Apple Wireless Mouse (and Support Blog) Problems. I've got a solution for one.

My Apple Wireless Mouse was turning on and off. I first thought it might be some kind of radio interference. Instead of guessing I Googled. The top hits were for the Apple Support Blog--where the world's wealthiest company, the world's most advanced technology company relies on self-selected users to solve the technical problems it's phone operators cannot.

The blog was helpful but only in that it focused my attention on the battery connection. The highest rated advice was well meaning nonsense, batteries had to be just the right size..... or they won't work.
There's that much variation between AA batteries that the spring loaded battery holders won't work?
Suspiciously the advice recommends buying rechargeable batteries from the Apple Store--they're 'just the right size.'
All this reminds me of Wozniak in college with his TV frequency interference box in his pocket. (Read Woz's autobiography it's honest and interesting.) He would flip the switch and make the TV picture go crazy. Someone would try fiddling with the rabbit ear antenna, and he'd turn off the interference.
He worked this to the point that a guy was standing next to the TV with one foot in the air. If he put down that foot, Woz flipped the switch.....

Maybe the battery size thing is like this.
The other helpful thing in these postings is that tapping the Wireless Mouse on the table top would cause the problem.  I tried this and yes, it absolutely caused the problem.

I doubt there's any significant variation in AA batteries worldwide that could cause such a problem, but a perennial problem of ALL  battery connections is corrosion between the battery terminals and the device. 
I once bought a used Minolta Spot Meter that was attacking erratically, I got if for 1/4 of the cost of a new one. I took it home, cleaned up the contacts with a pencil eraser and used it for the next fifteen years. I'm sure it's still good.

So I tried the pencil eraser on the Wireless Mouse. I also used it on the Eneloop rechargeable batteries I use in my mouse. Surprisingly the problem got much worse. That was surprising. I just had this happen with my car, where the electrical system goes completely dead. Tapping on the battery connectors immediately solves the problem. (You then need to clean them, but usually you can drive home, drive for a week after just a tap.)

There are better ways to clean battery contacts. I happened to have some alcohol based hand sanitizer, so using a Q-tip I cleaned up the contacts. It's been working 100% for the past week. 

The best place for this information is on the Apple Support Blog. Unfortunately, I  haven't been able to log in on this site in a couple of years. I'm really annoyed with how Apple handles IDs and Passwords. After a few years of hassles I've finally got iTunes and iTunes App Store sorted, but whatever gets me into the Apple Support blog... I don't have enough time to bother with. Let the guys with one foot in the air have their moment in the sun.

So use alcohol and a Q-tip rub the contacts on the mouse, and if you use rechargeables clean the contacts on these as well. 

One thing you don't want to do is use sandpaper or scrape these surfaces. I used to do this, because it works when you're soldering (or sweating copper plumbing pipes). It damages the surface of the contact exposing unplated metal to oxidation (corrosion).

Something else that will help is, after cleaning, to use electrical contact grease. This seals the area from air eliminating oxidation. It seems a little weird to slather the surface of an electrical contact with non-conducting grease, but the grease doesn't keep the metals from contact, they push the grease out of the way, make the contact. Anywhere they are not touching is sealed from the air.

I hope this helps. 

Vimeo doesn't work, Flash won't play outside the browsers, Adobe Flash Player doesn't work--does anyone care??

For many months, perhaps as long as a year Vimeo videos won't play in Firefox on my MacBook Pro running OS 10.9.  Full disclosure: I have flashblocker on, anything I can find to block pop-ups.
flv videos I download from YouTube don't play even though I've downloaded the Flash Player. It says there's something wrong.
I used to have a plug-in in FireFox that allowed me to convert them, but that disappeared somewhere between the near-weekly FireFox upgrades, perhaps between versions 207 and 1286.
I recently tried to download a converter and got that nasty Israeli change you default search and randomly pop up advertising. It was more like "Here's another company you should despise and have nothing to do with because they are part of what is a scam."
So I spent an hour sorting that out and forgot about finding a translator for flash.

Perhaps you've also had the same problem, perhaps you've found a solution. Or perhaps you think I'm an idiot, Apple is the new AT&T/KGB, and even I have to consider that you might be completely correct .

Here's what the typical Vimeo video looks like after I've clicked on all the buttons:

Neat, huh. I see this a lot. I interpret it as a reminder that I'm probably wasting time and really didn't need to see whatever it was. In fact I screen captured this image in the last fifteen minutes and can't at the moment remember what the article was about. I know it was from the WIRED magazine site.

Here's the message I would have sent to WIRED if Disqus(t) would have remembered the name and password I'd entered at their site, used once---and then it never worked again..... Again another roundabout way to remind I should spend my time in better ways.

"This is a Vimeo video, Vimeo doesn't seem to work at all anymore on my MacBook with OS X 10.9--hasn't worked in months. Then again for more than a year Disqus won't let me sign in--so you'll never know this. Because none of this has changed I must be part of a small insignificant minority, and it doesn't matter. Oh, well. "

I probably shouldn't be so snarky. My apologies.

I like rejecting stuff that doesn't work. I hope someone is paying attention somewhere (but there's probably no one).
I sent back a Logitech camera today. It didn't work, the instructions were inadequate, but two things clinched the send-this-junk-back decision:

First after reading numerous Support blogs, and receiving a couple of e-mails from a Logitech tech, I finally learned there was an indicator light on the camera. All the other lights were mentioned in the information, and they were all lit up; but two days in and about twenty contacts later I came across the first mention of an indicator light on the camera. Obviously I had seen no light on the camera; there being one that didn't light up would've been useful information an hour or two into troubleshooting the problem. "Yup. There's your problem, right there...."

My attitude, if it doesn't work an hour out of the box--there's probably more serious problems I won't learn about until it's too late to return. Send it back.

The other clincher was this:

"Please note, if we do not hear back from you within a week, we will assume your request has been completely addressed and your case will be set as "solved". (italics are mine) At that moment Logitech will send you a short survey that will be based upon the customer service you received during this email interaction.

Question 1 will evaluate your overall satisfaction with our email interaction, and how good you believe we have been assisting you with this concern (10 being the highest)"

The second part means that the big corporation is going to ask in the survey how good this tech has done, not how good (or rotten) their product is.
If Logitech logic were to be used in a hospital, than a patient left outside, in the basement, or in a dumpster or who'd died in the room....could be assumed to be 'cured' because they stopped buzzing the nurses' station.

They won't hear back from me within a week because I repackaged their dingus and sent it back to Amazon. So I guess my issue is 'solved.' I'm so happy my need and frustration were so deftly taken care of. (Amazon Returns works and that solves a lot of this nonsense.)

Anyway, I'm trying not to be a crank. (Though I'm dying to lay out all my video and USB connectors, take a photo and then list all the times in the last two weeks one of them failed to work (ALL Apple video adapters after three months) or the correct one that wasn't in my bag (or may not exist). I've got at least ten different connectors in my computer bag.
To the techie-nerd speculation that I am indeed an idiot? Well clearly I am if I've spent thousands of dollars on computer gear, carry around a mess of cables and they only do 3/4 of what I need them to do--and they usually don't do what I need them to do when I've got a room full of unruly students. Yup, I've been had.

My son had a BMW that was really trick, and it had run-flat tires. I thought this meant you could still drive on them if they were flat. What it actually seems to mean is that they go flat every other month and cost  a $1000 each to replace.
The way I see it, is if they were good tires in the first place (like the Michelins on my old Honda) than there'd be no issue about running flat because they'd last 100,000 miles and need replacing because one them them was loosing air and they were starting to break down internally. $600 for 4 tires and 100,000 miles, or $2000 for 2 tires and 1000 miles?

So nothing more on connectors. For now....
I guess as regards to high tech and fancy tires, see my last posting about making your own notebook. When has the beta version of anything worked 100 percent?
I'm on page 110 of the journal and it works great. Cost? About $2. (Costco paper 5000 sheets $35), so that's about 70 cents for 100 sheets. Toner? hot glue? a manila folder?