Field Mice

In honor of the launch of this blog, I decided to initiate a preemptive strike on the cube farm (also known as the art department). See, they don’t know it, but I’ve caught some whispering from their general direction about doing something nefarious to my office, so that I’d have something to write about during the blog’s initial run. Well, unbeknownst to them, I decided to attack first. Here’s how it went down:

I got to the office about an hour and a half early this morning, and set about removing the roller balls from every other cubicle’s mouse. (A simple procedure… just twist off the round covers at the bottom of each rodent, remove the rubber ball, and, in my case, stash it in the top desk drawer. The next phase of my plot took a little more time.

For each desk whose mouse I left intact, I fired up the computer and switched the control of the mouse to the opposite hand. Again, it’s easy to do—just select Settings from the Start menu, then go to the Control Panel and click on “Mouse”. From there, you can check the box that says “switch primary and secondary buttons”, thereby swapping the functions of the left and right buttons. You can also play with the mouse speed, set the click lock, and even disable the scroller.

After jazzing up everyone’s mice with my own personal touch, I shut down the computers, made sure everything looked the way it should, and took off to the local coffee shop. (A crucial part of my plan, as I didn’t want anyone to be suspicious when they came in and I was already at my desk) Sometime around 9:05, I strolled in casually; cappuccino in hand. A few cube dwellers were already loitering around the lobby, and it was all I could do to keep from cracking up right there.

Making a beeline for my own desk, I had the perfect vantage point from behind my monitor to watch people shaking their mouse in frustration. By the time everyone was at their workstations, the mumbles and curses could be heard throughout most of our floor. (Not to mention the sound of a whole field of computer mice being not so gently rapped against desks!) By the time they realized that they’d been punked, it didn’t take them long to figure out who was responsible; especially since I was having more than a little trouble keeping my laughter to a minimum.

An awesome way to start the day, if I do say so myself.