Thousands of hollow-eyed Crackberry addicts have been seen roaming the streets, accosting strangers and asking to borrow their cell phones and laptops so they could please please please check their email. The reason? A systemwide server outage at Research in Motion that lasted from Taxday Tuesday evening through the middle of Woeful Wednesday. RIM has yet to explain exactly what caused the outage, though inside Thousands of hollow-eyed Crackberry addicts have been seen roaming the streets, accosting strangers and asking to borrow their cell phones and laptops so they could please please please check their email. The reason? A systemwide server outage at Research in Motion that lasted from Taxday Tuesday evening through the middle of Woeful Wednesday. RIM has yet to explain exactly what caused the outage, though inside sources firmly deny that Karl Rove had anything to do with it. That same Taxday, Intuit also reported service outages. Thousands of TurboTax e-Filers were unable to get their 1040s in on time because Intuit’s servers were overwhelmed with traffic. (However, there is no truth to the rumor that Intuit chose that day to upgrade its modem bank from 28 to 56 kbps.) The IRS has given late TT filers two days’ grace before siccing the hounds on them.Finally, longtime writer/first-time reader R.L. reports that his AOL Phoneline account has been verklempt for more than three weeks. He writes: If you call me, the voicemail system says something like “the caller is forwarding his messages…and oh, by the way, I just forgot the number you dialed. Can you enter it again?”. Not exactly the way a voicemail system should work…. I figured out who the big cheeses were and their email addresses–namely Alex Quilici (Vice President Online Services/Voice Services), and Andy Spillane (Vice President, Product Development for Messaging and Social Media). I sent them a polite, but pointed note. That was on a Thursday; come Monday morning, I received a call from “Ted” (name changed to protect the guilty), who was a “tier 2” voice services dude. Clearly, my cri de Coeur had been heard! After a bit of back and forthing, he admitted that AOL had stupidly changed telephonic service providers (of some sort) and that now 1) 10 to 15% (!) of AOL voicemail users were down with this problem and 2) AOL still didn’t have any idea–after 3 weeks of working on it–when the problem would be fixed, and 3) Hmmm. Maybe my grumping about canceling AOL’s voicemail service wasn’t such a bad idea. FYI, R.L. has has had an AOL account longer than anybody except maybe Steve Case. Think maybe it’s time to switch? Have you been let down by high tech lately? Share your sorrows with me here or post comments below. Top tipsters may receive a handsome Cringe bag to help mitigate their misfortune. Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business