A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
Last June, I talked about using keyboard shortcuts to make your computer navigation easier. I mentioned that in the early years of computing, I wouldn’t buy a computer mouse because I thought that they were useless technology that just wasted your time. After all, you had to remove one of your hands from the keyboard to use it.
My thoughts have definitely changed over the years. I don’t just use any mouse though. I spend a little extra money and buy multi-button programmable mouses. I like any technology that makes my computing easier.
The mouse I am using these days is an OCZ Technology Equalizer Laser mouse. To be honest, I never heard of the company before I bought the mouse, but Newegg had a close out sale of $9.99 with free shipping, so I took a chance and bought one. I figured that if I didn’t like it, I could always make it into a computer club Christmas present. Turns out I really like it and went back to order another one, but they were sold out. Imagine my surprise when a week or so later, the UPS driver brought me another mouse. It seems that Newegg had a computer glitch and filled my order twice. I contacted them and offered to pay for the extra mouse, but they told me to keep it with their compliments. As much as I hated to, I accepted their offer and ended up with two mouses for $5.00 each. Although they are no longer manufactured, they retailed for about $40.00 apiece.
My mouse has seven buttons, four of which are programmable. The Keys that can’t be changed are the left click, a key that changes the mouses DPI. After the first day, I haven’t pushed that key. I don’t play too many games, so I have no need to change the DPI. There is another small key that is next to the left click key. In gaming mode, the small key is a continuous fire key. In regular mode, it is a double click key, which is extremely handy.
Like many other programmable mouses I’ve owned in the past, this mouse uses A4 tech programming. One of the programming features is the “Lucky Jump” and the “Net Jump”. These are functions that let you list programs and start them with one click. This is a lot easier than minimizing all your windows and double clicking an icon on your desktop. It is also easier than searching through you start menu. Like most programmable mouses, I can record macros and assign them to a key. It is so nice to push one key when I enter a poker parlor and say “Hello everyone! Good luck to all.” I’ve saved me a lot of typing over the years. I also use a programmable keyboard on my desktop computer. It’s a Microsoft DMC 3000 that I bought for $10.00. I’ve always been a cheapskate. It’s my Dutch heritage.
Over the years, I’ve literally saved millions of keystrokes. For instance, I create a lot of shortcuts. The normal method is to take your hand off of the keyboard, right click the mouse button, move the arrow to new, then move the arrow to the right and left click shortcut. My easier and much faster method is to keep both hands on the keyboard, move my pinky finger over and push the button I’ve programmed to create a shortcut.
I’m lazy. I like pushing a key to check my e-mail, another key to shift to my web browser, another to start Facebook, etc. I’m sure you’d enjoy using programmable equipment too.
My next goal in computing is to study and finally master AutoHotKey, a free, open-source utility for Windows. With it you can create hotkeys for the keyboard, joystick and mouse. Then you can automate almost anything by using scripts to send keystrokes and mouse clicks. I should be able to get even lazier.
Thanks for reading.