mighty mouse surgery

I just took apart Jill's mighty mouse. It was on my todo list for a long time. It's quite an invention, the mighty mouse. But they either didn't think through or didn't care about cleaning the mouse ball when it got clogged with lint. It's a common thing to happen to a mouse ball. I used to teach people how to take their mouse apart and clean it when it quit working. And when I did desktop support I cleaned many a mouse ball. It amazes me the things people put up with!

It's really simple once you get the ball out. The thing you have to clean are the rollers and the ball itself. The rollers usually just need to be scraped with your fingernail. if you want you can use a little alcohol on a qtip or cotton ball. The ball itself can be cleaned with soap and water or alcohol. But like we all know from 2nd grade, the best way to clean anything made of rubber is to rub it hard and fast on your blue jeans.

So I did that. After I got some tips on how to get the thing apart here.

And then I had to superglue the thing back together because apple superglued it before they shipped it.

I hope this is no more than an annual process.

On a related note, both Jill and I use Microsoft mice on our Macs. I'm pleased with how simple it is to do. Plug-n-play. They are both optical. Mine is the latest one that looks like those guard droids in Star Wars. And it's nice and silver and black and perfectly matches my MacBook Pro. Beautiful.