My cell phone contract through Verizon expired back in December. Because I had heard rumours that AT&T were likely going to lose their exclusivity on the iPhone sometime in late January or early February, I chose to poke along with a month-to-month contract and continue using my now two-year-old (and very basic) LG until the glory of Apple was finally bestowed upon Verizon, who stupidly baulked at (and promptly snubbed) the original iPhone when it was offered to them.
They, of course, paid the price for their stupidity and short-sightedness.
January and most of February came and went and the iPhone news turned bleak. It might not be until June – quite possibly much, much later – that this deal would happen. Maybe. Could be next year. Kind of. Eventually. Verizon were busy fiddling with their equipment and comparing the size of their upcoming 4G against AT&T and Sprint (who are already deploying their own 4G) and were touting the Droid as the Next Best Thing Ever and an alternative to the iPhone. And Apple are busy tinkering with their iPad and don’t seem to care much about anything else.
After a deluge of email and snail-mail from Verizon about upgrading my contract - and getting tired of the idiotic array of useless external buttons on my LG constantly beeping and dialling from my pocket every time I moved or breathed, I caved in.
With a $50 credit and a $100 on-line discount, I decided to opt for a 'free' Blackberry Curve 8350, to 'Discover What Life is Like on a Blackberry SmartPhone.'
I, of course, paid the price for my stupidity and short-sightedness.
Now I know that there are millions of happy Blackberry users out there, and I’m glad for you, but I hated it. I fucking hated it with an unbridled passion. After two weeks of dealing with the counter-intuitive menu design, the miniscule keys – which were fine for texting but a nightmare for placing calls unless you had a good deal of spare time to do so – and the pointless three different folders for apps you have, apps you can have, and apps you’ve downloaded (which are also apps you have but are not in the folder for the apps you have), and two different message folders – one for your email and one for duplicate email to tell you that you have a email message in your email folder – I gave up.
And Verizon are, frankly, no help. They recommend that before activating your new phone, you should download, install, and take advantage of their back-up software so you can transfer your contact information and your saved media to your new phone – and then not bothering to tell you that this does not work on the Blackberry. They also do not tell you that, although the Blackberry takes full advantage of Bluetooth connectivity, it cannot extract the contacts from your old (but Bluetooth enabled) phone, but it can send the contacts you currently don’t have to your old phone that has all your contacts in it. Verizon will, however, swap your contacts for you at a Verizon store for $10, so long as you don’t mind the thirty-minute wait after you’ve driven across town.
Rather than waste more time, I called Verizon and told them that, because I was still within my thirty day ‘trial period,’ I was finished with the Curve and they could have it back and asked if I should take it to one of their stores. No. You have to send it back in the box with all of the original packaging because it was a web order.
Fine.
I erased the two apps I installed, the Guardian UK and AP news alerts (because I am a news junkie), deleted the minute amount of personalisation I had done, buffed the screen clear of fingerprints, and repackaged the Curve for its return trip to Verizon via FedEx. I called Verizon to tell them that I was ready to return the phone and the nice lady said that to save time I could simply return it to any Verizon store. I said that I had been told I could not do that. She laughed and said, no, no, don’t be silly; that’s perfectly okay to just take it to the store.
Fine.
The next day I stopped by the Verizon Wireless store two miles from work. The nice lady said that only two stores accept returns on web purchases and, surprise, they were both on the other end of town.
Fine.
Later that afternoon I drove across town, box in hand, and marched into one of the convenient Verizon locations that accept web order returns. And I waited. And I waited.
And I waited some more.
Finally a woman who looked like Alanis Morissette came to help me. I explained to her the situation (and noticed that she casually slid her own Blackberry behind her back as I launched into what I disliked about Research In Motion’s brainchild) and told her that I simply wanted to exchange the albatross for something better.
Two hours – yes, two hours – later I exited into the cold darkness of a rainy March night with everything resolved and a new new phone: the Droid. And like a curious adolescent who inadvertently discovered their genitalia isn’t just for making water, I cannot keep my hands off of it.
Is it better than the Blackberry? Yah, sure, you betcha. It makes the Blackberry seem like the technological equivalent of two tin cans on a wire, except for the part where I will still have to manually enter the contacts from my old (but Bluetooth enabled) LG. Is it better than an iPhone? Well Verizon users will probably never know the answer to that question.
Will they, Steve?
I must only blame myself.
From the dawn of time, every sentient life-form to have ever existed, every
civilisation to rise and fall or to have passed on into the distant mists of
myth and memory was able to make rapid advancements through the development of
a systematic means of transferring both formal and informal information; to express
thoughts both abstract or concrete; to communicate by the use of structured
sounds their hopes, their dreams, their desires, and to make these ideas known
to others of their kind.

Oh, Hu-man...Hu-man...
There is, despite your misguided thoughts to the contrary, a very specific reason that the curious rectangular pieces of paper in which you sadly misplace so much confidence called 'money' often look remarkably similar to the image provided to your other left and, equally, a reason that you receive heavy sighs and looks of extreme annoyance from the low-wage-earning beings you so wrongly look down upon who do your bidding. (Though, to be candid, if it were not for this poorly mistreated servile class of beings you so effervescently treat with such jubilant disregard to your own smug self-satisfaction, one wonders how you might ultimately fare were it necessary for you to do for yourself those clearly reprehensible things such as preparing foodstuffs and various acts of requisite sanitation that you so wrongly believe remains far outside the purview of the imaginary elite.)
Yes, Hu-man, the reason your superfluously imperative 'money' appears so absolutely dissimilar in every conceivable fashion to the image supplied there on your other right is due, once again, to your implacable refusal to correctly administer the extraordinary functionality of the one item which allows you to perform such things as the effortless completion of astonishing technological advancements such as 'Channel Surfing;' to quickly flip through dog-eared books and magazines; to cunningly expel nose goblins on a wide trajectory from your speeding automobile or into random unseen areas of your dwelling or the dwelling of those whom you visit when no-one is looking; to experience masturbatory glee without clumsy manipulation and navigation or any complicated instruction or assistance; or to illustrate, in the manner of your iconic Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, your marvellously innate ability to loudly and correctly pronounce the first letter of your alphabet.
Fine. Fine, then.
Conversely, the skilful, adept, and ultimately correct utilisation of the Opposable Thumb brilliantly allows for the more adroit mastery of many basic motor skills and frees the cognisant higher functions of the brain from the dutiful bounds of slavishly inept fumbling and allows it to concentrate on important and far more useful functions such as working out bits like time dilation theory, torsion physics, and understanding your fascination for watching vehicles make high speed left turns for prolonged periods of time. 



