Morning Roundup: Delayed gratification edition

Good morning, Houston. Were you one of the folks who lined up Friday to pick up an iPhone? And have you gotten it activated yet? If so, you're lucky: A lot of people are having trouble getting their shiny new toys activated, and until they do, none of the so-called Jesus phone's features — not even its alarm clock — will work. Though most customers have been able to activate their phones in a few minutes, some have waited a couple of days as the result of overloaded AT&T servers. Houstonist's bag phone is looking better and better ...

>> Spring teen jumps from cruise ship: David Ritcheson, the 18-year-old Spring man who survived a brutal attack at the hands of two teens at a party last year, jumped from a Cozumel-bound cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday and died. Ritcheson was kicked, cut and sodomized with a pipe by self-professes skinheads during the attack in April 2006; earlier this year, he testified before a U.S. House panel in support of a federal hate crime prevention act. Carlos Leon, Ritcheson's family's attorney, confirmed his death Sunday, though few other details have been released. "I honestly couldn't see David's pain," Jolyn Hammonds, a classmate of Ritcheson's, told the Chronicle yesterday. "If he was in pain, he hid it really, really well. He was always smiling, joking around, being himself."

>> Gas is cheaper, but still not cheap: According to AAA Texas' weekly gas price report, the average gallon of regular unleaded fell 4.1 cents in Houston last week — reflecting the fifth straight week of decreases in gas prices statewide. The average price of a gallon of gas in Houston is now $2.83, a nickel under the statewide average of $2.88 and slightly less than the $2.86 average in Dallas and San Antonio. Seems high, eh? But as NPR points out, driving is still the cheapest way to travel, and will be until gas reaches $15 a gallon. We hope that's a really long way off.

>> Six Houston schools among nation's best: Six HISD high schools are among the top schools in the U.S. — at least according to Newsweek magazine, which ranked the country's 1,300 best high schools in its May 28 issue. The local campuses were Bellaire High (No. 95), DeBakey (113), Westside (240), Lamar (630), HSPVA (685) and Austin (1,257). The rankings were determined by dividing the total number of AP, IB and Cambridge tests taken at a school each year and dividing that by the number of graduating seniors; Newsweek said the number of tests taken mattered more than the scores because "even struggling AP students learned a great deal" by taking the advanced classes. (For the record, there were 15,409 public high schools in the U.S. in 2005-06, the last year for which data was available.)

>> This week's weather: Last week showed us that there's really not much use in trying to guess what the weather will be like, so we'll go with this: It'll be hot and humid and it may rain. Actually, today it will almost surely rain: The chance of showers is 70 percent this afternoon and 50 percent tonight, followed by a 60 percent rain chance Tuesday and a 50 percent chance on Wednesday. Afternoon highs will climb from 88 today into the mid-90s by the end of the week, with lows staying around 75 all week. The good news? You still don't need to water your lawn.

We're not sure about the rain, but we know there's news in your future ...