Years past it was lining up outside Apple Stores days in advance, this year it’s staring feverishly at LCDs, hitting little buttons like mice at a combo food dispenser/electro-shocker, and hoping beyond hope that iPhone 3.0 is finally ready to download and the UPS dude is a couple days early at the door.

Relax. Breathe.

No one really expected iPhone 3.0 to hit at 12:01am Cupertino Prime Time, and no one truly believed Brown would roll up with an iPhone 3G S at the exact same moment — and a couple days early. Hope perhaps, dream indeed, but Steve P. Jobs like his events both maddeningly unpredictable and elaborately choreographed.

Doing some elaborate time zone gymnastics, Engadget figures 1pm EDT/10am PDT is the magic moment for iPhone 3.0. Hey, it’s the typical start time for an Apple Keynote/Special Event, so why not?

Meanwhile, huge hulking piles of email and tweets tell us all those with early UPS delivery dates are seeing those dates disappear and change faster and more frequently than glowing Apple logo rumors, with the latest being: it looks like UPS is holding packages until their originally announced release date of Friday, June 19.

So, get comfy people, keep your virtual sleeping bags tucked and your coffee, cyber or otherwise, warm. It might just be a long day ahead — or few days ahead for hardware — for all of us.

Last year Apple Stores and AT&T owned retail outlets closed early, handed out water to the throngs of people lined up around their blocks, and then re-opened at 6pm local time to dispense the first generation iPhone to screams, cheers, and web-wide coverage.

This year, it looks like we’ll all have to come just a little bit earlier:

We just got a tip that AT&T store managers received emails stating that the iPhone launch would be at 8:00 AM

More, as they say, as this develops…

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