{"id":365,"date":"2009-01-14T22:00:40","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T22:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2009\/01\/14\/pit_stop\/"},"modified":"2009-01-14T22:00:40","modified_gmt":"2009-01-14T22:00:40","slug":"pit_stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2009\/01\/14\/pit_stop\/","title":{"rendered":"Pit stop"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know what it is about 2009, but I don\u2019t seem to have got going. My posts so far this year have amounted to a note about what\u2019s on telly<\/a> and a photo of some over-sized dice<\/a>. And it\u2019s not just in the blogosphere that things seem to be stalled. As ever at work there are many balls to be juggled in the air at once. But I just seem to be juggling without end: I haven\u2019t been able to set even one of the balls down to enjoy a fleeting moment of respite.<\/p>\n

\tMy uneasiness intensified this afternoon as I tried to settle to the task of banging out the first draft of a review article that is due soon. Somehow the words wouldn\u2019t come. I guess I haven\u2019t quite figured out my angle for the introduction and need to muse some more. But I wanted to get it done \u2013 get it over with.<\/p>\n

\tSo I returned home churned with frustration. I\u2019d like to say that I got inspired on the train and am now basking in the glow of having bashed out 2000 words. I\u2019m not because I haven\u2019t. But nevertheless a temporary kind of peace has settled.<\/p>\n

\tI brought home my computer mouse from work for repair. It\u2019s an Apple Mighty Mouse which, like much of that company\u2019s output, is delightful to hold and behold. But it suffers from a design flaw, which is that the little scroll ball gets clogged with gunk and stops working. For the past week or so I could scroll down documents or web-pages but was unable to reverse direction and wind my way back to the top.<\/p>\n

\tThis is a common problem and the fix is quite tricky. You have to dismantle the mouse and clean out the grease and dead skin from the scroll ball mechanism. Fortunately there is no end of helpful guidance<\/a> on how to do this from the worldwide community connected to my computer.<\/p>\n

\t\"Apple<\/a>
\nThe inner organs of a mouse – cleaned<\/em><\/p>\n

\tSo I spent a concentrated but pleasant half-hour working at the task. I prized off the plastic ring around the base with a pen-knife, carefully disconnected the wires between the ball and the circuit board and unscrewed the scroll ball housing. The housing, ball and four tiny rollers then had to be swabbed with alcohol to wash away the dirt\u2014of which there was a shameful amount\u2014and the parts carefully reassembled.<\/p>\n

\tThe focus on a finicky, practical task absorbed me completely and bestowed a pleasing calm. Happily it was not broken by the sudden pinging away of some miniscule part from my clumsy fingers. They say a change is as good as a rest. There could be something in that! Who knows if the words will come tomorrow but at least I\u2019ll be able to scroll up and down the empty page with some satisfaction!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know what it is about 2009, but I don\u2019t seem to have got going. My posts so far this year have amounted to a note about what\u2019s on telly and a photo of some over-sized dice. And it\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}