…and not in a good way

If you don’t know what a Rube Goldberg machine is, click here or here.

They tend to be vast elaborate, multi-step methods for achieving a relatively simple outcome.  And see, that’s what happens to me.  Things that should be easy just aren’t.

Take the Moderncat Cover Cat contest.

I don’t have a cat.  But I have a friend who has a cat–as well as a lot of other friends.  And we’ve all been mobilized for the last few weeks to vote for Bingley.

Now, I don’t know Bingley personally, but he’s a very photogenic cat.  Plus, he’s a therapy cat.  A do-gooder.  He totally deserves to be a Cover Cat.  I was happy to vote as often as I could.  (It’s not like a presidential election.  They encourage multiple votes in this contest.)

Everything was going smoothly until the other day.  I tried to vote on my Blackberry.  I’ve done that before.  There was no reason for it to turn into a two day ordeal.

But the trackball was sticking.

That’s happened on previous occasions, as well.

The last time, I googled for the instructions on how to remove and clean it, and it was easy-peazy-one-two-threesie.  I popped the trackball out, took it apart, cleaned it off, and  popped it back into the phone. Why would I think it would be different this time?

Shows what I know.

I popped it out, took it apart, and that’s when things began to go to hell.

It kind of fell apart, instead of coming apart in an orderly fashion.  You know, in such a way that you could take note of how it goes back together?  So, I had to google for the instructions again, because I had unaccountably failed to save them the first time.  Take note, and heed this warning.  If you find an explanation on the internet that makes sense to you—for whatever it might be—trackball cleaning, how to make ice cream, the meaning of life, etc.—save it!  Because it will disappear the next time you want it.  Maybe the website moved, maybe the google search order has changed.  Whatever.  But you won’t be able to find it when you want it.

I found a different set of instructions.

They were not clear.

I tried to follow them anyway.

And the little magnetic thingies* that look like rollers kept popping out.  And sticking to each other.

And that was bad enough, but then they popped out again.  And bounced off the desk.  Onto the grey carpet.  These things are tiny.  They have light grey spindles and black magnets on the head.  I can barely see them when I’m holding one on the tip of my finger.  Do you think I can find them on the grey carpet?

But I did.

I didn’t even really need that flashlight for which I now had to climb the stairs– or my husband whose sharper eyes I had enlisted.

Having bounced separately, the two of them experienced a magnetic attraction on the way down.  They had miraculously turned into conjoined twins, now twice as big as they would have been had they fallen separately.  Twice as big made them at least ten times as visible.  I found them!

And then I went through the same thing all over again.

Googled for better instructions.

Fumbled and fiddled around with floundering fingers.

Lost a magnetic thingie and the trackball.

We will draw a veil over the rest of the day.  After all, this blog would like to preserve a family friendly atmosphere.

And it turns out that, for $1.67 plus $0.50 shipping, you can just buy a new trackball at Amazon.

 

* remember–‘thingy’ is a technical term used in this blog for that for which I cannot immediately recollect the name