My BlackBerry is MIA

Goodbye BlackBerry, I’ll miss you

Some days I’m the tornado, other days I’m the trailer. Today, I was a 20 year old double wide with thin walls.

I had an early morning dentist appointment so I went to my briefcase, already late, to grab my wallet, cell phone and blackberry. And where my blackberry is usually attached, was nothing. So I looked around real quickly to see if it fell out and nothing. Suddenly, an image of the night before flashed in my mind. I was getting off the Delta Shuttle last night and while walking away from the back steps the TSA guy said to a woman near me that she dropped her phone. She went back to get what looked like a blackberry in a cloth holder, exactly what I lost. I had just used my gadget so I didn’t look to see if it was mine. I used my cell phone on the drive home, which I keep right next to my BB, and then took my laptop out of my briefcase later in the evening so I thought I would have noticed it missing yesterday. And if the woman did pick it up and realized it wasn’t hers, she would have turned it into the guys at the airport, right? But there I was this morning, no stupid blackberry. I don’t even like the thing, I hate gadgets, but am becoming more dependant on it, like Oxycotin or crack. It’s awful.

So anyway, I called the airport and was told to go down there. Ugh. To make a long story short, I ended up at the airport later in the day and it was not at the baggage counter, not in the delta safe, and TSA didn’t have it. It’s not in my truck, and nowhere in the house. It’s gone. So then to make it worse, I called my company’s help desk to have them block email and the phone on it that I never use (I have a separate phone for just making calls, a blackberry for mobile email and web, and yet another for music), and was told I had to open a ticket online. So even though it took me about an hour to hit the right sequence of numbers to actually talk to someone about my blackberry issue, I hung up and went online. And guess what? The site was down. So I called back, listened very carefully since the options have changed, which they seem to change EVERY DAY, hit 3, 3, 2, 6, 8, 1, 3, 1, 1 and got back to the same department I think because they also told me to go to a website that was not working.

So for all I know someone is making calls to China (everything other than my phone on the BB is password protected) and I will be hit with the bill. And I have a fear that I will never see the little guy again and will live the remainder of my life without really knowing where it went. Kind of sad.

On another quick note, I took my pickup truck to get inspected today. When the moron a-hole drove it back out of the garage bay, there was a sticker with a big red R in the window, R for FAILED. My 1995 black Ford F-150 did not pass the ONE EFFING TEST IT HAS TO TAKE ALL YEAR. Now, I keep my truck in good shape, it’s the only thing I have to drive with any dignity since our other vehicle is a mini van. There was nothing on it that should fail. But wait, I was wrong. Look hard enough and you can find SOMETHING to fail. Mr Dave, the dial on the radio was turned to conservative talk radio, that is not allowed under Massachusetts RMV regulations.

So I said to the (expletive deleted) “What NOW” since I was told by my dentist that I needed to have a filling redone, my BlackBerry was lost somewhere between the back of a Delta plane and my house, and I still had to put in a day’s work at the factory.

Well, apparently there is a useless good for nothing light on the side of the front headlight that comes on when you turn on the parking lights. It is not the headlight or the high beams, and its not the normal larger parking lights. It’s a tiny square on the side of my wrap-around headlight section that doesnot add any more light or safety to the truck and is USELESS, and the one on the left of the truck was out.

“THAT can’t be it?? You have to be joking. I failed because of THAT”.

The guy said that all lights have to work.

So I went home and in the pouring rain tried to fix it. Was it as easy as the headlight lights, which take about 30 seconds to change? Of course not, why would it be. So I played around with it for a while but couldn’t figure out how to get the entire headlight assembly off to get to that one tiny bulb. I consulted all three maintenance manuals I have on my truck – Haynes, Chilton and Ludel – but nothing that easily told me how to do it. Picture-less instructions said 1) Take off cover, 2) change bulb, 3) put cover back on. I’ll wait until it stops raining and I have some more time, and take another pass at it.

The strange thing about failing an inspection though, is that they give you 60 days to fix the problem and the original gas station has to pass you for no additional charge. So while my inspection, if I passed, would expire on Nov of next year, now I can wait until January, bring it back, and I’ll have until Jan of 2009 until its up again. It gives me an additional 2 months. Just the fact that I see the benefit of not having to get it inspected again for 14 months should just show you how bad my day has been.

Dave out.

Comments

[David]

Blackberry has been found. It was in my suit jacket, and it came to me around 4:30 this morning while I was up with our middle child that I put it there while walking off the plane. Ugh, I am an idiot.

[Rich]

If your inspection station is doing things the "right" way - then you will still get a November 2008 sticker upon passing the inspection. Even if you wait until January. If you are lucky and the inspection station people are morons (or the guy just does not care) - then you will get a Jan 2009 sticker. Keep your fingers crossed. BTW - glad you found your bb.

[David]

So that is how it works. I knew it was too good to be true.