i dont know if it has something to do with it but i'm not getting emails through gmail and i noticed that i dont have a blinking light. are these tied together?

By default the LED is a new mail indicator. So no mail, no light.

Depends on the blinking light. It's not always new mail. A green "always flashing" led is a coverage signal. It can be turned off under screen/keyboard and has been known to turn itself off sometimes when it shouldn't.

The better test of coverage would be to look at your signal bars and see what it says.

On a 8800 the default setting of the "LED Coverage Indicator" is set to Off.

Wirelessly posted (BB 8860: BlackBerry8100/4.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)

Its about time they defaulted it to off. I can't stand that thing!