Mac Forum / General / Hardware / September 2004

Twice over the last couple weeks I have had a seemingly unexplainable
problem that I was going nuts over, and almost made it out the door to
the local Genius Bar. Fortunately for my sanity I figured it out, albeit
kind of by accident.

The first one was my Powerbook seemingly freezing up on me. I could move
the curser with the track pad and even bring down a single menu, but I
couldn't get the menu to close or bring up the Dock etc. As I was
reaching for the power button to force off the computer (I couldn't
remember the Force Quit key combo, this is a Mac after all, we never
need it....) I saw a little glimpse of a red flashing light out of the
corner of my eye.

In preparation for some home remodeling anything that wasn't nailed down
was put into clear plastic totes, including my trusty Belkin Bluetooth
mouse. Of course it was at the bottom of the pile of stuff, and
something was pressing a mouse button. When I turned on the PB, it
"heard" the mouse and thus my dilemma.

The second debacle was this morning. I noticed my curser creeping
upwards on me. I was thinking that maybe I had a bad ground on the track
pad (similar to a problem with my Sony Viao laptop). I fiddles around,
started searching Google, and generally fretted about until I noticed
the same mouse pressed up against a book on the coffee table. Remove the
book from the mouse and Viola! Back to normal (or as least as normal can
be in a house under construction!)

Morals of the story:
Remove batteries from mice not being used.
Turn off Bluetooth.
Don't leave books where they can interfere with mice.
Shoot wife for putting my $75 mouse under her figurines in a box.
Don't remodel house, gets in the way of my Mac.