Today was AT&T day. Most readers are already sympathetic. The rest nod knowingly.

Oh, but you do not know.

So The Yankee, who is wonderful and kind and awesome, decided to get me an iPhone. They arrived yesterday, we visited the Apple store today.

Only, and this will surprise you, what we were told last week by one talented and helpful AT&T phone representative was something entirely different from what we discovered today. Seems I’m eligible for an upgrade, but she’s not. So while The Yankee talked to AT&T, I chatted with the Apple store employees.

I learned where all the hipsters eat.

So the problem, we were told, would resolve itself if we visited an actual AT&T store. Having had that particular joyful experience in the past I had the sneaking suspicion that wouldn’t be the case, but you may as well try.

We drove down the street. We had a late lunch. The AT&T store opened, we met the manager who’s second item in the corporate protocol — and this is my favorite part — is to call an AT&T phone rep. Meanwhile, have a look at the AT&T talking points. You aren’t supposed to see this paperwork or, one presumes, the typos contained therein:

The manager couldn’t figure it out. So he’s going to call his boss tomorrow. We went back to the Apple store, where we found one of my former students who works there. She got my phone, set me up, extended the hold on The Yankee’s phone and we had a nice visit.

And while she didn’t get one, today, I got mine. And it is very pretty.

So far I’ve added bookmarks. I considered consolidating my laptop bookmarks and my cell phone bookmarks, but then I looked at what I have on my machine’s browser and realized I don’t need any of those things on my phone. On my previous phone I used Opera, so I had to pull bookmarks from that browser, which stores them in a proprietary file. It is called an adr file which, as you may know, stands for Opera Address Book. What you might also realize is that the good people at Opera don’t understand how acronyms work.

I liked the Opera browser on my Q, which is Windows based, and will be only a little sad to see it go. Safari on the iPhone works very well, at least off of the home WiFi network. I looked for a Firefox app in the store, but there’s only a non-browser browser available, which seems a bit too complicated for me at this point.

So instead, after I added all of my bookmarks. Somewhere I found directions to sync this through iTunes, but that platform and I don’t get along very well yet. So I did it the old fashioned way. I built a page with all the links I need — library search pages, the local Craigslist, school schedules, football schedules, cafeteria menus, E-bay, Digg, XM schedules, movie theaters and airline site — and then uploaded it to my server. Then I clicked each link and added them manually, all neatly categorized and, unfortunately, not alphabetized. One needs these things to be neatly organized, but that isn’t happening. Let’s see what Google has to say about that.

Oh, click, hold, drag. With a little effort — I accidentally deleted one link and moved some a bit too far, so link juggling was required — I now have a neatly organized bookmark list.

Which allows me to move on to applications. Facebook, Twitter, Boxcar, Grocery IQ, RedLaser, Dictionary, Wikipanion and a level (by Stanley) all made it on the phone for free.

So, if you need me, I’ll be able to share details on my social sites about the UPC codes of coupons for synonyms found on Wikipedia and, also, updates on whether they are crooked.

While I did all of this The Yankee went back to the AT&T store, this time armed with paperwork, to demonstrate her upgrade eligibility. We were comparing notes: she’s been with AT&T for the better part of a decade and had maybe three phones, I’ve been with AT&T before it was AT&T, (before it was Cingular, back when it was Bellsouth) for 15 years. I’ve never had a significant or unreasonable problem with the  service in all of that time. Since they turned into AT&T in 2007 I, like many people, have found the human element of the company to be more than lacking.

But the iPhone is fancy. And now I must figure out how to change the background. I have a picture on my site I thought I’d use, but you can’t save it directly from the server on the iPhone. I successfully made a shortcut to the URL, but that does not a background make. So I turn to Google again, which tells me I must 1.) Save the picture 2.) Put it in iTunes 3.) Sync iTunes and my iPhone 4.) Be frustrated with that for a while 5.) On the sixth attempt figure it out and 6.) Realize I put the confounded picture in the wrong place.

But I finally I made it work. Looks nice, too:

Took that on our first trip to Savannah five years ago. We got married there, not far from that spot, actually, last year.

The black and white looks striking as the phone background — and the screen on the iPhone is beautiful. Give it a try.