Me & My Crackberry

Awhile back, I was buried at work, and I do mean BURIED. Days that started at 7am, included no time for lunch (let alone peeing), and ended sometime around 7pm... if I was lucky. Added to that were the working WEEKENDS, needed just to keep my head above water. And even THEN, I still wasn't keeping up.

Deep down, I knew workload was obviously a problem, but next in the priority list for solving my woes was just plain old ACCESS. Cuz the thing I continually was running into, was being stuck in meetings half my day. And when returning from SAID meetings, I'd see 83 new emails, 6-10 of which were people on my project team venting about this server being down, or that build needing approval. And instead of taking the ownership on THEMSELVES to get the server back up or get the approval needed, they'd instead send an email to me, cc'ing the group, and then they'd move onto OTHER things.

And yea yea, that's a problem in itself that I'm working to resolve, but the thing is, people don't just CHANGE in the blink of an eye. It takes time to not just CHANGE their ways, but change the way they THINK about their ways. So in the meantime, I asked for a Blackberry. The goal was to allow me to see those emails coming IN, and get the team acting on them IMMEDIATELY, even though I wasn't the one chasing down the issue. They send an email saying "Wahhhhhh, the server's down!"? I send one right back saying "Go talk to Joe you dumbass!"

And lo and behold, it's working. Admittedly, it's a slow change, but it's working. And it WORKING means I'm not only seeing stuff fixed faster or continuing to move better, it means I can manage my time better. Because rather than coming back to 83 new emails in 3 hours, I come back to 40 emails, because I saw the rest and dealt with what was needed.

The key in all of this though? It's my Blackberry Pearl. My crackberry. The new love of my life. Cuz this sleek little black thing, well, it's always up to sync, it's got all sorts of settings to let me HEAR it or IGNORE it, and it fits in my pocket - a WOMEN'S pants pocket!

The keyboard, admittedly, with the QWERTY thing going on where there's 2 letters per key, takes about a week to get used to, but once you've played for a week, there's nothing to it. While most of my emails and texts are kept pretty short, as nothing compares to a REAL computer keyboard, I've got no problem sending full-length emails on it too.

What else? The standard rings it comes with are pretty good, the volume is totally do-able, and surfing on it isn't too bad either. I'd say I'm not really a TRUE Blackberry user in that there's probably a whole bunch of tech stuff on it I don't even know EXISTS, but for what I needed it for (work email, staff calls/access, and personal home phone), it totally does the job. Two thumbs up from me.

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