I declare a thumb war

Friends, I have entered a new technological age. I have obtained a BlackBerry. Regular readers may find this somewhat difficult to believe, but I’ve never actually used one before.

It’s odd, because I’m an inveterate gadget nut and will play with just about anything once (except for a thing I found on a website a while back that I thought looked, shall we say, ill-advised – I’m steering clear of that).
I’ve sort of deliberately avoided using a BlackBerry because of the device’s reputation. I’m already something of an email addict, checking for messages every 10 minutes at my desk and feeling decidedly anxious if I go more than a few hours not knowing what’s come through.

The experiences of BlackBerry users I know led me to believe that this problem only becomes worse when you don’t even have to check your email with the BlackBerry – it comes to you the minute it’s sent. It’s like a morphine drip. No wonder they call the device ‘CrackBerry’.

Anyway, I sort of accidentally acquired one, as I won a new BlackBerry Pearl as a door prize at the press launch. I’m not complaining of course – it’s a very impressive-looking beast. And I’m not just saying that because they gave me a free one. It really does look cool.

I’m taking a while to get used to it. The keyboard is neither a typical mobile phone keypad with letters in familiar T9 layout, nor is it really a QWERTY keyboard, only sort of. Just getting used to typing on it took a day or so.

Oh, it’s bad. I’m used to my computer chiming up every 10 minutes but there’s something more insistent about a phone doing the same thing. It demands immediate attention. And I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of email. This thing is chiming at me every couple of minutes.

Here’s the big problem: I haven’t yet figured out how to set up spam filtering on the thing. The net result is that I’m like an email newbie, leaping at the sound of new messages, hoping for some fascinating bon mot to brighten an otherwise dull minute, and finding only pharmaceuticals, smut and offers to enlarge bits of me that I’d really rather leave alone.

I want to just ignore it. Check it every so often in case something important has arrived. But I’m weak. It bleeps and I respond, drooling like a Pavlovian dog, my thumb crooked into a permanent question mark.

Help me, dear readers. I need an intervention. Matthew JC Powell is startlingly easily reachable on mjcp@optusnet.com.au.

blackberry matthew jc mobility