It's madness out there.  Stay home and protect your loved ones.  Reports are coming in from all over the place that Apple's iTunes Servers have wilted under the crazy iPhone 3G demand, and retail outlets cannot activate customers' shiny new phones.  Engadget is reporting that "Apple has confirmed to us that activation is down, and that customers are being asked to take the phone home and activate via iTunes later." 

Worse than that, people trying to upgrade first-gen iPhones to the new 2.0 firmware have apparently been getting PWNd by the madness and some of them wound up with bricked iPhones.  Yeeks.  I'm kind of glad my first-gen model is unlocked -- I'm not upgrading until an unlock solution hits the interWebs.  By then I'll have the PhoneDog 3G review model to play with, anyway.