Just need to vent...

Most bees I have encountered have much different temperament than their wasp cousins.
I grow raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and strawberries and this time of year am regularly picking them and pruning overgrowth.
The honey bees and large bumblebees working around them doing their business will continue to work and even land on me but never sting. It seems they know we are both just going about our similar businesses. Also having a small orchard and the bees are vital to the pollination of our fruit trees. I purposely don't treat our lawn and have a large amount of clover just to attract bees.

Some wasp, hornets and especially yellow jackets exhibit aggressive behavior whenever I have encountered them. Owning a small rural farm in my younger days that included an old barn I have had many close encounters of the undesirable type with these winged creatures.
Even now living in town it is not unusually to find yellow jacket 'nest' with the associated aggressive behavior in the most unexpected places.

In the orchard trees many wasp species help control pest like aphids but have yet to find what good hornets and yellow jackets do.

 

From wasps to mice...

New vent, with a very satisfying hack to resolve it.

Mouse button #3 and Mouse button #4.

I just bought a new bluetooth computer mouse. I picked out one that could pair with two different computers, because when I'm working on the road there are usually 2+ laptops in front of me, typically a locked-down client owned laptop, my own work computer and sometimes a third.

Like many modern computer mice, this one includes extra buttons along the left side. These are meant for use by your right thumb. You can use software to assign clever functions to them, but many computers will interpret them as "back" and "forward" unless you make changes.

Well, I hate them. I tend to do a lot of work in browser tools, and it's very frustrating to put an hour's effort into a given tab and just as you're mousing over to the commit/save/preview button.... you accidentally hit that back button, and the work is gone.

So, I removed the buttons.

I flipped the mouse on its back, removed two screws, disconnected a ribbon cable that ran from the daughterboard hosting the side buttons, and removed the daughterboard from the top half of the mouse.

Then I just grabbed the two momentary SMT switches with my handy xcelite 378m pliers, gave a quick twist to break the tiny solder bonds, and threw the switches away. (The third switch remaining on the board is the target selector to choose which computer the mouse controls, so I kept that. Fortunately it isn't easy to accidentally trigger)



I reassembled the mouse and it works perfectly! No more accidental navigation!

You're wondering why I didn't try to solve this in software? Go back and read the bit about a locked-down machine. I'm not allowed to install software on all of the machines this mouse will control.

The whole reason for this mouse is to conveniently operate several computers that have different security policies and can't be on a common LAN.

 

Good work! I know what is like to have extra functions on the mouse causing havoc on daily workflow. In my case, a simple function of the left button misbehaving has caused enough headaches, I just ordered a new "corded" trackball.

I spend most of my workday in front of a workstation doing quite a bit of clicking. I have never found a mouse in which I have to move the device to navigate the cursor to be comfortable. So, from my very early computer use days some 30 years ago, I always used "trackball" instead of a "mouse". But I dislike many of the trackballs with a small ball that has to be controlled by a thumb and only by a thumb due to the location of the ball on the left side of the device.

This lead me to pick Kensington's Expert Trackball. I had a corded version of this at my office when I was working there, but when I started working from home remotely, I left the entire workstation set up at my office and duplicated the setup identical at home. The same triple monitors, same docking station, same keyboard, and computer (which is provided for the work thus I don't have administrative privileges) can now be used by docking to the station either at home or at the office exactly the same way... that is with one exception of the trackball. When I was setting up my home office, I could not find the same corded trackball, so I went with the cordless version. It is a very similar form factor, has the same number of buttons, and uses the same driver and software. For the most part, this configuration worked seamlessly for three years.

But, recently, my cordless trackball has been acting up. The left button long press is not registering consistently. So, when I try to click and hold to select a long sentence, it sometimes stops the selection in the middle and starts again on the later section. In most cases, a symptom like this is caused by a weak battery, but fresh batteries did not fix it. Now, I am thinking this may be caused by BlueTooth's interference. Tried a few different things like changing the USB dongle into a different jack, and changing the location of the trackball, but none have helped. The problem is intermittent, so the device works perfectly for a while and all of a sudden stops responding to the hold-left button. Yeah, it's just that hold function that is not working occasionally, but it is so frustrating I ordered a new "corded" trackball for $98 out of my pocket. I could have asked the IT dept to purchase it for me, but that would take a long time and a lot of red tape to cut. That's the cost of bureaucracy.

My Amazon order should arrive at my door front in a few days.

 

I like mousing, but I can't do it all the time. Every few days I alternate with using the trackpads on the laptops instead, just to ward off RSI.

 

I don't like the mouse and I don't like the trackpad on the laptop. For years, I bought only laptops that came with the "Eraserhead" pointing stick embedded in the center of the keyboard. Nowadays, it is very hard to find one equipped with anything other than a gigantic trackpad. I think Lenovo Thinkpad still makes the signature red eraserhead pointing stick option on their lineup. But my days of traveling are over now, I never use a laptop as a laptop for my work. It is basically a portable desktop box for me, so having a pointing stick is not a crucial requirement anymore. However, my current work-supplied computer, an old HP laptop does come with a pointing stick. Though I have not yet taken this laptop off the docking station, so the screen, keyboard, and pointing devices are never used.

 

I want one as a pet

 

LOL right ...
Humor aside - if you check out YouTube videos regarding insect stings, there are many people anxious to win the Darwin Award by deliberately getting stung by such creatures or comparing brown recluse stings to Black Widow stings - just to relay which one is more horrible.
.

 

I wonder if a couple thick-enough blobs of Plasti Dip over the unwanted buttons would have done the trick.

Peel 'em off later if you ever decide you want the buttons again.

 

A problem with being borderline in need of epipen is that allergies typically worsen with exposure. So 4 dings, next time, may make you wish you had that other everyday carry. The best news is that the experience is unambiguous.

There are much cheaper generics available, so search the internet.
==
Narcan in schools seems more complicated. When one person drops to the floor, call 911 immediately and confirm airway function. If a school has a nurse equivalent, it would be very good if that person knows (in advance) who has type 1 diabetes. And does a blood sugar fingerstick (whether or not victim is known diabetic) and knows what 4 to 11 mmol/L means.

Now, get the narcan nasal spray cued up. Airway is functioning, ambulance is en route. This is not an unambiguous experience, and the person with knowledge is unconscious. None of this contraindicates narcan in one nostril, but it is never your only prompt action.

Kids can faint from dehydration, and from many other things. I know of no other conditions for which narcan is contraindicated, but when narcan is the hammer in toolbox, not everything is nails.

 

I've never tried plasti-dip at depth, only just enough for a finish. I have made use of sugru to mold grips and features into existing tools. Interesting thought, to have built a dam across those two buttons...

At $15, I bought two of these mice. The other one sits untouched on the shelf for now.

 

Probably fair for me to mention that the only way we do keep any of these around is because my wife does have some allergies, a doctor did prescribe the pen, and she happens to have some dynamite prescription benefits. I'm quite aware that this alignment of the planets is rare.

 

Speaking of computer mice ... Why do they all have to be made for people with dainty fingers? I'm tired of unexpectedly clicking links I didn't want to click, merely because relaxed my finger. Constantly hovering above the buttons gets tiresome. They could solve that problem by making the force required to click the buttons adjustable.

Semi-relatedly, Prius, like other Japanese cars, seems to have been designed for people with dainty feet. If I step on the brake pedal with my foot oriented vertically, I'm pressing with the arch, not ball, of my foot. Meanwhile, the toe of my shoe is jammed against whatever obstruction is above the pedal. In my Mazda, I ameliorated the problem of the accelerator pedal being too close to the floor by cutting about 1½" out of its shaft and having it welded back together.

 

I suspect you could also adjust that by putting the right size dab of Plasti Dip beneath the button.

(I don't work for them, honest, but I always have it around.)

 

Having been a wireless mouse designer for part of my contract career, this surgery brings back tons of memories. Those parts and the construction inside look damn familiar, even though everything I worked on has since aged out of the market.

 

OK OK OK seen the video of a guy volunteering to get stung by one of these said it was one of the most painful experiences he’s ever had.

 

Nice thing about a small-town school is that you KNOW which kid get insulin, YOU KNOW which kid DOESN'T get peanuts, and kids in the deep South (USA) are already up-armored against the heat-stress monster.
Groovy thing about NARCAN.
It's NOT methadone.

You don't get a buzz. (If I'm accurately informed - never huffed it myself..)
If you puff and the kid doesn't respond?
Try something else.
One presumes that a properly trained teacher (the one that knows the kid's NAME) will have the tools and talent to assess the situation on the ground and in real time.

If a kid tries to huff all the NARCAN in your kit?
NOTHING happens - unless he or she is already under the influence of Fent, and then.....it's LITERALLY a "buzz kill."

AGAIN....if I'm accurately informed.
I get it.
In the city, or even in flyover country where you don't KNOW the kid you have to consider different things but in some parts of the US the village DOES help raise the kid, if only to be there when the kid gets in trouble.

Sometimes?
Nails REALLY ARE are nails.
If not?
You reach for the multi-tool.
I've carried one for years and I have yet to see one with a hammer....

 

2 nurses in the ER who attended me would disagree w/ you.
(They also disagree with the notion that passing a baby was the most painful thing.) They agreed that passing a kidney stone was tops on the list. I'd checked in to the hospital on day 6 of this excruciating pain - where my physician neighbor told me at the onset that, 'no-it's not food poisoning' that was making me so sick but an 8 mm mulberry shaped oxalate stone. On day 8 it passed.
Having gone through ~12²" of scalp & facial burns as well as the pain of shingles? Avoid the stone peev.
.

 

Lemon water.
IYKYK.

I've had stones, but since (some scientists still believe) I also have a Y chromosome, this means I was born with all the human eggs that I will never have.
Of all of the insensitive, uninformed comments I've made over the course of a lifetime, I've NEVER made the mistake of wondering whether my paltry pee-rock was in any way comparable to carrying a wiggling, kicking bowling ball around for a few months - inside me, and then birthing it.
Were I to mention anything like this out loud I would make DAMN sure that no mothers were about.

I'm just delighted that while I was flopping around like a freshly landed fish in the ER I didn't cry like an infant or require new undergarments afterwards.
I still carry toradol in my go-bag.