Everyone knows I’m addicted to my damn Blackberry.  Most people are, although some are less inclined to admit it (I’m looking at you, Rachael).  I use my Blackberry so much, that sometimes my computer goes untouched for days.  This is because I can essentially do everything I needed my computer to do from my Blackberry…I can pay bills, read and send emails, check Facebook, etc. etc.  Shit, I’ve even bought shit on my Blackberry (damn you Amazon application!), and checked in for a flight on it.  Computers are depreciated, I reckon.  As a matter of fact, it had been so long since I last actually used my computer that I didn’t even know that I had some virus or spyware action on it from some torrent I must of downloaded way back when.  Whoops.

So to find out just *exactly* how much I used my Blackberry, I downloaded an app from Early Sail called “I Love Blackberry”  It’s available for an OTA install here: http://download.earlysail.com/i_love_blackberry/ It runs in the background and tracks how much you use your Blackberry.  I ran it for exactly 7 days to see what happened.  Here’s the results:

Daily Average

Total: 72 Times for 2h 44m 8s
Work Hours: 34 Times for 52m 0s
Nights and Weekends: 38 Times for 1h 52m 8s

Weekly Average

Total: 246 Times for 8h 4m 17s
Work Hours: 170 Times for 4h 20m 2s
Nights and Weekends: 76 Times for 3h 44m 15s

Monthly Average

Total: 1051 Times for 34h 35m 31s
Work Hours: 727 Times for 18h 34m 26s
Nights and Weekends: 324 Times for 16h 1m 5s

A few things to note is that “work hours” are considered from 0700 to 1600 monday through friday.  Nights and weekends are from 1600 on Friday to 0000 on Monday.  Additionally, since I only ran the application for a full week, the monthly average is an estimate based on the daily & weekly average usage.  Lastly, of special concern, is the fact that I’m not allowed to have a Blackberry or cell phone with me in the area that I work, so the usage during “work hours” is very interesting.

I wanted to draw a comparison between my personal Blackberry usage and my work Blackberry usage, but our corporate IT policy on the device (who woulda set that shit up??!) doesn’t allow the application to be installed.  But I’ll fill it in for you: it’s probably only a third as much usage.

This should be rock-solid proof that I’m addicted, and should sober me up a bit.  I remember telling someone that “I can’t live without my Blackberry,” in which he responded that “that is sad.”  I agreed with him, but that exchange still didn’t make me change my habits.  This is for a multitude of reasons.  For one, as mentioned above, my Blackberry *is my fucking computer*.  I use it in place of everything on do on my desktop computer.  And this is of importance, since everything I do–from managing finances, to shopping, to reading news, and to communicating with friends and family–is accomplished on the computer.  Next, there’s the simple fact that a Blackberry is still a goddamn cell phone. Although my minute usage since getting Rach and I a Blackberry is astronomically lower (by at least half), I still use it to–gasp!–talk to people.  Then there’s the fact that I’m much more active the average cell phone user is.  I have my job job, my ski shop job, my golf course “job”, and then my personal life.  All are managed from the Blackberry.  This obviously adds a lot of time to the device’s usage.  Finally, the Blackberry is a toy.  Once you have it, you’re going to use it, just like anything else fun and dynamic.  The Blackberry can be anything you want it to be.  Just a phone?  Done.  Phone and email machine?  Done.  Super ultra mega social networking machine?  Done.  Your life on the go?  Fucking done.

So looking back on the conversation with that person, and the numbers above, I’m not really turned off from using my Blackberry any less.  There are times, in fact, that I could curb my usage (like in a wedding ceremony, but it’s not every day Tiger Woods comes from behind to win the Buick Open), but for the most part, it’s all reasonable usage.  So thinking about how I said “I can’t live without it,” I stand by that statement, and take solace in the fact that I really, truly can live without it, just as I have done when I go backpacking, camping, and skiing.  I can live without, although life is just a bit harder to manage then.  Oh, and then there’s the whole “it’s the fucking 21st century, move out of the goddamn sticks and ditch the flip phone” mentality.  We’re about to colonize Mars, being reliant on a cell phone is no different than being reliant upon a radio 50 years ago.

While I’m not going to wear my Blackberry usage as a badge of honor (although this post would seem to indicate that I’m doing just that), I’m not going to deny that I’m a power user.  And I’m OK with that.  I’ve turned many people on to Blackberry since I’ve had one.  Most of them admit that their lives are easier, that they couldn’t live without the device (in a manner of speaking), and some of them flat-out are power users, like me.  That only further validates me shameless usage.  So yeah, I’m a crackberry addict.  As if I didn’t already know that.