I spend a lot of time on my computer. In fact, now I wonder what I did before I got my first one.

I am of the generation that took typing in high school, not computers. My typewriter was even a manual one. Speed tests were the dreaded thing in those classes. I actually had one teacher who carried a wooden ruler as he wandered around the class. Our manual typewriters didn’t even have the letters on the keys.

I felt even then that I would need all the business classes I could take in my high school. Many students didn’t take typing, bet they wish they had now.

My son’s tried to get out of typing too. That is one thing I insisted on with them. Oh how they hated practicing. Since they both were into writing, both of their careers were on computers. I often wanted to say, “I told you so!”

My grandson used a computer before he was even in school. His generation started out on them, quite different from mine.

Being the news addict that I am, I kept hearing the word BlackBerry almost as much as I heard Obama. I would see him walking carrying this “thing.” The news story broke that he might have to give up his BlackBerry. That really aroused my curiosity. I had not idea what a BlackBerry even was. Then he said he would not give up his BlackBerry. Sounded really important to me. I guess the debate between he and the Secret Service still goes on.

I was in the computer department recently at Wal-Mart. I stopped two women who were working in that department.

I was determined to find out about the BlackBerry. I asked one, “Please tell me what a BlackBerry is.” Before she had time to answer the other woman said, “Oh, it’s like a raspberry.” Then they both laughed. I said, “I am serious. I want to know about this device that is causing our Secret Service so much debate over security for the President.”

I must say Beth and Vickie helped me understand about the BlackBerry. I even got to look at one. It didn’t look like a blackberry to me. But remember, I am from the old school. My conception of a blackberry was in pies.

I found the following explanation on my computer. I know there are many of you who took the same kind of typing I did. . . and have limited technical knowledge as I have. Of course, some of you may not care either. But if you are, and next time you see Obama on television, if he has that thing up to his ear, you’ll know he won the debate with the Secret Service.

History of the BlackBerry Phone: The BlackBerry phone is a wireless hand-held device that was originally launched in 1997 as a two-way pager. The more commonly known BlackBerry we are accustomed to today, which supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing, and other wireless information services, was released in 2002. Developed and manufactured by Canadian telecommunications company Research in Motion (RIM), the BlackBerry delivers telecommunications over wireless data networks provided by mobile phone service companies, such as O2, Vodafone, and T-Mobile.

While BlackBerry’s include PDA applications, such as address book, calendar, and to-do lists, their claim to fame has always been their ability to send and receive e-mail wherever it can access a wireless broadband network. It has a built in QWERTY keyboard designed for “thumbing”, the use of only thumbs to type.

How did RIM come up with the name BlackBerry you wonder? After weeks of working with Lexicon Branding Inc., the Sausalito, Calif.-based firm, responsible for naming Intel’s Pentium microprocessor and Apple’s PowerBook, they settled on “BlackBerry”, one of the naming experts thought the little buttons looked like “tiny seeds in a strawberry.” Straw sounded to slow and someone else suggested blackberry and RIM was sold. Before ‘BlackBerry’ the device was called LeapFrog, alluding to the technology leaping over its competitors. During brainstorming, the placeholder name was PocketLink. On April 2, 2008, RIM announced the number of BlackBerry subscribers had passed 14 million. Not bad for a little company from Waterloo, Ontario.