My name is Gary Walsh, and I am a crackberry addict.  (Group echos...hello Gary).

It didn't happen the traditional way.  I was not a typical propeller head experimenting with technology.  I was almost 50 at the time I started using, moving into that stage of life where the last thing I needed was another keyboard, especially one I had to operate with my thumbs.  I won the damn thing at a RIM event at Lotusphere two years ago. I didn't even want to go, but Scott dragged me out of bed for the early morning breakfast event thinking there could be an opportunity.  I told him we had enough initiatives on the go, we did not need another, but I was too sleep deprived to argue.  

It sat in my desk drawer for months, the box not even opened.  Then one day it happened.  My old and battered Nokia cell phone died.  I needed a new phone in a hurray so I activated the Blackberry. Voice plan only I told the gal on the phone, but she gave me some sort of deal on a data plan, free email for a month.  What the hell I said to myself.  I don't have to use it.  Little did I know.

As a phone it worked fine, and it had some games that kept the kids entertained on long trips in the car.  I told them it was a gameboy and they bought it.  I did not bother with the email because I thought people would respond to the blackberry account. The last thing I needed was two email accounts to check.  There was no way I was going to take the time to install a BES server to integrate mail and calendar for only one user.  Beside, nobody would let me near the server anyway.

I was sitting in Union station one afternoon waiting for a train and got tired of reading the free rags regurgitating the same old news. I pulled out the Blackberry and clicked on a help icon on the desktop, and started to read.  It said I could change the outgoing email address so anyone replying would be doing so to any email account I entered...like my Notes mail account.  I knew from past experience that I could put a forwarding record in my person record to direct email to the Blackberry.  I tried it and it worked.  I had an air card on my PC, so wireless email was not new, but this thing took no time to boot up, and it would fit in my pocket.  Hmm.

I then discovered the web browser. This device used something called the Rogers Edge network.  I had tried a 7500 series Blackberry and browsing the web sucked...it was so slow.  But this thing was fast. Granted pages looked different because of the screen size, but I found I could Google, do Canada411 address look-ups, go on client web sites to get contact info when I was on the road, that kind of thing. The screen resolution was amazing, and it was readable even in direct sunlight. Goodbye air card.

Then someone emailed me the URL for the Exeter  Aviation weather.  I was going to look on it when I got to my PC but thought what the hell, it can't hurt to click on it.  In seconds I was looking at a radar image of Southwestern Ontario showing thunderheads and rain showers in vivid detail.  I sat there for a few minutes, stunned.  I fly a little homebuilt airplane, and what I was looking at was onboard weather radar, good to the last 15 minutes, in the cockpit.   That type of thing is available, but cost thousands of dollars, and now I had it for almost nothing, on my phone.  It was insane.

I kept forgetting to forward my mail in my person record before I left the office, so I was always calling the guys to add the forwarding record.  Dave eventually had enough of the interruptions and wrote me an agent in a Notes database that I could hit from the wap browser on the Blackberry to do the redirect.   It was my first custom web app for the Blackberry. The voices in my head became so loud I could not concentrate on normal tasks. I would be eating dinner and blurt out..."maybe I could update sales call status info on the road..or enter timesheets..or..or". I would come around to find my wife and kids looking at me like I had two heads.

I found I had trouble sleeping. I would be up all night surfing the internet to see what else I could find.  It was like a floodgate had opened. Someone had a Blackberry interface to our CRM so I could I enter my sales calls and look up sales activity, I didn't have to write a custom app.  Sametime became available so I could keep in touch with the team in realtime via instant messaging. I tracked down DV, and he said the BES and Sametime install would only take an hour or so...and he was right.   Now customers from all over the world were pinging me using the chat link off our web sites...regardless of where I was.  I could respond to their sales inquiries and support issues almost immediately and direct them to the right person.  

Then I found the bluetooth GPS software that I was hoping for.  Most of the GPS systems available on the Blackberry were directed toward earth bound drivers.  I wanted one that measured distances in a straight line, not via the roads. Something that made sense for an airplane.   I wanted one that was not wired to my car.  One that traveled with me wherever I went.  Sure it was impressive for the car. If I needed to find a customer all I had to do was enter the address and a voice told me where to go, when to turn, when I was there.  TomTom provided that, for about $ 500, and you had to carry another device.  More important to me I now had airspeed, line of sight distance and heading. It even had a moving map to show your track.  That was something I could use in the airplane.  I had put off buying one of the aviation specific ones because they were so feature bloated, I didn't want another device to carry around, and they cost $ 500+ when a good old map was only $ 29.  This was just too cheap to pass up. It cost $ 80 for the bluetooth receiver and $ 50 for the software. Most important, it was on the same device as my phone and email. Oh my God!

And then the unthinkable.  I was getting out of the car. It was a hot day, and I grabbed the Blackberry from the console of the car as I got out. It slipped out of my sweaty fingers.  Everything slowed down, and I could hear the sound track from that fight scene in the Matrix as it tumbled towards the pavement.  I thought I had it, but my panic reach only managed to launch it higher and further away.  It landed with a sickening crash.  I immediately picked it up, but it was too late.  Gone was the glow from the screen.  The red light beat with a regular pulse but there was no screen.  Using all the power I could muster....I screamed.  That was last I remember...and I woke up here.