Rick's Time On Earth: July 2008

Friday 8 am: The Apple iPhone goes on sale in the United States. I hear rumors that some people actually slept out the night before in front of some Apple stores.

Friday 2pm: I leave work a little early. I plan to drive up to Danbury where an Apple store is and meet one of my friends there. The drive will be about an hour. We both have the original iPhone but we want the newer faster phone.

Friday 3:15pm: I arrive at the Danbury Mall. I hit some traffic but the ride wasn't bad. My friend called me on my soon to be "old" iPhone and said he wasn't feeling well and ask me to pick up a phone for him. No problem.

Friday: 3:30pm: As I'm walking up to the Apple store through the mall I see a line. Not just a few people but maybe a good 75-100 people. I ask a man in line what's going on. He said we're in line for the iPhone. I think to myself, it must be a good phone if all these people are waiting for it. The line moves verrrrry slowly.

Friday 4:00pm: I call my friend. Told him about the line. I figure it will be worth the wait. A Apple employee who walked by insured me that there's enough phones to go around. Activating the phones seems to be causing the delay.

Friday 5:00pm: The line moved about 30 feet in an hour. After killing time talking to an old security guard riding a segway, a veterinarian who was in line in front of me, a veterinarian, who was in line in back of me (go figure), I found myself staring at people passing by. I even caught myself profiling some of them. By the time I realized what I was doing I had the old security guard a possible child molester, a skinny lady that was downing a huge ice cream cone was bulimic and was going to throw it up after she ate it and a shell shocked looking man who I seriously believe was fantasizing about pushing his bitchy looking wife down the escalator as she nagged at him.

Friday 5:30pm: This is insane. I'm so close to going into the store and the line has gone from a creep and stop to a complete stop. If I didn't drive and hour to get here I would just go home. I suddenly make eye contact with a tall skinny, geeky looking Apple guy. I ask him if there's sgtill phones left. He tells me yes, there's plenty. I tell him that I want to buy 2 phones. One for me and one for my friend. He then tells me that only ONE per customer. I thought these people can't be serious. Why on Earth would they limit one phone per customer? That means more people in these long ass crazy lines. They must be on crack. I was getting a little angry. Oh yea, I had to pee too.

Friday 6:05pm: I walk through the doors of the Apple store. I waste no time. I picked the phone I wanted. The service guy quickly activated my new phone and in 5 minutes I was out of the store. I looked back at the line. There had to be a good 200 people waiting now. I couldn't understand the lines. I was i and out. This was crazy. Oh well.

Friday 6:15pm: I'm in the parking lot. I look at my shinny new phone. I then look at my old phone. The old iPhone suddenly seemed old and beaten. I couldn't wait to use my new phone. I quickly call my friend. The phone sounded great.

Saturday 7:00am: I'm at home. I look at my new phone. I notice where there used to be 5 bars for reception there now was only 1..1 1/2 at best. I found this strange. It's a new and improved iPhone. They said it was "better". But in the same room when I used to get 5 bars on my old iPhone I'm now only getting a fraction of that on my new iPhone. I quickly call AT&T to ask them why. I contact AT&T and after a long barrage of computer voices telling me to press buttons to get me to a person that could help me I am told by the computer "Service is closed until 8am." CLOSED?? Didn't they attempted to open up a little early seeing that they launched this new "improved" phone on the world just hours ago?

Saturday 8:00am: I talk to a service rep who tells me to shut off my phone for 15 minutes and they'll send a signal to the cell tower to up my reception. Sounded kind of high tech to me but it calmed me down.

Saturday 8:20am: I gave the cell tower an extra 5 minutes to do it's thing. I turned back on my phone and .... 1 1/2 bars. I think that lady told me that cell tower thing, hung the phone up and the entire office she worked in had a good laugh. I could actually see this in my head.

Sunday 6:15pm: It's been 48 hours since I first spoke on the new and "improved" iPhone. I actually dropped a call when talking to my sister. That was a first. I tried the new GPS system. Kind of cool but almost useless when I really needed it. The G3 network that makes the phone faster is nice at best. My God, suddenly my old iPhone started looking really, really good again. But I can't go backwards. I need to give this phone a chance. It's just that I LOVED my old iPhone so much. Part of me is thinking "What the hell did I do?"

As I sit here and write this I know in my heart I need to wait this out. It's the first few days of this new "improved" iPhone. I'm going to trust that Apple will fix the problems with this new phone, (YOU HEAR ME APPLE??)

I did a little research on the early American Flag and found that before an offical flag was named there was a wide variety of flags that represented the United States Of America.