I am getting frustrated by this... Kind of reminds me of how those of us  who waited outside Best Buy (or wherever) in the freezing cold, all  night, for the Xbox360 release ended up worse-off than those who bought  one a year later and even more worse off than those who buy one now.  Us  "OG Fanboys" for the 360 put up with red-ring-of-death issues, a "big"  20GB HDD, issues with the disc reader (the laser), overheating, limited  HD support (component video only), limited true surround-sound support  (sound is "upscaled" to 5.1), wired-connection for internet ONLY (until  the $100 WiFi adapter came out), etc.  Of course, those issues all  reared their heads AFTER we'd shelled out $400+ for the console and the  (crappy) launch-day games.
Now, you can get a 360 for half that  price, and with it comes integrated WiFi a/b/g/n, a 250GB HDD, HDMI 1.4a  output, true 7.1 surround sound, vastly-improved silicone and cooling,  and no worry about RROD.  He*l, you can get the above XBox, three games, and the Kinect for less than the original 20GB one was on launch day!  
(In  case you can't tell, I really want a new "slim" 250GB 360, but can't  justify the money when I have one that works just fine, and has been  "fixed" by MS regarding the Red Ring of Death)
My point is  this: we are like the people who stood outside for 24hrs in the freezing  cold, hoping to get our hands on the newest, best, most revolutionary  game console (phone).  We waited, we gossiped, we clung to every rumored  release date and every one of us felt our hearts drop when it didn't  come to be realized, and just like the first-day new game console  adopters, we were pretty much left out in the cold.
Yet now, the  phone has arrived!  We begged, pleaded, and offered up our first-born  children, and finally the "omnipotent" Verizon bequeathed upon us the  Galaxy Nexus, a phone to rule all phones, the KING of all Android and  IOS devices.
However, as you may know... Heavy lay the crown...
We  got what we wanted, but we have to accept that it was at some cost.   The more pressure they were under, the less testing and the faster  production required.  We all knew, getting into this, that we would have  "buggy" phones, and on December 14, 2011, every person on here was  absolutely OK with being a "test mule" for VZW, for Google, and for  Samsung.  
Yet, now that December 15th has passed us by, people seem  to only want to complain?  I admit, there are many things that frustrate  me about this phone, but they are ALL (at least so far) issues that can  be easily resolved via software patches.  Also, for every time that I  get frustrated, there are at least five times where the phone does  something new and amazing that puts a smile on my face.  I'd say that is  worth the price of admission.
Don't think that we are being  "abandoned".  Look at the Nexus and Nexus S timeline... Google takes  care of these phones like they own every one themselves, so we WILL be  getting the best software updates they can create, and we will get them  weeks and months before anyone else.  I admit the signal issue is  frustrating, but I have yet to drop a call due to it, and I can still  browse/text/talk/"app"/whatever without issue, in 99% of the places that  I go.  Also, over the holidays being home so much, my phone has mostly  been connected to my WiFi network so I have actually cut my data usage  by ~80% or more (I'm under 400MB from 15th-28th... normally, I'd be at  about 2.75-4GB).
If this issue persists, Google is far to  "bright" a company to do a wide release of ICS, so that could mean that  we GNEX users will EXCLUSIVELY have the OFFICIAL Android 4.x.x for some time yet to come... 
(Admit it... everyone here has made their friends jealous... it's far too tempting not to 

 )
At least, that's how I see it.  
Sincerely,
nleksan