Well, my mouse finally died, and was buried on the "crappy equipment" shelf in my office, along with at least one of its predecessors. It died spectacularly, basically doing random mouse things at a high rate of speed for about two minutes. I eventually had to ctrl-alt-del the computer off, and try it again. And speaking of computer things, I've finally got around to checking previews etc. for Half-Life 2, and it looks like it's going to be quite nice - it's set in a sort of post-apocalyptic eastern European city, for starters, and that's just plain cool. One of the best things about the original was the fact that it actually had a plot that went something beyond "waste the bad guys," and hopefully the sequel will follow suit. Demonstrations of the physics of the new game also seem to have "people in the know" drooling.