Technoferrets

I took my new mouse into work today. It's pretty odd-looking, part Batmobile, part futuristic tank in appearance. That, and its rear end lights up. I guess it looks cool or sonething.

It seems to attract developers like flies to honey so that coolness factor seems to work.

You see, I bought it because it had a built-in macro recorder and after messing with Excel for the billioneth time, I realized that perhaps having macro recording capability would preserve my sanity somewhat, especially in Excel 2007, where Microsoft decided to make it look "new" by relocating the functions I know over to somewhere else that I don't know about. I hate the app and I'm using that instead of a prior version (which I know and love) because corporate I.T. refuses to install older versions. *sigh*

Anyhoo, I digress. So here I was, happily fiddling with Excel and doing nifty things with recorded macros when the usual stream of people come sauntering in to try and get me to commit my team for some (typically badly thought out) work. I usually poke holes in their proposal until they get a clue and go away to rethink their needs (or try to sucker someone else to take on the work). Today however, was interesting:

*dev lead struts into my cube*
DevLead: Hey Kate, I was thinking...whoa, what's that you've got on your desk?
Me: Oh, just a new mouse I got. It's got macro recording, which really saves time when I'm using Exc...
DevLead: *interrupts* Wow, it even glows red! *tries to pick it up but I slap his hand off, tut-tutting*
Me: Please do ask before you touch my stuff!
DevLead: *head bobbing left and right looking at the mouse from all angles* Whoa! What's that bad boy called?
Me: *sighs* It's just a mouse, nothing more. But to answer your question, it's a Microsoft Sidewinder.
DevLead: Cool! I have to go check it out! *runs off without discussing proposal*

That scene repeated itself practically all afternoon. I had to step out for a meeting later in the day and returned to find 3 devs clustered around my desk fondling the mouse. I shooed them off.

Yes, I was a very popular manager today. All because my strange-looking mouse has a rear end that glows red.

Oy! I don't recall that I was anywhere that bad with new shiny tech when I was a dev. Still, it's been a pretty amusing afternoon nonetheless. And I didn't have to fend off any idiotic work requests - that's a win in my book! :)