New geek accessories!

Our home Acer PC's wireless mouse was giving trouble for the last few months. Even a battery change didn't improve its erratic performance. Last night, I removed the casing to check on the batteries again, and was surprised to find that the inside of the mouse was wet!

I discovered that one of the batteries had leaked. And the mouse was designed in such a way that there was a hole directly underneath that battery, large enough for liquid to seep through to the circuit board. In short, the mouse was damaged. The Acer wireless keyboard was also getting erratic - and we've had this PC for less than a year.

So I went shopping for a new Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse, and settled for the entry-level Optical Desktop 700. I bought it at South Asia Computer and it came with free flat panel speakers!

At the same time, I bought myself an 8GB Flash (thumb) drive. Initially I had gone upstairs to Challenger to view their product range and prices. They had a beautiful, shiny Sony 8GB thumb drive that was going for about $260. However, as I wasn't a member, I wouldn't get any discount.

So instead, I bought an 8GB Imation Pro 2 Flash (thumb) drive for $159. It doesn't look as pretty, but it is smaller and comes with its own partitioning software.

I also picked up a SanDisk 6-in-1 PC card adapter. It is to be inserted into my Dell laptop. When you're at an event and want to upload photos immediately, things are much easier with a built-in reader - rather than a device that's sticking out of a USB port or dangling on a wire.

Small, functional gadgets, but I did get a sense of catharsis today.