just saying “no” to crack…finally!

so, i’ve debated this since the damn thing came in…

…today it’s official. i am no longer a crack(berry) head.

my love affair with the smart phone started off pretty rocky as you may recall…and that was just the whole “i’m smart but don’t know what time zone i’m in” thing. what’s interesting is while you have to TELL it what time zone it’s in, if you take pictures with it the damn thing actually stamps it with time, date, and CITY you were in at the time. i didn’t put “lockhart” in when i took a picture of dude jumping off the couch – but it somehow knew it. i didn’t put “austin” in when i took a pic of the giant killer robot sewing machine craig drew…but it knew it. but it didn’t know it was in the central time zone until i TOLD it.

so i’ve learned blackberrys are REALLY smart in some ways, and REALLY retarded in other ways. so they’re not “smart phones”, they’re “autistic phones”.

from there we had the alarm issue, than the bluetooth issue (which was on going) and finally the “no time display” issue, where when i called somebody it would say “connecting…” even after it had connected, without showing me a call time (or the buttons at the bottom) which would indicate it had even rang, let alone that somebody had picked it up – which was a real pain in the car ’cause i’m sitting there looking at it without putting it to my ear waiting for it to connect, and the person on the other end is screaming “HELLLLLOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!” trying to yell over my stereo. pain in the ass.

today was the final straw – i woke up to the alarm on it (the real one, not some app bullshit that won’t turn off even when you turn the phone off) and, since it’s pretty pleasant, gently woke up. hit snooze. rolled back over. five minutes later it goes off again. i nod back awake, again rather pleasantly, and roll over and turn the alarm to off. i see i have a message (email? voice mail? text? who knows – i just see an envelope, so it’s like CHRISTMAS and shit!) and it prompts me to enter my unlock code…

…now i got my first cell phone (a motorola flip, which at the time was the smallest phone you can get and now would be as big as four or five iphones taped together – and that was with the SMALL battery) back in 1993. had one ever since. still have all of them, actually, save for the ancient motorola which was stolen from the ex i gave it to in new orleans. even back that far i had the same unlock code. had it on the two sony phones after that, the motorola star-tac after that, etc, etc…all the way to the crackberry from hell. needless to say, i “know the code” as the old commercial used to say – so i punch it in.

INVALID CODE it says…

so i try again…

INVALID CODE it says again, and then prompts me to type the word “blackberry” and hit enter, so i do, figuring maybe there was some random security update i didn’t know about. it prompted me to enter my code a third time, so i did, and it came back with

THAT WAS THE THIRD INVALID CODE – ALL DATA WILL NOW BE WIPED OFF THIS PHONE FOR SECURITY REASONS and a bar graph started to show it’s progress.

i yanked the battery – which with this piece of shit i have to do at least once every couple of days. i pulled the micro sd card and all it had were pics on it, so i saved those to my computer. when i put it back in the bar graph started again, and within about three minutes (with me hitting every key i could think of including typing in the security code repeatedly) all was lost. every contact, email, text message, picture mail, everything…except, of course, for the pics on the sd card. what i was able to save was never erased – everything else? gone. it even reset the fucking time zone.

“pissed” doesn’t even BEGIN to describe my mood.

i called and started the return and flip (no pun intended) to my old LG phone when it occurred to me – wait…maybe i can listen to voice mail and get back some of the lost contact info because for some reason after it nuked itself back to the stone age it started working without a code. no problem making calls, no problem hitting voice mail, i reckoned. hung up with customer service and i COULD hear voice mails – just couldn’t get any callback info from it.

fuck.

so, i called back and talked to customer service. when all was said and done my voice mail was nuked again just like it had been the LAST time when i got the crackberry. but this time i was expecting it, and it was no big deal. because i’m returning the phone AFTER the thirty days i can’t get a refund, but they will buy it back. the buyback price is based on the retail of the phone, not any sale prices, so i PAID fifty but they’ll give me ninety- three. in addition they’re knocking another fifty bucks off my bill…monthly…for two years.

so, in the long run, i guess i kinda win. but still a pain in the ass – lost a few numbers i really needed, but the bulk of them i think i’ve now gotten back one way or the other. if i was a single guy and still getting “those” numbers at the rate i could acquire them that woulda REALLY been bad. fortunately the couple of colleagues and folks i lost were expecting to hear from me today (thursday is my monday so most know i’ll get back to them on texts or calls from the last few days today) so THEY hit ME up asking where the hell i was (“ME” as in the guy writing this, not the girl that used to typically refer to whom i don’t believe even still reads this site) so that all got resolved. man, am i gonna be cautious as shit before i change phones again…and guaranteed the word “berry” will NOT be on any phone i ever own again…ever.

…now i just need to figure out how to get word mole – that was the only thing i’ll really miss about that bitch.