Well, I went to the show yesterday morning.

I've never been an early adopter at all, and have never waited in long lines for any product, but I figured you should experience nearly everything at least once in your life, so I got in bed early Thursday night to prepare for the day ahead.

I set my alarm for 4am but woke up on my own at 3. I got up, got showered, got dressed, and headed to Bellevue. Arriving at Bellevue Square Mall at approximately 4:30am I found my place, already number 15 in line.

The wait was somewhat long, but no overnight camping or other extreme shenanigans. The people closest to me in line were very pleasant, and a couple of them were even in my same line of work. We enjoyed conversation with one another as we waited, which helped the time pass more quickly.

At around 6am, security showed us into the mall interior, where we found a roped-off staging area waiting for us. We herded eagerly like cattle into the line and stared at the Apple storefront, shrouded in secrecy by a black sheet hanging just inside the glass.

At around 6:30-7:00, a half dozen Apple Store employees came out and began their predictable attempt at stirring the sleepy, waiting droves into an excited frenzy. They were only mildly successful. They handed out Starbucks coffee, bottles of water, and small brochures describing what you'd need to have ready in order to purchase an iPhone - strangely the pint of virgin blood was omitted from the documentation.

At 8am sharp, the Apple Store employees inside the store lowered the black shroud, and revealed themselves to us lowly cretins outside. Everyone erupted into cheering and general tomfoolery, and I immediately felt less cool about being a part of this process, and more like an over-zealous jackass.

It was announced that they'd allow 20 people at a time into the store, and I must embarrassingly admit that I felt a rush of excitement, realizing I'd be part of the "first wave". With that, they started counting off people and letting them into the store.

I passed into the store, receiving high-fives (seriously) from the gauntlet of Apple employees lining the entrance. I escaped relatively unharmed and headed directly to an associate to request my new iPhone, a 16GB model in white. He obliged and met me at a random point in the store to complete the transaction. He scanned this and clicked that on his little Easy Pay device, and then announced a problem.

He couldn't connect to the Apple servers.

As I surveyed the store, I realized that many other employees were obviously having the same problem, and the manager appeared already fully prepared to fly into an inconsolable temper tantrum.

After waiting for approximately 20 minutes, all the while window-shopping for additional accesories to augment my iPhone (I swear these technical difficulties are on purpose), my Apple guy was able to connect to the servers and complete stage 1 of the transaction. In case you're not aware, stage 1 involves teasing me with a cleverly designed box, taking my money, and deactivating my existing previous-generation iPhone. Stage 2 was to tether my shiny new device to a Mac, connect to iTunes, and complete the activation of the new iPhone, rendering it useable.

Alas, this was not to be.

Apparently, due to overwhelming load on the iTunes Store servers, Apple's infrastructure simply collapsed, and iTunes Store went down globally. Down. Offline. On launch day. Someone at Apple buy Steve Jobs a shot or seven, because you're all about to be fired.

The iPocalypse had begun.

Finally, after a few attempts at activation, I was told to take the new phone home (or to work, in my case) and activate it there as soon as iTunes should become available.

I was filled with shame and self-loathing.

I had waited in line for 3.5 hours, spent another 45 minutes and untold dollars in the store, only to be sent on my way with two very expensive, yet very useless paper-weights. I was discouraged, but passing the hoards of people still waiting in line as I exited the store with my swanky iPhone 3G bag full of (non-working) goodness, I felt better (than them) and thus left Bellevue Square satisfied (and with a slight air of superiority).

When I arrived at work, I plugged the iPhone into my computer and began the attempt at activation. It took about 3 hours and hundreds of attempts, but finally the phone beeped at me, grabbed a signal, and alerted me to a text message I'd received sometime previous. It was alive. I instantly forgot about the issues I'd faced, and set about toying with my new device.

I've been exploring the phone extensively over yesterday afternoon and this morning, and I have to say, I'm completely satisfied with my decision to upgrade. I am quite impressed by this device, it truly does live up to the hype, and the advances over the previous model made it well worth the upgrade (especially since I sold my previous model yesterday evening for the same price I paid for the new one).

Of course, posting all this talk with no photos would be foolish of me, so here are a few images of the new iPhone 3G.