Dunno what made me think of this just now. When I worked for IT in a school district way back in the 90s, a librarian told me she kept a supply of mouse balls in her desk because kids would steal them out of the school computers. What I remember about those balls was they picked up dust and crud off surfaces. Pretty soon optical mice came along and they were history.
I definitely disabled a few school mice back in the day.
neutered
Crazy to see this in my feed, I was just thinking about this the other day. I didn’t steal the balls, but I remember figuring out that I could remove them and clean the crud off of the rolling components inside to smooth my cursor movement. (This would have been 3rd or 4th grade.)
Kids these days will never know the satisfaction of opening the bottom, removing the ball, and then taking an unfolded paperclip to remove all the built up crud and hair on the components inside. I would do this anytime I was left alone in my mom’s office while she had a meeting or something.
i did this everywhere i went it was so amazing
Youre mom probably wondered why her mouse started working smoother.
I always keep an old toothbrush in my pencil cup for cleaning the mouse contacts. I dont use a mouse, I’ve always used a track ball, and now and then you have to pop out the ball and clean the accumulated crud out of the contacts.
Until reading this, I had forgotten that mouse balls were even a thing.
Today students pick keycaps off of keyboards and steal anything not tied down (so instead of just the ball, the entire mouse gets stolen). Once I heard a student ran off with an entire side panel of a computer
Good to know every generation is progressively more enlightened than previous ones, just like I keep reading on social media. All the world’s problems should be solved any day now lol.
The keycaps thing is a huge problem now because of the widespread use of Chromebooks with butterfly switches. 9 times out of 10 if one of those caps is torn off, the switch is permanently damaged and the whole keyboard needs to be replaced.
No, when I was in school no computer had a mouse except one Mac in my English class.
I only did it once, because I hated the teacher and I guess I thought that would send a message. I was immediately caught and the kid who saw me pocket it kept saying I “liked mouse balls,” so it really backfired pretty spectacularly.
Yes, yes I do remember doing that. Not just at school. Use to do it to dad. When he was being annoying sometimes.
I actually don’t remember any of my school computers having ball mice. They all only got their computers in the late 90’s and had optical mice by then.
But I can imagine; my high school was savage.
Dunno if was my parents or genetics or what, but as a kid I never had the urge to do stuff like that. My impulse was make up funny stuff. The idea of breaking or ruining something seemed bad to me. So if I had gone to school in the age of computer mice I would have been pissed off if some kid disabled the mouse. It didn’t bother me when my friend tricked the voice synthesizer at the science center to repeat “Fuck you, fuck you…” but I would have called him an asshole if he poured a drink into the keyboard.
No but i had a habit of cleaning the lint and gunk off the rollers of every mouse i touched
Doing God’s work!
The best was when you got a “full peel” from a really dirty wheel without it breaking into pieces.
I was working with some younger people a few years back and one of them noticed that all of us from of a certain generation always slam the mouse down whenever we first use it. I explained it’s a reflex from when the wheels inside the mouse would get stuck with gunk and we would instinctively slam the mouse to get them free.
Ouch felt that in my old bones.
Another habit I noticed was lifting the mouse so the cursor stayed still on screen, and putting the mouse down on the edge of the mouse pad, so I could move the cursor further on the screen without going past the mouse pad.
A quirk that’s eliminated nowadays thanks to mice that can adjust dpi on the fly, but I still catch myself doing this paintbrush like motion once in awhile.
Haha holy shit, this made me realize I do that all day everyday. It really is a reflex from the 90s and serves zero purpose.
Wow
I haven’t used a mouseball mouse since i was a kid but your description brought back a visceral memory of doing exactly exactly that.
By the time I hit grade school the balls were outdated. So I missed out on this. What I didnt miss out on was finding a broken (exposed) usb stick and when I would plug it into a computer it would shock me a bit and the computer would shut down. I felt like I had the ultimate power in my hands
My library made us take the balls out and give them to the librarian when we were done with the computer.
We used to huck em at each other’s nuts
We used to huck em at each other’s nuts
Never change, kids
There are no winners in a game of Ball Ball
Turns out you could use an xacto and carve the rubber coating off and the steel ball was a perfect fit for a paintball gun. No winners had there.
Jesus, could that actually kill someone?
Nah, it didn’t have enough oomph to break skin but it left nasty bruises. It could have claimed an eye or teeth though
I 'member
Yeah, I always tried to use them as a pencil eraser. They were never very effective but I still always tried.
i was on the other side… i’d spend the first five minutes scraping all the finger shit off of the rollers every day.
I forgot all about scraping those little rollers with my fingernail! It was strangely satisfying.
and super gross when you think about it…
The gunk is just compacted dust from the desk surfaces.
Perhaps a bit gross, but it’s mostly stuff you’re breathing in daily, just now visible due to being compacted.
Super gross to me would imply something like bodily fluids or other biohazard.
Am I missing something?
The majority of dust particles on the surface of your desk is dead human skin cells. That’s the part you’re missing.
So touching dead skin cells with my skin is supposed to be a biohazard?
First time I hear that.
I guess I also shouldn’t shake hands anymore.
i think you’re missing the part where a lot of that gunk is exactly bodily fluids and other biohazards lol
How so? I’m not coughing or spitting on the desk.
Dead skin cells, sure, but that’s not a biohazard.
you’re gonna be REALLY grossed out when you find out what’s on your toothbrush…
That’s why I don’t keep my brushes in the same room as my toilet.
