Skip navigation

Man vs. Mouse

A network admin disables a wild and wooly peripheral

When I used to work as a network administrator, radio wireless mice had just come out, and we had one user using such a device in the office. His envious colleague, not to be outdone, bought one privately, connected it to his computer and was using it happily until suddenly the mouse got a life of its own and started opening files and programs.

He tried desperately to stop it, but no chance--the thing had a life of its own. Panic stricken, he phoned our IT support technician, telling him that there was a vicious virus on the loose and he'd better hurry or the consequences would be dire.

Without thinking twice the brave support guy rushed to the rescue, two stairs at a time. Indeed the mouse pointer was doing weird and wonderful things. Then he noticed the brand new wireless mouse sitting smugly next to the computer and it all became clear.

With a quick turn of the dial he set a different channel on one of the mice and terminated the vicious intruder.

--Paul Wawrzyniak
Hide comments

Comments

  • Allowed HTML tags: <em> <strong> <blockquote> <br> <p>

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Publish