I received the shipping confirmation and tracking code yesterday. I’m quite excited about tracking my little phone package back and forth across the US:

The FedEx site seems to lag several hours behind the tracking updates. As of midnight, the status was still showing;

At 03:00 this morning, it’s showing that it arrived at BFI yesterday evening:

I was hoping for a something a little more NRT (Near Real Time).

Those of you that have checked out my new website see that I’m all about displaying the latest data I can acquire.

Then there is the question of why I am awake at 03:00 PDT to even LOOK at this data. Insomnia is a regular part of my life.. something I’ve battled for years.. and some of it might be childish anticipation of playing with an awesome new toy, phone.

Even when it arrives some time Friday (today), I will have to go through several steps to get it activated. How many.. a lot.. (me thinks). This is direct from my ‘Welcome to the Borg’ e-mail sent from AT&T:

Congratulations! With AT&T, you get the nations’ fastest mobile broadband network* and the best coverage worldwide – more phones that work in more countries**.

To Activate your Device and utilize the entire suite of features included with your service, you MUST follow these steps IN ORDER;

1. Charge your iPhone.

2. Check all voicemail messages on your existing device. Once your new iPhone has been activated, all voicemail messages and greetings on the former device will be lost. (Existing AT&T Customers Only).

3. Turn it ON and follow the on-screen instructions. Your iPhone may prompt you to connect to iTunes via a Mac or PC. Install it for FREE!

4. Synch iPhone with your contacts, calendars and bookmarks on your computer and with music, video and other content from your iTunes library.

5. Activate your device online at some-website or by calling 1-555-555-1212 from another phone.

6. Turn ON your iPhone and make a test call. If your test call is not successful, wait one hour to allow the activation process to complete then try to make another call.

Once in hand, it’s going to be at least an hour of charging before I can even start to migrate the many gigabytes of information, contacts, photos, songs, videos and notes from the old white 3GS to my new white 4S.

I’m glad they released the white phone right out of the gate this time. I think they lost some initial iPhone 4 sales while people who like white phones (such as myself) waited out the initial order surge. Could this explain the massive initial orders that completely blew away the iPhone 4 release records? Probably not, but it was a factor for me. It removed the decision to wait for the white phone or order the new black one and live with it.

So.. here I sit, at 04:12, typing up a half-coherent ranty blog, wondering if I’ll get back to sleep or I’ll simply fire up the VPN and perform some of my day job.