The holy grail of Bluetooth mice

This past year my loving husband decided to get me a Bluetooth mouse for my birthday. I work with Bluetooth every day, so it may be surprising that I didn't already have my own, but I guess I was just content to use his "unacceptable" castaways. I have grown to love my MacBook track pad (the pawing action is to die for), so I don't use a mouse with my laptop very often, and I certainly wouldn't travel with a mouse, at least I haven't crossed that line yet. These details put me in a more relaxed quest to find a Bluetooth mouse than my husband whom, I have found, is quite particular about his Bluetooth mouse preferences. Anyway, this birthday present "promise" happened in January, and, until Thanksgiving night, I still had not received the perfect mouse.

You may think that this ideal mouse would involve ergonomic design or perhaps the right amount of buttons or controls, oh no! My husband had two simple requests in a Bluetooth mouse:
1) It must be rechargeable. Who would want to have to replace batteries... ever?? Ok, I can agree with him here. Rechargeable is the cheaper and potentially more environmentally sound solution.
2) It must have an on/off switch. This is where I lost interest. My needs don't require an on/off switch. My use case would be to have a recharging station that would keep the mouse charged until I used it and all would be well. Since my husband travels with a mouse, he was looking for the additional benefit of turning the mouse completely off while it sits in his laptop case so that he doesn't have to carry extra cables just to charge a mouse. These exist as you can easily find Bluetooth mice with an on/off switch.

Now the obvious problem occurs when you combine these two requirements; rechargeable and on/off switch. His arguments were valid and the technical point of view was even in line. Being able to charge your mouse and then ensure that it was ready at a moments notice was ideal, and "it's only an on/off switch, that doesn't require much engineering". But I was more pessimistic. I countered that there would be very few users as picky as him and even though it may not be a lot of extra cost, what company would add a switch if they didn't have to?

Well I am proudly announcing today that I was proven wrong. After standing in line at CompUSA for the Thanksgiving night sales, bringing home my birthday present, opening it up to charge for me to use in the morning, and then excitedly realizing that this wonder of wonders Bluetooth mouse was not only rechargeable, but (gasp!) also had a power switch, my triumphant husband trucked back to CompUSA to fight with the morning crowd and buy one for himself. We now own two Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000s.










There may be others out there with these features since ours had no documentation on the box that proclaimed the power switch, but this was a story with a happy ending so far.

Picture This

I was recently married and we have been "combining households". One of the things that we have a lot of are pictures. Digital ones are pretty easy. Most of them are already organized into folders and, given that we've only owned digital cameras for no more than the past 6 years, we can remember details to file random ones. The organization problems start with hard copies, especially hard copies that were given to me or are my husband's. These in particular tend to not have descriptions written on the back and therefore will someday be lost to the WTF? pile. Some of them we can remember the people, but not the location and here is where I would love to have a tool.

We have been able to search for information for many years . We can also search for images and videos now, but each of these searches is initiated by text. What I need is the ability to search via the image itself! How awesome would that be? Scan in and upload a picture to a search engine that could analyze the picture and at least tell you the location. "Did we take that picture in Colorado or Utah?" Even better would be an approximate date or information about the location. "When did Pepe's Pizza close? Sometime after this picture was taken, but what year?"

The algorithms and time needed for this go way beyond my patience, but I'm sure it will happen some day. I just hope I'm still around so I can finish categorizing our pictures!

Poof! Skills

Have you ever wished you could just snap your fingers and gain knowledge or skills for something? Well this evening I had a similar experience, but from a different perspective. I had the pleasure of going to my cousin's elementary school orchestra concert... ouch my ears. Honestly, it was better than I expected, but I still had the urge to be able to wave my hands and magically make them sounds less painful.

I can distantly relate it to times when I've stood witness to someone doing something for the first time, and see them struggle like a child learning to walk. I know I can't just do it for them, they have to learn, but there is still that urge deep down inside that just wants to at least show them how easy it will be once they learn it.

Another example is my mom and ebay. She's used ebay to buy things several times and now she wants to start selling things. I haven't actually done this myself, but I know it isn't that hard. However, she has herself convinced that it will be complicated and that makes it sort of scary, as in right before you jump into a pool and find out if it's cold or not. She has even bugged me repeatedly to convince my good friend Aaron (ebay whore enthusiast) if he will sell her stuff for her. Now at first he considered it, but after we pondered a bit, we both realized that this is definitely something that she needs to do herself; a character building experience if you will.

This got me thinking about how one could make those firsts in life easier. There are things that help like having an older sibling or a friend that has done something give you tips or let you know what to expect. With so many things posted online these days, it's pretty easy to research stuff before you have to do it. But what about the things that aren't covered by these aids? Well after about 5 minutes of concentrated thought, I have decided that there shouldn't be a "safe" way all of the time. In fact I identified situations where I was nervous or unsure and paused for sometime to worry about it and that made it more thrilling, think of the slow ride up to the top of a roller coaster (worst part of the whole ride). Once I actually started in on my "first" it was more fun and more satisfying.

So while sometimes I may wish to be able to make someone more improved to save my ears, I have also decided that it may not always be a good thing to have a magic wand that I could wave and go Poof! skills.