Click me once, click me twice

Four months ago, I got a new A4Tech optical mouse with an extra button that performs a double click. Even though I rarely had the chance to use the frivolous double click feature, I was quite satisfied with the mouse overall. I mean, it's just a freaking mouse. The bar for satisfaction was never really that high.

But last week, things started to go wrong. Very wrong. As I was surfing the Web, I noticed that when I do a mouse click, it's sometimes registered as a double click. Uh-oh, that can't be good.

The problem got worse with each passing day. Now, whenever I press the mouse button, I can't predict if I'm going to get one click or two clicks. This of course causes all kinds of problems, like accidentally closing two windows instead of one, or opening the same file twice and causing Windows to slow down to a crawl. Unpredictability is not good. Not good! Grrr!

I don't know why this is happening. I'm guessing that the wire of the magic double click button somehow got crossed with the one for the left button. If that's the case, then what was once a useless feature has become a source for headache and temper tantrums. That's right, I said tantrums. I've found that slamming the mouse hard against the desk sometimes fixes the problem... for like 30 seconds.

So when I found myself near a computer shop last Saturday, I rushed in to get a new mouse. Being the cheap ass that I am, I asked for the cheapest optical mouse available. (It had to be an optical mouse because, aside from being cheap, I'm also too lazy to clean a mouse ball regularly.) The clerk showed me a white Melody mouse that costs only 170 pesos (less than $4). Why, that's even cheaper than A4Tech! I immediately bought it.

It took me a while to realize that my new mouse is tiny. I guess I was fooled by the unnecessarily big box. I was a bit pissed off, but I was almost OK with it until I found out that it was a USB mouse. Crap.

I wanted to slap myself for not taking a closer look at it earlier. What the hell am I going to do with a USB mouse? My ancient PC has only two USB ports, and I sure am not going to waste one on a freaking mouse. Well, I suppose I can toss it in a corner for now and wait until I get my hands on an Eee PC. Ah, a shiny cheap new Eee PC... now that's a happy thought.

Meanwhile, my stupid mouse seemed to have learned a new trick. Each attempt at clicking now randomly gives me zero, one, or two clicks. Er, yay?