Crackball Woe

Current Mood: Alarmed & Esctatic

As hideous and quasi-illegal as the title sounds, this story is really about my Crackberry.

The crackball on this thing tends to throw a fit from time to time. While I appreciate RIM’s use of a ball instead of four directional keys, I spent the better part of twenty four hours completely unable to scroll downwards. The ball was working perfectly before tutorial (9 a.m.). I put the phone away until the end of tutorial (11 a.m.). When I pulled it out, the crackball threw its fit. Something had twisted the ball’s undergarments into a tight knot, and there was no satisfying *click click* on a downward scroll. It felt sticky and unconstitutional. To make matters worse, the design of the CrackUI is very tightly coupled with the notion of a working crackball, which led to the following bouts of insanity:

1) When the crackball was working, I had switched the phone to the “Off” ringer profile during tutorial yesterday. After tutorial, the crackball died. I could not scroll back up to “Normal” or “Vibrate.” I missed six calls.

2) I had been reviewing a few old emails before tutorial. After tutorial, I could not scroll up to the new messages. The red notification LED kept blinking all day as more and more messages came in, and I could that irritating *blink blink* out of the corner of my eye any time the phone was in my periphery. My fingers, now veritable caged felines, tingled and thrashed around helplessly.

3) I was unable to holster or keep it in my pocket, because downward scrolling is required in my CrackUI to reach the “Keyboard Lock” icon. I walked around with it in hand all day. *facepalm*

MacGyver time for a MacGyver fix:

1) Find a safety pin.
2) Use safety pin to release the trackball as described in various Youtube videos (search for “removing blackberry trackball”).
3) Use safety pin to clean out dust and dirt around the trackball. Also use it to bend the rear clip slightly to provide better contact with the ball itself.
4) Reinsert trackball.
5) Return to normalcy.

One safety pin is all it takes to fix your crackball. While I do not recommend this approach as it probably voids some sort of warranty somewhere in the world (and is probably NOT the safest way to clean a crackball), it worked for me in a pinch.

Hurrah!

VR

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