#8. Scraping off the lint from the inside of a mouse with your fingernail

It’s a pre-iPad or even a pre-optical-laser mouse world. Your mouse has been jumping around the screen lately, regardless of how crumb-free you kept your mouse pad. You have been ignoring this annoyance for a week, but now it’s getting to be a bit too much to handle. Twice now, the one-second delay caused by your dirty mouse has prevented you from strategically signing out of AIM the moment you heard that familiar login sound of the door creaking open. Instead you got suckered into another brain-numbing IM with MadSk1llz84. Next time, Invisible Mode, you remind yourself… Until then, it’s time to clean your tools. You pop the track ball out and put it off to the side as you notice that the ball is surprisingly heavier than it looks. It’s like the rubber ball inside the core of a baseball. Cool. Looking closely, you see a tight ring of lint around each of the four rollers.  Using your fingernail, you scrape, roll, scrape, roll and blow, until the inside of the mouse is completely smooth. It’s ten times more satisfying than removing a giant fluffy cloud from the lint trap in the dryer. The mouse is back to its smooth gliding moves, and you made that happen. Satisfying!

Photo sources: 1, 2