10 Uses For A Dead BlackBerry

Yes, it is another column about BlackBerries. Over the years, I reminisced about "When Life Was Simple and BlackBerries Were Fruit," sneered at those who take their handhelds into the bathroom and cautioned about "Blackberries on the Beach and Other Ways to Ruin Your Vacation." Leave it to me to beat a dead subject.

And there was a death. In fact, it was on the eve of my vacation when my BlackBerry died. There was no warning and no time to prepare myself. It was preceded by the usual pre-vacation flurry of activity — clearing out the in bin full of back-piled periodicals, watering the plants and cutting away dead leaves, and plowing through the never-ending bevy of e-mails.

There was no traumatic accident, no flickers of sickness, just a sudden, unexplainable death. It was very late. I finished packing and picked up my trusted BlackBerry to reset the alarm clock for my early morning flight (the Calypso alarm tone is my favorite). The screen was lit but I could not see anything. No e-mail. No calendar. No address book. No BrickBreaker. Just a clear screen. I could hear the tones as messages were received but could not do see or do anything about them. I tried to resuscitate. I plugged in the charger. I turned it on and off. I took out the battery and then the sim card. I counted to 10. I tried it all over again. And again.

I called the 24-hour technology help line. Now I confess, I am technologically challenged. I am not sure what my issues are, but I seem to have bad computer karma. I spend way too much "hourglassing" and searching for lost e-mail and seem to be forever in technology retrograde. No kidding, my home computer restarted itself in the middle of writing this column (luckily, I had just saved).

The help desk folk are usually quite helpful and have talked me through crashes and proxied in to get me connected countless times. Not this time. My technician did everything he could to diagnose, treat and save our patient. He asked me about my BlackBerry use ... and abuse. No, I did not drop it or get it wet or connect it to a cheap charger — at least not recently. He tried all the trouble shots and finally pronounced my BlackBerry dead.

At first, I was in denial. I had no time to grieve, though, and realized I needed to accept the death and adapt. I kept it plugged in, hoping it would somehow spontaneously come back to life. I considered bringing along my laptop, which is a personal rule I did not want to break ...