Waiting, wanting, wishing... or wasting time?

The new iPhone is looming, right? Current iPhone models are not being restocked or are 'sold out', buzz is being generated. It's a different kind of buzz than last time around though. There aren't 'leaked' pictures, there aren't many purported leaks, or any increased amount of feverish patent-trolling to see what's coming. It seems that there won't be a ground-breaking paradigm shifting this time around, right?

On the larger vein of waiting, though, I'm a pretty impatient type. A bit ADHD too. But you know the type of person I'm talking about: people who are ready, willing and able to wait for something for a finite amount of time. Not talking about waiting for iPhone 2.0 but more about waiting in a line, for a table, for a movie to start, at the DMV, etc. Moving to California from the Midwest a few years ago taught me how Californians are supposedly so laid-back. In realty, we all have just gotten used to dealing with the large amounts of people who live here and that things take longer here than they do in other parts of the country. Here, you have to learn to wait in line for everything, parking, coffee, food, etc., it's part of the deal.

Of course, there are plenty of ways to alleviate waiting, cell phone calls, reading a magazine/newspaper, staring off into space. So instead of wasting time in the waiting line (ala Zero7), having the internet on the iPhone (or similar devices), especially in Starbucks with their free Wi-Fi now makes the wait, for me at least, seem much shorter. For me, a wait evaporates with a quick check of the NYTimes, Facebook or of email. If the internet connection or if EDGE is slow, however, the wait seems even more interminable. While I distract myself from the wait with web-safaris ala Safari, there are others who isolate themselves off from the rest of the world with their iPods or and others who subject the rest of the world to a potentially inane and ceaseless cellphone call. Whatever the poison, passing the time away in a waiting line may no longer be a time where you can meet new people or see new things if we're distracted by our own PDAs. Is that even more of a waste of time?