Mouse Gestures

Some days it’s all I can do to tolerate the obnoxious, know it all, annoyances in my life. They just ruin everything. They dominate, try to rule and run your life, and all you want to do is just slap them. And I would too if that stupid computer didn’t have all my information, all my thoughts and creations held deep inside its innards.

We use them for business. We use them for personal computing and searching the internet for things we want to purchase, can’t find locally and don’t need. We use them as photo albums. We play games on them in the dark by ourselves and over the internet with who knows who. We use them to research data quickly so we can answer the 5 o’clock brain teaser and win a round of golf when we don’t even know how to play golf. We use them to look up mysterious medical conditions that we may or may not have. We use them to snopes the things we don’t believe, but believe anything that snopes.com says. We use them to communicate with family we don’t want to speak to in person. We use them to keep up with our finances, and trust them to calculate bank balances better than we can. We feed our thoughts, our desires, our longings, our lives in to them and trust that they will keep it all from prying eyes. Bottom line, we use them. We trust them. We think we can’t live without them.

I was told by one of my first supervisors in the data entry department of a large accounting firm that there was nothing I could do to the computer that she couldn’t fix. She was a very smart lady, but even she could come undone by the computers. Her greatest warning was do what you want but if a computer ever calls you by name, STOP. Stop fast and don’t touch another key. It happened one day. I did something and the computer spit fluorescent green words on to the screen – ‘are you sure you want to do that?’ I hit the yes button. It said – ‘are you really sure you want to do that?’ I once again said yes. It then scared my panty hose into knots when it displayed – ‘Wanda, are you very sure you want to do that?’ I was no longer sure I was Wanda let alone do whatever it was it thought I was doing. I STOPPED. I can’t remember what happened after that other than I gained a healthy respect for computers when they know your name and use it.

That was years and years ago and eons ago in computer technology. You would think the personal computers of today would know your name and could use it against you it they wanted to. After all you have to enter your name into the operating system, the word processing system, every software package you install, the e-mail packages, the IM packages, the paper packages. Okay, you get the idea. But as of this morning I have never had a personal computer ask me – ‘are you sure you want to do that?’ It normally just does what I ask it to do and then I say, ‘oh shit, I didn’t mean to do that.’ But by then it’s too late. Whatever I was working on or wanted or never wanted to lose is permanently gone into cyber-whoknowswhere.

But as with most things, the computer has gotten too smart. I was doing something this morning. I think it may have been actual work, but that’s probably not the truth. Anyway, I hit some key or did something with the mouse on the computer and whoa Nellie. The computer began to talk (done by displaying words on the screen) to me. A box popped up in the middle of the screen:

You have performed a mouse gesture for the first time.

Mouse gestures are activated by mouse movements while holding the secondary mouse button.

Press [Help] to learn more mouse gestures.

Would you like to continue using mouse gestures?

Hmmmmmm. Okay, it didn’t actually say my name, but this was new information to me. Now I know something about gestures as I had an uncle who was Italian. He would hit his forehead with the palm of his hand and say – ‘now ain’t that a B$%^&* of a thing.’ He would also do things with his hands and his chin but would never explain what they meant. My granddaughter is deaf and she uses hand gestures to communicate. I’ve been the recipient of a few hand gestures while driving on the highway, but I’ve also given a few of those gestures to other drivers on the occasion of them being stupid or being in my way. I’ve seen people way their hand indicating a nice ‘hello’. I’ve seen a few gestures land on the body of another person and know it was not a kind gesture. But, until this morning, I was not aware of ‘mouse gestures’ either in or out of a computer. I like my outside mice dead, and my computer mice cooperative.

I had three options when this message came up. 1) Yes. 2) No. 3) Help. I chose option number 4. I shut the stupid thing down, let it eat whatever it wanted and I went to the bar at the beach to drink and consider my options. As far as I could figure, which wasn’t too far, I had a couple options. I could let the computer win. I could get the computer geeks to exterminate the damn thing, or I could stay at the bar and drink enough to forget about what had happened.

I was back at work shortly after lunch. I had not consumed enough alcohol to forget – I personally don’t think there is that much alcohol available for human consumption. I am back at the computer and as of right now I have not been witness to any mouse gestures. I did stop and get some D-con mouse traps just in case. I also have a call in to my Italian Uncle just in case the D-con doesn’t work. I would put his gestures against the mouse gestures any day.

Wanda M. Argersinger