Here’s a stupid post, it’s been a while. I’ve upgraded Slackware from 12.2 to 13.0 and now it is messing with me. Believe it or not the stupid thing knows when I’m annoyed and pisses me off even more. Here’s how it works:

Sometimes my pointer starts jumping all around the screen, for no good reason. That’s not entirely unexpected, I have a crappy wireless mouse – but sometimes it gets on my nerves. When it does the first thing I do is stop moving and breathing, to see if it moves on its own or it goes nutz. No, it doesn’t do anything when I freeze.

So I take it easy, and use the mouse for a few seconds normally – but then it starts messing with me again. I slam my hand on the table, put a firm hand on top of the mouse, and deliberatly move it down – and it’s like it dares me to slide it all the way off the table, the pointer keeps jerking back up. Repeat, same thing.

Hardware problem? I thought so too, and replaced the wireless USB mouse with a wired PS2 mouse. Same problem.

You’ll never guess what it was. Turns out Slackware 13 treats my Microsoft Sidewinder steering wheel as a mouse. So when I press the pedals, it moves the mouse. When I deliberatly move the mouse down I at the same time (without thinking) press the gas pedal, which moves the pointer back up. Great stuff :)