Smackberries

I really don’t consider myself much of a whiner.
Don’t like to complain, although you will agree, if you’ve been visiting here for very long, when I see a problem worth honking about, it will receive a work-over.

So I’ve just spent the better part of this week wrestling with an on-going issue with my cellphone. Frankly, my life would be much more serene without cellphones. Not necessarily more productive, or better, or worse…but assuredly more serene.

My cellphone is pretty amazing, actually.
It’s a Blackberry Pearl (not the more obtrusive “crackberry” that VIP’s and politicians have had surgically attached to their hands). It was a gift from my Bride on our 27th Wedding Anniversary last year, intended to replace my bulky, cantankerous Sprint-Nextel phone and less relevant Palm Pilot. Two lumps of plastic combined into one.

Unfortunately, there were twice as many challenges in getting both communicators’ modes and databases to synch smoothly into the new device. Only took a month to work it out…which brings us to the past few days’ adventures with the Blackberry (which I’ve seriously considered renaming “raspberry.”)


The fool phone wouldn’t synch with my Outlook Contacts.
We tried everything.
Called in the techies we use at the office to help diagnose the source of the problem…to no avail. Finally ended up getting a replacement phone and SIM card, as well as reloading desktop software for the Blackberry on my laptop.
I spent so much time in front of that screen, I’ve gotten a tan.

In all fairness to AT&T, they’ve been terrific, once I got in front of someone who could help me. (Note to The New AT&T: your in-store customer pre-screening routine leaves much room for improvement.) I walked out the door with a new SIM card, phone, and Bluetooth ear piece…and finally solved the synch problem.

It was an issue with Outlook all along.
Thanks, Bill Gates. Richest guy on the planet, but his software causes untold losses in time and energy each week worth millions of dollars in lost productivity…

The final straw for me last night came when I was finalizing all the re-sets on the Blackberry. Personalizing ring tones, adding contact photos, and setting up alarms and alerts. Could not “pair” the Bluetooth headset to the phone after repeated tries. Got all the way to the point of getting the phone to recognize the earpiece, and discovered my replacement had not been issued with a key number for final activation.

I nearly chucked the whole thing into the duck pond behind the house...which would have qualified it for "quackberry" status. No wonder my life would be more serene with out my cellphone.