So far, the main way I haven’t seen suggested.

I guess I owe my wife an apology.

Nice.

That’s one of my wife’s answers.

You’re very prompt.

My mouse has five inputs: left click, right click, scroll wheel (not including clicking), ball movement and emulated middle clicking by simultaneously clicking left and right.

I can’t see any of those being better than right clicking and neither a keyboard nor a controller seem preferable.

edit: correct a word.

I wouldn’t characterize it as vehemence, but rather a combination of consistency and honesty. People are fairly consistently surprised at my enthusiasm for gaming with trackballs, as though it’s automatically a detriment; I don’t find it to be so, except in Minecraft, so I don’t want to represent it as other than it is.

With the style of trackball I use - ball in the middle, left and right click on their respective sides of the ball - and the way I use it - thumb on left click, index and middle finger on the ball, ring and pinky on right click - right clicking can be a stressor. This isn’t a problem when tapping once or holding, such as when engaging a scope; but when repeatedly right clicking, it tires whatever muscles and tendons run between the outside of my hand and my shoulder, which already has its own problems.

Minecraft is the only game I play that requires me to repeatedly right click. (I know that now you can right click and drag to place lots of blocks, but that hasn’t always been true and doesn’t really allow for precision in my experience.) Therefore, it is the only game to which I feel my trackball is not well suited.

My favorite has always been the Kensington Orbit. Probably a lot of people - even those who like Trackballs - would disagree, but I’ve been happily using these for around 25 years. Except in Minecraft.

When I was a kid, I got my hands on a PS/2 Y-adapter and so typed on two keyboards - left hand on one on my desk, right hand on one on a keyboard tray. I don’t know what my typing speed and accuracy were then, but a few years back an entire office of people tried to beat me in a typing test and couldn’t. Since then I’ve taken a typing test on a laptop while sitting in a hotel bed and gotten a score of 158 with, IIRC, 98.2% accuracy. (This was my best score but even since then all of my typing evaluations have gone well.)

I also use a trackball as exclusively as my environment allows, including while gaming (other than Minecraft). I’m not remotely a pro, but among my peers I tend to score highly in, for example, FPS’.

I’m not trying to brag; there are many better than I in both categories. The reason I bring these up is to demonstrate that something being the convention doesn’t automatically make it better and something being unfit for your preferences doesn’t make it inferior.

edit: AFAIK, I only have one left hand.

Also don’t unfixably break things in your body even with redundancies. That’s no fun, either.

For some reason, I suspect you are an enjoyer of Cinema Sins.

Why?

Did you know that cats can have the capability to either roar or purr, but not both?

https://youtu.be/aoETopg_bWg

Honestly, my first thought was that it sort of looked like a Mario level.

I’m so very glad you laughed!

It’s an awesome series, or so I felt when I read it. Have you watched the movie? It’s very different, but shares many qualities and is enjoyable to a lesser (IMHO) degree.

Since I have your attention, you talked about your chicken, and I mentioned my wife, I’ll tell you a much more boring story that is much more meaningful to me:

In the time when my then-girlfriend was about to become my then-fiance, there was a local vineyard we frequented. I’ve never really been a major wine drinker and she barely drinks at all, but the wine there was exceptionally good and the owner was very personable (and took a liking to us personally). Almost immediately after I proposed, we went to the winery and, unplanned, told the owner of the vineyard of the event.

The owner was very excited and offered us a sample of some wine they hadn’t released yet, which was also awesome. While we enjoyed the wine and the sights, one of her pets jumped on the table provided. It was … Drum roll … a rooster. Neither of us had really interacted with livestock before, so it was rather a treat and kind of marks the beginning of the engagement for us. I’m not sure if I took any pictures, but my now-wife sure did.

I wasn’t going to mention the name of the vineyard for fear of doxxing myself, but my comment history already mentions my time in that area and the vineyard is worthy of mention. Unfortunately, their only web presence appears to be Facebook, but here it is:

https://m.facebook.com/@MountFelix/

edit: hopefully this works. Subsequent edit: I still can’t get images working in my client, connect.

When much younger, I read the Odd Thomas series. In the first or maybe second book of the series, the titular protagonist encounters some coyotes. The protagonist suggests, when being hunted by them, the survival strategy of making loud, sudden and bold movements and sounds to startle the coyotes into fleeing.

I can’t say whether this would be effective or not, but apparently I took it to heart at the time. Very soon thereafter I was having a nightmare about being chased by coyotes through my dad’s backyard (at the time probably the wildest place I’d been). I took the book’s advice and threw myself forward, yelling. Unfortunately, that was apparently the moment my brain released me from my dream, resulting in me thrusting myself in my then-girlfriend’s then-sleeping face, yelling.

For what it’s worth, I now would recommend avoiding that approach unless actually imperiled in waking hours.

edit: Not to diminish the impact of PTSD. My hope was that the ideally humorous story would raise your spirits. Apologies if it did otherwise. However, I laughed at myself several times while typing the above. Hopefully you enjoyed the anecdote, too.

I had the same experience with the ice cream.

Strongly agreed!

I learned that from Daniel Radcliffe.

edit: Fixed a word.

Seems like they’d be an avid listener.