Blackberry outage--am I the only one who enjoyed being offline?

Maybe it's just the fact that I was out sick last week, but man, I really enjoyed my Blackberry not barking messages at me for a few hours. I had a zen-like calm only achievable when completely disconnected.

Since the beginning of the year I have found myself less and less interested in living life online at all times. Anybody else feeling this way?

[noblackberryandhappy]

Did you know that there's an OFF button on the Blackberry? I don't understand why people are enslaved by their gadgets. The tools are supposed to make our lives better, no?

[Matt Asay]

Dave, I was stuck at the DMV without anything to do but try to avoid breathing in the noxious fumes of body odor that permeated the room. I was praying for Blackberry access during that nearly two hours that I sat there. Normally, an outage would have been refreshing. Yesterday, it was nearly fatal.

[Antemeridian]

I find myself echoing the comments. I didn't mind being out of touch, but I can accomplish that with the power button, or at least through call screening. However, when I was trying to check the weather in Chicago to see if I should be trying to find an alternate routing home, that outage was a little frustrating.

[foobartoo]

I set up a profile on my BlackBerry called "Home." It still rings the phone (since I don't get many work-related calls off-hours) but it doesn't notify me when I get mail (which happens 24x7). It's great.

All you Crackberry dweebs seriously need to get a life. The world will continue to spin.

[lawofcsgo]

I guess this is part of the reason I don't have my Palm Treo "push" emails to my device. I have it set up so that I have to choose to retrieve them. That adds about 5 seconds to the process, but then I choose when I want to deal with email. I still check several times per day, and that is more than often enough. If someone really needs my attention, they just call me instead of emailing me. Also, I can be online through the web browser and getting things done that way without being bombarded by emails. I thought that one reason someone would choose a Blackberry over a Treo is that they want that direct constant connection to email.