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Blackberry Blowout
For the last few days it, the Blackberry network for Europe, Africa and Middle East has been non-functioning, which has led to a massive outcry.
Mainly of people wailing that without their blackberry and their online access they are doomed, DOOMED, I tell you. Oh woe is them, for them cannot access their IM and email while wandering around the streets.
Seriously, do these people have no life. Can they honestly not survive without checking their email every 5 seconds???
Grow up and do something more interesting than burying your head in some electronic gadget for half the time and fretting about it for the other. Seriously, the world will function without you just fine.
Apple users at the back, stop sniggering.
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Oh, I don't know. I get that I don't need my phone for playing Words with Friends and surfing Mellophant, but its true purpose is so I can get work e-mail, and it makes my life a hell of a lot easier because I get a ton of emails that have to be addressed immediately, so without my phone I'd be chained to my desk all day and sometimes half the night. I'd be pretty annoyed if my service was out for more than a few hours.
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FWIW, we just got an e-mail from our IT people to the effect that "RIM reports that service levels are improving".
Given the level of crackberry addiction around here, I'm surprised that I haven't been hearing about suicides.
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Fortunately, I do not use the Blackberry email service. I use my local ISP, which talks with my Blackberry, so although some of my Blackberry functions are not working (for example, a news gathering app), my email is just fine.
When I am on the road for business (a couple of days every couple of weeks I attend at a satellite office half a day's drive from home), the only way I have of sending and receiving email most of the time is through my Blackberry. If it were to fail, I'd have to spend longer hours in the motel at night catching up on the email.
When the weather is nice, on my return trips I like to hang out on the beach while I work on my files. Again, the Blackberry is tremendously useful. If it were to fail, then I'd have to get up about four hours earlier earlier to get back to town earlier so as to be able to complete my work at the office. Since the Blackberry makes it possible for me to finish my work without having to be back in town, I then often spend the next night or two on the beach (or on other beaches -- we have a lot of them, paddling, hiking, skiing, or just laying in the sun), which turns my routine road trips into mini-vacations.
It's a nice beach, a kilometer long, with cobble at one end, fine sand at the other, no people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=QPh60Jd0Np0http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lID0Q1wTxs4
In the winter there is some nice un-groomed cross-country skiing there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHMvRwbxTYg&feature=player_profilepage
And of course there is endless hiking through the forest and along the shoreline:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehvzg1Swq2k&feature=player_detailpage
So yes, if my Blackberry were to fail, I'd be disappointed, for it would make a serious dent in my routine for a few days, causing me to work longer hours, and preventing me from enjoying my road trips.
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Several days of news feed just came down the pipe. Looks like the folks from Waterloo have got things rolling again.