You make it sound like optical mouses were a no-brainer, but they were very much non trivial: it required both ingenuity and fairly sophisticated tech to make them work well.
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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We had to flip the mouses around at the end of every computer class so the teacher could check all the mouse balls were still there.
Yup. I was a nerd who got to go inside and boot up the computers and set them back from what the kids had done the day before every morning. Warning sounds with SNL skits were popular at one point, as was messing with the icons.
It was instead of standing outside in the cold wet concrete courtyard for 20 minutes before the first bell.
First job was turning the mouses back over (the were left balls up at the end of each class).
Reminds me, I used to have compiler errors make the 3 Stooges "bonk-OWW!" sound. Not as a student, as a software dev in my 40s.
Out go to prank was a shut down bat file, disguised as GTA.exe. We used to put that in a shared folder and waited for other students to shut down their computers.
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
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