Walking with Mr. Ludd

Last week was a bad week for me, computer-wise.

On Tuesday, I discovered that my cat has a new walking path in my office. I don't know what it is with animals, but (just like my kids) they have inexplicable favorite places to be and inexplicable favorite ways to get there. My parents used to have a cattle farm behind their house, and the cows used to walk, en masse, along the fence every so often. Many mornings when we were visiting we would gather on the back porch and watch the "Cow Parade". Then some neighbors got a yappy dog and the cows stopped coming by my parents' fence. Now they've clear-cut the pasture and wooded hill and are building a new neighborhood. Ah, progress.

Anyway, my cat now walks behind my desk several times a day. He stays in my office most days, presumably because I'm there, but also possibly because none of the kids are there. But on Tuesday, for the first time, he did not steer clear of my power strip, the one that plugs in both computers and monitors. He stepped on the switch, and then, while I was yelling at him, climbed up on my desk to stare at me. Bad move. I picked him up while bizarrely mumbling "bad kitty" and the like, and then put him in the garage for a while.

Neither of us learned our lesson, because he did it again a couple of hours later. So I moved the power strip. It now resides on the bottom rung of my computers' rack mount (actually a short, metal towel rack that my wife didn't want anymore).

On Wednesday, my mouse finally died. It was a 5 year old optical (i.e. ball-less) mouse and had given good service for a long time. But it had been skipping and refusing to move just a little for a few weeks. By Wednesday, I couldn't move it at all (by this I mean that I could move the mouse itself, but it had absolutely no effect on the cursor on the screen; just so we're clear).

I switched mice (mouses?) with another computer to see if it was the computer or the mouse, and, thankfully, it wasn't the computer. So I had to buy a new mouse, which might have been a pain, but Microsoft has kept the form factor the same. So I just have to get used to a new color. Yay.

On Friday, my monitor died. It was even older than the mouse, being a 7+ year old Gateway CRT (big, heavy and hot). Its demise was very inconvenient, because I had work to do on both computers. A little juggling, lots of shutting down and restarting, and I was able to finish the day. But by Friday afternoon, I never wanted to see another computer again.

But yesterday I got my new monitor, a 19" LCD. Very nice. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have dozens of sticky notes to transfer.