Mastodon/Fedi: The social network for people who have actually cleaned mouse balls 🖱️

[pussreboots@sfba.social]

@FlockOfCats Gen X and Millennials did too.

[rhube@wandering.shop]

@FlockOfCats Amazing

[jamesrg@famichiki.jp]

@pussreboots @FlockOfCats

now hands up if you had to overboil the egg yolks in the school science labs so you could replace all the mouse balls in the computer room

[pussreboots@sfba.social]

@jamesrg @FlockOfCats

The computer room (library) computers didn't have mice. They were Apple IIe machines.

[rachelthornsub@famichiki.jp]

@pussreboots @jamesrg @FlockOfCats My high school (semi-rural PA, 1981-1983) was not cool enough to have Apple IIs. If I remember correctly, we had some variation of the Radio Shack TRS-80. No mouse, of course.

[jannem@fosstodon.org]

@FlockOfCats
I have a whole bag full of old mouse balls. A place I used to work threw out a lot of old mice and I collected the balls, thinking they could be useful for something in the future.

Heavy, smooth, rubber coated, with a uniform size. Some day I will figure out what to do

[jamesrg@famichiki.jp]

@RachelThornSub @pussreboots @FlockOfCats

okay our school had no computer room but there was an RM Nimbus in every classroom, save for the Reception years, which all shared one BBC Micro

[zillion@freeradical.zone]

@FlockOfCats

[frang@meow.social]

@FlockOfCats and also know there there was more than one size.

[felila@mastodon.social]

@RachelThornSub @FlockOfCats I remember defragging. Very peaceful.

[johntimaeus@infosec.exchange]

@FlockOfCats

I was in the meeting when the head sysadmin for a large university dumped a box of mouse balls onto a conference room table.

"You turned down my request for optical mice.
You want to know why trouble tickets take so long and I can't get projects finished?
Here's why. Two hundred mouse balls replaced this quarter, thousands cleaned and serviced.
Every time one of my staff touches a mouse with a ball, it costs twice what a modern ball-less mouse would cost.
Every time you cut my capex, you pay twice that in opex."

A truly epic scene.
He got his budget request.

[jannem@fosstodon.org]

@crouton @FlockOfCats
My original plan was a self-aiming autoloading desktop trebuchet. But they're a bit too heavy to throw at people I basically like.

[mangotable@famichiki.jp]

@FlockOfCats why you have to trash my hose water drinking X gen childhood? ‍

[rachelthornsub@famichiki.jp]

@jamesrg @pussreboots @FlockOfCats I had to look up both of those. You're from the UK, no? Interesting that it would be so different from the U.S. in the same period. Things were more wide open back then. It didn't take long for one or two global corporations to drive the rest out of business.

[iamdannyboling@mstdn.social]

@mangotable

This is so perfect

@FlockOfCats

[nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social]

@FlockOfCats Ugh, and that stupid fiber-like formation of hairs and gunk that would form on the rollers was so hard to get off even with a q-tip... Actually, it was, more than anything else, the biggest culprit in reducing mouse accuracy. I never actually had to do any of the rest there, just get that off the rollers.

[urig@mastodon.online]

@FlockOfCats I still do and you can too!

I use a trackball lol

[falcennial@mastodon.social]

@mangotable @FlockOfCats yeah the hose thing is definitely Gen-X I think.

our boomer friends drank directly from the leaded petrol nozzle didn't they

[riverpunk@defcon.social]

@FlockOfCats man, I remember growing up we used to have a mouse that actually had a ball still, until it finally got replaced with a laser one.

[brabo@milliways.social]

@FlockOfCats thanks for making me remember that