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Daily Update: Oh my mouse!
Yesterday was a busy day. A lot of work needed to happen and it did. Once I finished with all that work stuff, I picked up my favorite daughter from school and we headed over to my mother-in-law’s house.
She had a busy day with doctors opening her chest up just a little so they could replace her pacemaker’s battery. While they were in there, they poked around and everything looked good so they just replaced the battery. They didn’t go any further than that. Today she’s doing great. The outpatient procedure went without a hitch.
My father-in-law proved how sneaky he can be. With a bunch of us there he asked who would like something to eat from the taco shop. He took orders, called it in. I told my favorite daughter “Let’s go. We’ll pick up the food.” I know he had a stressful day at the hospital and I figured he needed a rest. He thanked me and said not to leave for ten of fifteen minutes. It’ll take a while for the food to be ready. I said, “Oh, ok.” My favorite daughter and I sat back down and he took the roundabout way to get out where I couldn’t see him and next thing I know I see his truck driving up the street.
I could only sit there and laugh. I guess with a waiting room filled with stressed out family members, he just wanted a couple minutes of alone time as all of them followed him home as well.
We ate, we talked, we laughed. My mother-in-law looked tired, but was in great spirits. Today she’s doing even better.
So today was an even earlier day than yesterday. I’m used to getting up at 5am or 5:30am. I’ve done that many times before. Today it was 4:30am because I needed to be in the office by 6am for an early morning call that, of course, got pushed back to 6:30am once I was in the office. Well, these things happen. I made good use of the time.
I was happy to be in the office. I have my mouse once again. A week without it and it feels like finding an old friend. It’s like riding a bike. It’s like sitting down and clicking all the right buttons and having the mouse do what I want versus not having the buttons I need at all. The bug mouse will be put back into cold storage until another day when I forget my mouse in the office again. I hope that’s not any time soon.
I’ve given serious consideration to getting a mouse with more buttons. I keep seeing gaming mice with a large number of buttons (one has a 12 digit thumbpad), but I’m sure more than I’d need, but I see other mice with a few more buttons than I have now. It’s one of those things that once you get used to the buttons, you miss them. I’ll keep it under consideration for now.
Another thing I’m thinking about doing it putting a SSD (Solid State Drive) into my netbook and upgrading to Windows 7. But I might make it a linux machine or even a dual boot. I’m not sure just yet. I’m still thinking about this one. I love the keyboard on the netbook so I’m not thinking about getting rid of it just yet. I also saw a way to replace the screen with a touchscreen for around $100. I might do that too, we’ll have to wait and see. Like I said, I like my netbook, it’s just a little slow. I’ll have to see what I can do with it first.
On the writing front. Edits for Jack Kane and progressing nicely. I’m about 8 or 9 chapters in. Probably 30 more to go (or less I’m not sure). There’s lots to edit, I don’t think any major rewrites will be required. There will be some new chapters needed to fill in a couple small gaps, but overall it’s looking good. Once I complete my edits, they’ll be over to Mr. Plested and he’ll be able to give them the once over and then it’s off to Beta Readers.
Speaking of readers, Don’t Eat the Bread is not out in the wild. It should be available on the Nook, Kindle, and Smashwords. Go pick yourself up a copy and let me know what you think.
There is a lot to do, so I’d better get to doing it. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll write about ducks. We’ll see.
Until Tomorrow!
Woo Woo!
Daily Update: Some times the smallest thing can throw you off.
Yesterday was the one day a week I go into the office. I’ve said before that I love my job. The rest of the days the past couple of weeks have been long days. Either up early or up late trying to get an issue resolved with work.
Being that I went into the office yesterday I packed everything up and went in. That means I put my laptop, my tablet, mouse, mouse pad, secudeid, everything. I pack it all into my computer bag and head off to work early in the morning.
Yesterday went well except I still hadn’t corrected the issue I’d been working on. Frustrated I packed up from the office, headed out to get my favorite daughter from school, and went home to log back on and do some more work before I took her to volleyball practice (more on that in a minute).
All the way home something nagged at me. I’d forgotten something. I knew I had forgotten something but I could not figure out just what it was. I thought long and hard, but it just kept escaping me. You know that feeling.
I picked up my favorite daughter, got home, and set up my laptop. I plugged it in and placed the secureid in its spot. I powered on, plugged it in. Set down the mouse pad. Reached in to where my mouse should be. Didn’t find it. Looked into the bag. Didn’t see it. Dug around. It wasn’t there. It just wasn’t there. I did not have my mouse.
Now my mouse isn’t anything special. Well, not really. It’s got a few more extra thumb buttons and I have those programmed for specific tasks. There’s Back and Forward for the browser, but I also have alt+tab programmed in as well as CTRL+F5. This helps me type code and two mouse clicks and I can refresh a web page quickly. I’m used to it. It’s habit for me. I love my mouse. There are a couple other things programmed in the mouse as well.
So I found a mouse we had gotten for my favorite daughter when up in Oregon last year. It’s acrylic with a June Bug in it. It’s got two buttons and a scroll wheel. It’s a mouse. It’s not MY mouse though. My mouse is a laser mouse, this one is an optical mouse. My mouse is cordless. This one has a cord. My mouse is black. This one has a literal bug in it and glows red and yellow or green or blue depending on where it’s in the rotation.
What I’m getting at is I’m used to my mouse and how it acts. So far since plugging this thing in I’ve wanted to throw it across the room, wrap it in duct tape, beat it on the table. It’s distracting because of the flashing colors. It’s distracting because of the bug. Those things I can handle. The buttons are connected with a single piece of plastic that wiggles all over the place. The roller is so sensitive that it I roll too hard it clicks. Being an optical mouse on a mouse pad specifically designed for a laser mouse means it hops, skips, and jumps around the screen at whatever speed it wants.
Yes, I want my mouse back. I almost drove into the office to get mine. I almost went to Office Depot to get a new one. I figured this is a good lesson for me to not forget my mouse in the office anymore. So I sit and I struggle and I fight with this mouse. I’ll grumble about it until I have my own mouse back.
So my favorite daughter’s ankle is doing well. She can walk mostly normal now. She’s still got a slight limp. I didn’t think she was going to go to practice last night giving me a free night to either work on my problem from work or to get in some much needed writing time to finish off My Teacher is a Werewolf (I’m building to the confrontation scene!). In many ways I’m glad she decided to go. She was there to help the coach and cheer the other girls on. I could tell it pained her to not practice with the rest of the team. Even though I didn’t get to do what I wanted to do, I’m very happy I took her to practice. It’s not always about me. 🙂
Speaking about me. I did manage to get that issue resolved with a hybrid solution. Just one solution didn’t work so I mixed a couple together and that appears to be working. I will be doing a lot of testing tomorrow. But for now, I’m going to see how many words I can get written in a short amount of time.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
J.R. Murdock 