About a Mouse

I noticed for the first time yesterday the first sign that my internal mouse wheels were covered in that hard cheeserind crud that accumulates on them: sporadic X- or Y-axis failure. I'd be moving my mouse cursor around my screen as I always do, but I'd get sudden brief loss of motion in the X or Y coordinate.

Time to open up the bottom and do some scraping. I ended up losing not one but two big long curls of crud inside the mouse, so out came the Leatherman and I did as thorough a repair as possible without having to cut wires and re-splice them — which I haven't had to do since high school.

In all I pulled several large pieces of crud off the wheels and had to carefully choreograph scraping the gunk off the white stabilizer wheel with my thumbnail. Reassembled, the mouse works like new again and there is a noticeable difference in how fluidly it moves and feels.

Which is disgusting. I mean, think about how filthy its guts were just earlier this afternoon. Makes me want to retch.