Don't be so hard on yourselves - there's a nationwide shortage of the vaccine.  There may be drugstores in your area offering the shots, and infants will almost always be taken to the front of the line, so you might try that.

Definitely the iPhone! Apart from the fact that you need to use a virtual keyboard, it's superior in every way.  I have yet to think of something I want to do for which I couldn't find an iPhone App.  And the ability to have the iPod running in the background (with the cool fade-out when a call comes in) is unbeatable!

@seattlesounders

Sad, but true.  Can you imagine trying to bike around Detroit! But biking is one of the easiest and cheapest forms of transportation infrastructure to retrofit.  All local governments have to do is make it an objective and create a plan.  Seattle is a fantastic example of how to do it right.  Seattle created a Bicycle Master Plan for gradually expanding bike lanes and trails over the next nine years.  The plan lays out a desired network of bike lanes, and each time routine road maintenance is performed on one of the target streets, a bike lane is added at little or no incremental cost.

To get a very articulate, impassioned perspective on where the U.S. stands in developing a clean energy industry, check out the testimony of John Doerr to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works from July 16, 2009.  John Doerr, a senior partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is arguably the most prominent venture capitalist in the world (he was the lead investor in Amazon, Google, Netscape, and several other tech behemoths), and he has dedicated himself over the past several years to building a U.S. clean tech economy.  If we want to be a leader in clean tech, we need to put in place a few fundamental policies that support entrepreneurial investment.