Activation is the scary part of the iPhone process. Tales abound of yesterday's long waits and crushing failures. Unfortunately, my story is no different.

I got my iPhone home at about 12:30 P.M. today. When I connected it to my MacBook (named Caladan for reasons that anybody familiar with my computer naming scheme should understand), iTunes started right up and registered it. Alas, the phone made a little "sad tweet" and informed me that it had no service and the service was required for activation. Hm.

Well, even though my crappy Motorola L2 has 5 bars everywhere in my dorm, maybe the iPhone just isn't that strong. So let's try taking it outside, where every cell provider in the universe has 5 bars. Nope. Still no service. <google />It looks like some iPhones were shipped with inactive SIM cards. Well, that's a bummer. Let's call AT&T customer service...

I called AT&T (on my Motorola) and talked to a representative named Keasa Arnold. She walked me through some basic troubleshooting steps (try the SIM card on my other phone, try my other phone's SIM card on the iPhone, etc.) and told me she was just leaving for her lunch break, but would call me back in a few minutes any way. I went through the rigamarole, but no luck. Ms. Arnold called me back and we jointly concluded that the SIM card must not be set up correctly. A couple of minutes of typing on her end and I had 5 bars on my iPhone. Kudos to Ms. Arnold and AT&T wireless; yet again, they've impressed me.

Next up: first impressions