Funny for Nerds Only (maybe)

So for a few days I've been having issues with my PC lately. It would keep freezing up on me locking me out of all windows. No matter what I clicked on everything was like frozed. Sometimes it would free itself up. Sometimes I'd have to ctrl-alt-delete to free it up. I'd click all around and would be totally locked out. This has been a problem that I've been half ignoring for days.

I finally accept the fact that this problem is not going to go away by itself and today I try to fix it. I download tons of junk so I figured maybe something I recently took down messed up my machine. So I go uninstall all this crap... but I still get the freezing problem. (I hear you laughing at me mac people) And it's driving me crazy.  So then I go into seeing what's in my startup and maybe there's too much clutter in there. So I go into my System Configuration Utility and start to uncheck all the unnecessary stuff in my startup and then restart.

I still get the freezing! I do a full Norton scan. I get the freezing! Defrag. Freezing. So I do a 'diagnostic startup' into like safe mode to see if I'll get the freezing. And even there I get more freezing! It's making me nuts. I go back to uninstalling even more stuff! Stuff I didn't want to uninstall! And I try to monitor what I do that might be triggering the freezing. No rhyme or reason. It's making me super nuts because I usually have like 25 windows open at a time and I'm constantly clicking around the taskbar minimizing and pop things up and all that.  I'm thinking do I have to reinstall XP? Do I have a virus that's so deep it's just wrecking stuff?

Finally I happen to look over at my mouse. It's a optical Microsoft mouse. On a whim I swap it out for my old rollerball mouse and sure enough. This whole time. It wasn't the stupid computer! Or the stupid startup. It was the stupid MOUSE that was on the fritz! 

Meanwhile I'm going around calling everything stupid but I should really be pointing the finger at me for thinking I was a smart nerd when in fact I was a dumb one. 

ok bye!

tOdd

(by the way that was the second optical mouse that flaked on me. no more with them. garbage.)