Igniting post-traumatic stress disorder in all Gmail/Blackberry users who experiencedFamily stone the download.com/entertainment/2009/09/01/the-great-gmail-fail/”> the Gmail fail a few weeks ago, it appears that RIM, the company that owns Blackberry, is currently experiencing difficulties, causing e-mail and internet service to be spotty on devices in North America.

I noticed my Verizon Blackberry stopped receiving e-mails and Facebook notifications around 11am this morning, and subsequently rushed to the Verizon store where they fixed it for about five minutes before it stopped working again. The store owner, who was only mildly creepy, gave me his e-mail address in case the problem persisted. Thanks to tech blogs, I figured out the problem before he did, but he sent me this anyway: “It seems that RIM is having some issues and hopefully they will fix it by the end of the day today,” he wrote.

At least this proves it’s not just my crappy Bberry finally succumbing to the ailments accrued by me drunkenly dropping it three stories onto a slab of cement.

UPDATE: Though the outage is widespread, it seems to only be impacting some users, primarily those with Verizon. Since this was posted I’ve only gotten about half of the e-mails to my phone that have appeared in my inbox, so unfortunately it has yet to be fixed.