Hours of sleep: 5
  iPhone 4S preorders placed: 1
 Crankiness level: High

My alarm clock jarred me out of a sound sleep and it took me a few moments to remember why I’d set my alarm for 2:55 a.m. Oh, yeah. I needed to preorder my iPhone 4S. The thought of getting my hands on the new iPhone served well to rouse me and I reached over to my current iPhone to preorder one with the Apple Store app.

But the Apple online store was still offline and displaying that “We’ll be back soon” message on a virtual yellow sticky note. I was very familiar with that sticky note thanks to many previous preorder efforts for other new Apple products. I hated it. With a passion.

I dragged myself out of my warm, comfortable bed and hunted down some slippers and a robe to brave the cold floor and the fall chill that had worked its way into the house. I made my way down to my home office and sat down in front of my computer with a sigh. I woke it from sleep with a tap on the keyboard. Unlike me, it did not notice the late hour and woke without any disorientation.

I went to the Apple store site and saw the same cheerful virtual sticky note. And I kept seeing it for the next 30 minutes after refreshing the page over and over and over again.

I wanted to tear that sticky note into tiny little pieces.

Finally, the Apple online store started to load around 3:30 a.m. Hurrah! And though my plan of spending only a few minutes awake to complete my preorder had been destroyed by the Stupid Yellow Sticky, hope bloomed in my heart as I started going through the order process. I could swear I heard my sweet, sweet Tempurpedic mattress calling me back. It might even be a little warm still.

But it didn’t work. I tried again. And again. Error after error popped up letting me know that my order could not be processed at this time. I tried the Apple Store app on my iPhone as well, hoping at least one of them would break through the logjam of bits and bytes on Apple’s and AT&T’s servers. But nothing worked.

A tiny cloud of frustration began to roll in and I checked Twitter to see how others were faring and saw that I was not alone. Hardly anyone was able to place a preorder either.

On a whim, I tried calling Apple to place my order but immediately heard a recording stating that, due to exceptionally high call volume, they could not take my call at that time. That cloud of frustration began to darken and rumble with thunder.

I kept trying again and again for more than an hour and finally gave up as the clock neared 4:30 a.m. and headed back to bed – tired, cranky and gadgetally unfulfilled.

But I couldn’t sleep still. I tossed and turned and picked my iPhone up off the nightstand every now and then to see if the Apple Store app was working. I saw the “please try again” later errors twice more. Then I picked up my iPhone again, swearing to myself that this would really be the last time and I would wait until my alarm went off a couple of hours later to try again. And it worked! I stared in disbelief at the order acknowledgement screen and took a screenshot of it for later reference, just in case I had dreamed the whole thing.

I put my iPhone down and snuggled back into bed, but worry gnawed at me still. What if my preorder hadn’t really gone through? I checked my email for a receipt from Apple. Nothing. Damn! I checked again a few minutes later to find one sitting in my inbox. I gave a little yelp of victory and tapped on the email, dismissing the blue dot that marked it as unread. I scanned through it to make sure it was the real deal and then finally put my iPhone back down for good.

I then slept like a baby. For two whole hours until my alarm woke me. Stupid alarm clock.

Now I’ll be on pins and needles all day next Friday waiting for FedEx. In 2009, they thoroughly bungled the delivery of my iPhone 3GS and I’m expecting no better this year, frankly. I really wish Apple would have offered an in-store pick-up option as well. I would much rather go to a store early in the morning and wait in a line to pick up one set aside for preorders, like I did for the iPad 1.