My Kingdom for a Cursor

I'm having technical difficulties. It all started after Lilo went ripping around my study one day when our wireless LAN was on the fritz and I had my laptop cabled to the printer. I came in after the fact to find the laptop on the tile floor and the printer teetering precariously on the edge of disaster. All seemed to be well at first, but upon closer inspection I found a hinge on the laptop had popped out a bit, which causes the screen to flop over backwards once it's pushed past center. O.K. not so great, but not so bad either.

A day or two later, the real nightmare began when I discovered my cursor has taken on a life of its own. Sometimes it drifts to the right or left, all the way across the screen until it hits the edge and disappears. Sometimes it rises like a balloon to the top of the page or falls like a rock to the bottom. Until it disappears. Sometimes it drifts on the diagonal, all the way to a corner. Where it disappears. And sometimes it runs back and forth across the page, like a swimmer doing laps. Before it finally disappears. But mostly it just disappears for no apparent reason. And then I have to experiment with various decidedly low-tech ways of making it reappear.

Intuitively, it seems that tracing big swirly patterns on the track pad should do the trick. When this doesn't work, in other words, about 90 percent of the time, I try repeating these swirly motions while pressing the track pad harder and harder. Which sometimes works. Bob suggested a more macho approach--simply beating on the machine--which actually seems to be the most effective method. So I've been playing a lot of computer bongo lately.

I spend so much time with my computer it feels almost like an extension of myself. Almost human. You know, like HAL or Data. So it seems it should gradually get better, like a person with a bad cold. But it's not getting better. If anything, I'd have to say it's getting worse. Right now, for example, as I type, my cursor is acting totally spastic, jumping up and down the left margin of the screen with every keystroke. When I stop it drops toward the bottom. And disappears. As hard as I try to deny it, this is not the behavior of a healthy cursor.

I wish I knew what it is inside my laptop that controls the cursor, what exactly about its recent unfortunate accident made it go haywire. I have this naive impression that if I only knew what it is, I could fix it myself. I fixed my washing machine once. Took it all apart, put it back together, and it worked just fine. That was 30 years ago, but it still ranks in my mind as a great mechanical moment.

Whatever's going on with this crazy cursor, it's gotta be a hardware problem. Something way, way beyond me. Which means I'm going to have to get a new laptop pretty soon. I've known this day was coming. I knew it the moment I let my "whatever happens, we'll send a guy out to
fix it" extended warranty expire. I hated to do that, but I had to. This little Latitude is almost 3 1/2 years old after all, and since the battery can't hold a charge for more than 11 or 12 seconds anymore, it required constant life support even before this cursor business started up. So it didn't make sense to invest another $250 in Ole Betsy when I can buy a next-generation model for only a thousand or so.

I did hate to drop that warranty though because I really used it. At least three different Dell repair reps have replaced various parts of my computer and some more than once. Motherboards, keyboards, outboards, inboards, whatever. The first of these guys came once to my office and once to the house. I found him a little creepy. Hardly said a word; couldn't be chatted up. All serious and morose. ("He seemed like a nice enough guy," said John Doe, the suspect's neighbor, "kinda quiet though, usually kept to himself.") Plus, he told me my machine was so gritty inside it looked like it had been to Iraq. He meant that literally, having actually worked on computers that had been to Iraq. Or so he said. Now I ask you, how can that be possible? I know I use my computer a lot. O.K., so I use it almost all the time. And I use it everywhere. In bed. On the couch. In the car. Sitting on the floor. Hello? That's the whole beauty of having a laptop. And I leave it open. And there's a lot of dust where I live. I admit all that. But geez, I live in a house. With a roof and walls and a central vacuum. Not a tent in a war zone.

Thank goodness for Dell Guy No. 2, a grandfatherly type who was as outgoing as Guy No. 1 was reserved. And yet he did not feel the need to guilt trip me about the amount of dirt clogging my hard drive. What a breath of fresh air! But after taking my machine all apart and then putting it back together, Guy No. 2 had a couple of screws left over and seemed totally baffled as to why. Uh... yeah. Really. Still, everything worked just fine. And besides, Dell Guy No. 3, who seemed both psychologically sound and technically competent, fixed the problem I'd called him about and then cleaned up No. 2's mistakes to boot.

But that was then, and now my cursor is playing hide and seek on me, and I can't do much of anything without it, and I have no more Dell Guys standing by on retainer, just waiting to come fix it. So I'm afraid the end is near for my faithful D600. Time to start shopping for a replacement. In the meantime, I really think I'd better go run a backup.