I received my replacement BlackBerry Pearl on Monday as I sort of figured I would. Getting back up to speed would take me a couple of hours between my various at projects. I was proud that I'd replaced the both the SIM card and the media card all by myself. I'd asked the only guy in our office to help but he was pulled to do an assignment and I was way too impatient to wait for him --- sorry, I really am working on that but I'm a Crackberry head and I wanted needed to be connected to my e-mails from a lot of people that I've never actually met before. Go figure.

The AT&T folks didn't send an entire phone; they sent the phone minus the battery cover. It looked really weird but I understand the possible production cost savings and potential revenue from selling replacement covers.

Everything was cool except I think I lost some of my ringtones. No big deal in the grand scheme of things. Things got a little weird waking up Tuesday morning to e-mails invading my BlackBerry at a speed you could never imagine. No, I hadn't become oh, so, popular; many of these messages were old and re-appearing in my box. What's old? How about four and five months old?

After several AT&T customer service and tech folks, I ended up speaking to a guy at RIM {Research In Motion, the actually BlackBerry folks – the Crackmasters!). He talked me through a few fixes to no avail. He said a few of their customers were experiencing the same problem but assured me it would be corrected within the hour. How'd he know that?

At that point, there were over 7,000 unopened messages on my Berry. Keep in mind that I'd already deleted a few hundred throughout the day and there were old messages on there also. I tried waiting to see if the unit would explode. It didn't.

The problem was corrected was promised and then I was left with thousands of messages. I learned a new option on my e-mail message menu. It read 'Delete Prior'. That meant I could delete all messages prior to a certain date. Of course I took advantage of that and emptied the inboxes for all of my accounts.

I've been better about getting to my e-mails but I'm still at 622 unopened messages as I type this. I still love my BlackBerry Pearl; now I just need to learn how to use all of the unit's features.

Smooches…