The plan is to show up at an Apple store in the morning to see what obstacles exist to Internet In My Pants. I was unable to rationalize the iPhone’s first release since I knew the 3G was on the horizon, and frankly I’m impressed I waited this long. I believe the ability to annoy Kelly (and anyone in earshot) with “if I had an iPhone…” every time an unanswered question or bit of trivia came up was partly responsible. Resisting giving AT&T money also helped.

But I can wait no longer to consolidate many devices into one. Turns out, the laptop doesn’t quite fit in my pocket, and fails at simple phone calls. My old Motorola (already once replaced) continues to fall apart, while T-Mobile has recently been delivering SMS messages between 1-12 hours late – they’re just asking me to jump ship. My iPod… I may have lost it again. Or Kelly’s hiding it.

I’ve already downloaded a few apps for it, including NetNewsWire, Twitterrific, Yelp, Exposure, and Remote, even though I’ve resisted consuming too much time with pre-acquisition activity.

I expect I’ll still be countering random unanswered questions with “if I had an iPhone,” but now will get to produce one with mock surprise and amuse myself. Also, it’s shiny.

I’ve probably just jinxed my ability to find one.

UPDATED: 19:20
Well, if you followed along with Twitter or caught us on IM, you already know we brought home iPhones today.

I expected a smaller line and a faster queue when we showed up at 8:30 AM, but the Apple and AT&T activation processes were either slow or not responding altogether, resulting in a longer morning than planned. Charlotte was incredibly well behaved despite missing her naps, but there was plenty to distract, and as she was entertaining, we played a good deal to pass the time.

Around 1:30 PM we made it into the Apple store, and knowing exactly what we wanted, the transaction was quick and painless. Even the transfer of our two lines from T-Mobile was a non-issue, which I didn’t expect. They did offer to take the last activation step (the source of so many delays) if we wanted to try, but shared we could also do it from home as well if we wanted to escape. And so they could sell more to the drooling masses, I’m sure, though everyone in line wasn’t leaving until they had their hands on an iPhone.

Including waiting for the AT&T account transactions, I think we spent less than 20 minutes in the store after about a 5 hour wait.

After running some other errands, we came home to plug in the iPhones for activation, and they woke up nearly immediately. I think we avoided many of the direct account frustrations while in line, though it certainly still consumed most of our day.

If we did not have plans for vacation in a few short days, we would’ve just done this later without lines or logistical problems, but we wanted to have mobile internets (which ones? all of them!) while we were gone, and knowing something would go wrong meant we wanted at least a day of padding to reconcile any issues.

So! Now we have these phones. I’m sorry, iPhones. I’ll spare you the gushing over new toys, but they were totally worth the wait.

Sean wins so far for the most evil birthday present. You may all still enter the contest at anytime.

This headcrab, while smaller than the ones I remember, still reminds me too much of creeping around the Black Mesa research facility, fearing zombification. I had to seal it back inside its box for the night, and must transport it to the office in the morning. It’s too horrifying to keep under our roof.

I hope to god it is still there in the morning.

I was looking for new phone about as soon as I got my last, and I was not particularly excited about anything I saw. My desires fell somewhere between a phone that simply did voice and text in a tiny form-factor, and a full-featured brick, knowing the best of both worlds is not possible. I was content enough to not be satisfied with the free crappy phone that came with the service plan years ago, since it meant not commiting more money to something I didn’t like.

The Treos were the most interesting gadget, followed by the PPC 6700, but I couldn’t rationalize the cost of service to take advantage of the features, and the size was really too much, so those were out. Again I considered the basic smaller phones that you get with the service plans, but those didn’t satisfy the technolust. The Motorola PEPL commercial during the Super Bowl alerted me to a sexy phone that I didn’t know I wanted, but I did know $300 for a re-packaged RAZR was asking too much.

So then I looked at the RAZRs again. A slim phone that came out around a year ago, decent set of features, but also thin and light. We stopped by T-Mobile over the weekend to check them out (and to fondle the PEBL), and found out they were selling the RAZR at half the price of the PEBL, and were offing a two-for-one deal with new plans. That’s a Happy Valentine’s Day plan.

So, one year behind the striped shirts, I have a new Motorola RAZR. I’m still waiting for the old phone number to switch over, but I’ve had the chance to play with many of the features already. So far I’m happy.