the new apple iPhone 3G has officially been released, and once again… i have missed the opportunity to own one of these things. First… a little background. About a year ago, I needed to switch carriers. Sprint was not working at all in our new home, dropping calls and generally misbehaving.

Now, I would be classified as an ‘early adopter’. I owned the Hitachi G1000 Pocket PC ‘Brick’ phone before smart phones were cool. My wife does not understand my sordid love affair with these devices, but she has forgiven me through that phone, a Treo 650, 750, a switch to the HTC 3525 when I moved to Cingular, and now my current phone, the HTC 8525. None of these relationships came without heartache, and most of these changes were due to problems with each phone as we went along. As we stood in line waiting for the new iPhone 3G … at about 8am… (after driving an hour to get to the Apple store), she turned to me and said ‘i better not hear one complaint out of you about this phone.’

Well… remember how I told you that Sprint was not working in my area and I needed to switch? This was back in March of 2007. The first generation of the iPhone was not due to be released until June, but I really could not endure Sprint any longer, and figured that maybe this one time I would just wait until all the kinks were worked out of the iPhone before I got it. So that’s how I missed out on generation one of this device of the uber-elite.

Flash forward to July 11th, 2008. Melissa (my faithful wife), myself… and about 800 to 1000 other loyal Apple fan-boys (and girls) were lined up at 8am (or earlier) for the equivalent of a city block or more within the Green Hills Mall in Nashville, TN … the Apple store far out of site. One of the people in line commented… ‘with all this manpower, we could build a house in the time we’re waiting!’ He was probably right.

We had some interesting conversations with some of our line-mates… oh… and Kevin Max from DC-Talk was in front of us!

So… after about 8 hours of stinky arm-pit fun (a guy behind us must have forgotten to take a bath for about a month!)… we finally get let into the ‘Heaven’ that is the Apple store. I actually have a friend who works there, so I got his attention and he wound up being the one to help me out. We picked up a nice leather case, some screen protectors, a 2 year Apple Care, and a black 16GB iPhone.

But… that’s only where the fun begins.

What I was told was… I was not eligible for the upgrade, but Melissa was. Unfortunately, this would leave us with having to switch phone numbers because they would not move my phone number to the iPhone. The concierge spent about 30 minutes online with several ATT reps trying to resolve the non-issue, reminding them all that we had been there all day long… on Melissa’s last day of vacation.

Call it a matter of pride or principle… but I left without paying full retail for the iPhone. Remembering that you can’t eat your principles… Melissa and I decided to go with a couple of our new found friends (Thanks Aaron and Ashleigh!) at The Cheesecake Factory (another article for another time, great place, highly recommended!).

After a good meal and some time to think… I decided to go back to the Apple store, swallow my pride, drop my principles… and buy the phone. Unfortunately, the line was still a block long, and the bouncer at the door would not let me in without first waiting with the horde.

more to follow… the hunt is now on… hopefully this does not turn into a story like my hunt for the wii!