend was large-scale flip-out number three, and I had enough. It is, in fact, why I haven't posted as regularly as usual. I hunted yesterday for information about the problem and, as usual, found nothing helpful. Then, I happened upon some techie forum containing both the nearest description of my problem I've ever seen as well as a very similar troubleshooting path to the one I followed, including the dangerous act of screwing with the registry (which I did, biting my nails the whole time, on the second big flip-out... without steady use of the mouse). Then, at the bottom, the guy included his ultimate solution, which he said was one of the best things he's ever done.

Last night, my wife and I made a "romantical" trip to the store and bought a new mouse. I got it installed and running when we came home, and lo, problem solved (I hope). Thank goodness for that.