Stop the Suffering

This weekend's outage may be just what the doctor ordered. Millions of BB users suffer from a trendy new affliction known as "BlackBerry Thumb". Formerly known as "Nindendonitis", Blackberry Thumb occurs when the thumbs and connecting tendons in the wrist are overworked causing pain and/or numbness.

Thumbs are designed to stabilize your other fingers. On a normal keyboard people use the more dexterous fingers for striking the letter keys, reserving the relatively clumsy thumbs for occasionally hitting the the spacebar. But since thumb typing is so repetitive and the keys are so small you're likely to press harder than usual on a normal keyboard. Hence the once humble thumb ends up doing a lot more than designed to.

For temporary relief (and about 50 bucks) you can head down to your local Hyatt spa for a "Technology Hand Massage" aimed at relaxing and stretching the hand muscles. But according to WebMD the only cure for BlackBerry thumb is to lay off thumb typing. Ha! Fat chance.