Why is there such a time difference in getting your handle approved? The first one I tried took almost 24 hours in the red Awaiting Approval. I tried a different name and it only took 15 minutes or so.

At the moment, only ASims can accept new handles. Therefore, you have to wait until one of them gets to accepting them.

Also depends on the name you try; accepting is currently faster than declining due to a fix underway for default decline messages, so a valid name is probably going to be accepted far more quickly than an invalid one gets declined.