Friday, December 13, 2013

Mutant Paperclip

Paper clips have been commandeered for a long time to be misshapen and turned into semi-sharp, pointy, pokey tools.  One of the most common uses in the world of personal computers is to reach a recessed reset button, one that the designers wants to ensure could ever to be pressed by accident.  Back when I was in middle school, our first computer came with the instructions to use such a paperclip to get to a manual eject button inside the disk drive. It was a bit scary that the official trouble-shooting procedure involved poking around in the computer innards but that was the way things were done.

Or "are done" I should say.  The receiver for my wireless mouse broke and the manufacturer sent me out a replacement.  The instructions for pairing the receiver to my mouse involved this recessed-button poking but rather than asking me to use one of my own paperclips, they send me one in the receiver package, pre-bent.


(The manufacturer is Evoluent, by the way and I'm using their Vertical Mouse 4 to help reduce strain on my wrist.  The product is great and their technical support was top notch.  I called phone support, a real person answered, and once my problem was described, he knew what needed to happen and sent me out a replacement receiver.  The only downside: I have to drum up a Windows computer to run the mouse-receiver pairing software.)

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