Breaking stuff

I was playing in my World of Warcraft raid last night and I was being terrible.  The boss would get ready to do his gigantic attack that we all had to dodge away from, and I would click to move.... and nothing would happen.  I would die, and let the team down.  This is an easy thing to deal with if it is 100% of the time - the mouse is broken, and you move on.  But when things work 98% of the time, you wonder if you are just bad and failed to click.  There is always that doubt in your mind.

You can't keep playing with a 2% failure rate.  The boss is going to make you 'React or die!' 50 times, and failing once means you die and your group loses.

Finally I concluded that I could not keep playing.  Thankfully Wendy and I are using the same mouse so we swapped hers in and I got to keep on going.  That feeling when you play properly and get confirmation that yes, it was the equipment failing, not yourself... priceless.

However, I now have a mouse that works most of the time.  Videos on the internet assured me that all I had to do was tear the mouse apart and clean the tiny metal piece that gets all gunked up over time.  I didn't have a lot to lose, so I tore the mouse apart.  The metal piece was immaculate though, so clearly the internet videos were wrong.  

Upon reassembling the mouse the left click didn't work at all.

In some ways this is better.  At least this way I don't have my money demon telling me I should keep on using the mouse until it is well and truly broken.  I can pretend to keep on using a mouse that works 98% of the time even though it makes me sad.  

I can't use a mouse that doesn't click at all though.

I tore the mouse apart and reassembled it a couple of times and finally concluded that all my attempts at fixing it have resulted in the tiny metal piece being ever so slightly bent.  Wendy and I attempted to get it back to its pre intervention state, but we failed.  It turns out that even a slightly bent metal piece is totally useless, and the mouse is junk.

After only 8 months of use!  Junk!

Admittedly that mouse has had some hard living.  My hands always make all of my peripherals gunky and gross, and I have been on the computer *hard* since the pandemic hit.  That mouse has not been treated lightly.

Still, it irks me that I couldn't fix it properly.  All the internet videos assured me it would be easy and foolproof, but apparently I am fool enough that I broke it anyway.