My mouse is being cranky...

(note: this is an icon that snowgrouse made for me, in photoshop. It's a character in the roleplaying/roundrobin tardis_hoedown that kind of petered out a long time ago, and shows no sign of reanimation. But it's such a lovely icon, I may just start using it randomly, because I like looking at it)

Anyway, my computer mouse is being cranky; the cursor rolls left, right, and down, just fine -- it just won't roll up. So in order to get it to work, I have to take the roller ball out, and move the sensor rollers manually, with my finger.

Yes, I downloaded the free "Mouse Emulator," but when I try to pull it up and run it, it tells me that some of its hotkeys are in use by another program, so it will shut itself down, kthnxbai. Note that it doesn't tell me which program is in conflict, nor will it tell me which hotkeys are confused either, so I can't do much to fix the problem. And also, I can't find a way for the emulator to load automatically, when I turn the computer on, so I have to use the mouse that doesn't work well to access the replacement. ...mmmyeah. I guess you get what you pay for, huh?

So if I'm not online much, or I'm not replying much, it's because I'm finding hi-tech frustrations to be higher than my tolerance levels allow; I'm probably reading a book, or something.

Oh, and as for using the mouse manually: it doesn't feel gunky or stuck anywhere, but I do seem to need to push a little bit harder to get it to roll up.... there may be a loose connection, inside, maybe?

The day is full of WTF...

Okay, what would cause 80% of a television's channels to suddenly go on the blink and switch to other channels, mid-program?

Okay, so at around 6:45ish pm, I wanted to switch from the PBS station to ABC (from channel 15 to channel 13); the television skipped all the way back to NBC (10), as if abc didn't exist.

So I pulled up the Automatic Channel Setup, where the TV scans all frequencies, and automatically stores only those with a strong signal. Starting at 3, it skipped through everything until it got to the 65. It usually comes to the end of the frequency line at 83, but today it kept going until it got 125, dutifully storing half a dozen evangelical Christian and shopping network station along the way.

So far, PBS has switched from 15 to 66. CW has switched from 27 to 78, MyTV switched from 33 to 84, Fox has switched from 43 to 94, Ion has switched from 49 to 105. CBS is still on 3, NBC is still on 10, and ABC is a ghost of its former self (lots of snow and static, but if you listen carefully, you can hear what show is supposed be on -- no, just double-checked. It's back to normal, but PBS is not -- where are we in the solar flare cycle, btw?).

[Eta: Okay, lizziebelle twigged it in replies, sort of: My TV had switched from over the air TV to Cable reception and I didn't catch on. (I finally did figure it out at the end of the day, and got all the presets back to normal) The funky stuff started happening while I was at the computer, with the TV playing in the background. I suspect it did have something to do with a teeny-tiny power surge. Those happen, sometimes, around here where it's not enough to turn the power off, but it will switch my radio from FM to AM (or from the radio tuner to the tape-player mode... yeah, it gets wierd here on a regular basis). Since it happened at 6:45 on a hot early evening, it might have been Dominion Power switching loads to handle all the AC coming on, and people cooking dinner on electric stovetops... or something.]