My friend, David Isley played this song for Susan and me at our wedding in 2003. A while back, I got this video of him playing a snippet of it again at Nero's. He asked if I would post it for him, so here it is!
]]>
I frequently find myself trying to remember the corresponding name or number of various macOS versions.
This wonderful little page on the Apple site lists each macOS name and it's corresponding number, with links to the installers for the last 5 versions.
]]>Today we took a family walk.
We decided to walk down to the stop sign at the highway and back up the hill again, about 1.5 miles round trip.
It was a beautiful walk. We are lucky to live in such a wonderful place.
#bydhttmwfi
My family and I went to Round Valley (Covelo, CA) today to see Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers featuring Derek Miller play for the California Indian Day Celebration. We have been fans of Derek Miller for quite long time, and I love the blues that Gary writes and plays too. This is the first time I have seen either in person. It was a blast!
Check out Jay's new Blog
Family Salmon Recipe
Traditionally cooked Salmon (in my wife’s culture, Karuk) would be roasted on redwood sticks over a very hot Alder fire. It is not possible to do this on given random weeknights at home when we want salmon for the family dinner. However, my wife has found an oven-roasted salmon recipe that creates some of the same wonderful flavors of salmon cooked on sticks over a fire, simply and quickly.
This is a high-heat recipe, intended to imitate the properties of searing heat from the fire on the salmon fillets. The basics of the recipe come from “The Joy of Cooking” 1997 edition.
You don’t want to overcook the fish, keep to the recommended cooking times, then inspect the fish for doneness. You want to remove it before the center is totally opaque, 125-132 degrees, depending on taste.
The oven should be fully preheated to 500 degrees.
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a small sauce pan and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a half teaspoon of salt.
Get a shallow roasting pan, spread half the melted butter/oil mixture over bottom of pan. Add salmon fillets, 1.5” thick (plus or minus), into pan, skin side up. Spread remaining butter/oil mixture over fish. Salt and pepper as desired.
Roast for five to six minutes in fully preheated 500 degree oven, remove fish, close oven to keep it at heat, flip fish, return to oven, cook for another five to six minutes on other side.
Check for doneness. Remove the salmon to a platter, pour pan juice over it.
Enjoy.
]]>The Family Quiche Recipe
Optional Items:
dash of hot sauce (I like the green kind best in egg dishes)
½ to ¾ cup of any filler item(s) you like, chopped into appropriate sized bits. I have tried each of the following at one time or another:
Combine cottage cheese with eggs, milk, and seasonings in blender, beat on high till smooth and frothy. Pour a thin layer of egg mixture on bottom of pastry shell. Sprinkle jack or swiss cheese in bottom of pastry shell. Then scatter into the pie shell the onions and any filler items from list above, (or invent your own). Pour remainder of egg mixture over cheese, onions and filler items in pastry shell. Do not overfill. Cook at 350 degrees for a total of 45-50 min (or more) till silver knife inserted in center comes out clean. (Sprinkle cheddar cheese over top of quiche after first 30 minutes in oven so it melts all over the top during last 15-20 minutes of cooking).Allow to cool and set for 20 minutes or more before cutting and serving. (I guarantee whatever you don’t finish will be even better the next day! I usually just double the recipe and make two).
Updated 4/28/19
The Internet is abuzz today with news that the U.S. Patent Office has canceled several trademarks belonging to, as John Oliver calls it, “the-football-team-for-some-reason-not-yet-formerly-known-as the Washington Redskins.” The patent office ruled that the term “redskins” is “disparaging to Native Americans.”
The move comes — coincidentally it would seem — at the crest of a wave of public backlash. Last month 50 U.S. senators wrote a letter urging team owner Daniel Snyder to change the name, and President Obama recently suggested the same thing. (Snyder has vowed repeatedly that he’ll never do so.)
Anyway, all this hubbub got us thinking about a certain auto repair shop near Costco in Eureka.
Honest Engine has been in business since our nation’s bicentennial, and lest you miss the pun, its logo features an “injun” in a feather headdress — an apparent riff on the old Indian Head penny.
Is that racist? In our experience, opinions locally range from totally blasé (“Meh, I never even thought about it.”) to fairly incredulous (“How can they still have that name?!”).
To: Ryan Burns, Lost Coast Outpost
The local business name, coupled with the logo is insulting to say the least. The entire concept of the pun behind that business name belongs in the history books chronicling the dark ages of this country, next to blackface and minstrel shows. (Do a google image search on "Negrobilia advertising"). Would any decent person approve of Negrobilia style advertising in this day and age? Why is it ok when it is an Indian?While I am not Indian, my wife and 8yr old son are Indian. I am tired of having to try and explain why society allows the inherent racism of the Washington R-word team name splashed all over national media to my son, and I am saddened by local businesses using cultural appropriation and racist implications in their pun-based name as a dark ages advertising gimmick.Greg Gehr
This is a old video of my 2 yrs old at the time, reading Sandra Boynton's book "What's Wrong Little Pookie?" to the grandparents. It is one of my all-time favorite videos and I decided I want to have it accessible on-line. They are really reading it, it is not memorized. They even start to read the back of the book at the end of the video. The book is of course copyrighted by Sandra Boynton, and if she objects, I would/will pull the video at once. But I hope she agrees that this is fair use, and pretty darn cute too! (I am sending her the link so she can let me know if she objects). If you want to get a great book for a little kid, I highly recommend buying this book (and her others too!)
http://www.sandraboynton.com/sboynton/boyntonbooks.html#Anchor-What's-49575
My good friend, David Isley, has provided me some of his recent studio session recordings, and I am honored to post them here for you to enjoy with his permission. I could wax on about David's musical talents, and the many instruments and styles of music he plays, but I think the music speaks for itself.
Enjoy.
Eleven days ago, I send an "Open Letter to Apple" regarding the "motion sickness" symptoms that I was experiencing due to my upgrade to iOS 7. I sent this letter to the known email address for Tim Cook, and to accessibility@apple.com.
I actually received a response. While, what I am assuming is a canned response from Apple, told me to change all the settings I indicated I had already changed in my initial letter to Apple, I still was pleased to hear them state that:
"Apple is aware that some users may need additional motion control options. We do appreciate your feedback and will forward this information on to the appropriate people for review."
This is GREAT NEWS. Apple has acknowledged the problem, and indicated that they are reviewing what else they can do to assist people like me! This is truly great customer support and wonderful news! Even though I still am getting a little nauseous when I use my phone, it helps me in dealing with it to know that some team at Apple is considering what to do to make it better!
Thank you Apple!
Greg Gehr
_________________________________________
COPY OF EMAIL SENT TO ME BY APPLE:
Begin forwarded message:
From: Apple Accessibility <accessibility@apple.com>
Subject: [417739] An Open Letter to Apple
Date: October 4, 2013 12:30:33 PM PDT
To: #####@mac.com (My personal email is removed to prevent "spamming" If you want to contact me, tweet me @GregGehr)
Reply-To: Apple Accessibility <accessibility@apple.com>
Hello,
Thank you for writing to Apple. At this time we want to ensure that you are aware of the current options to help reduce motion in iOS 7.
If you have an iPhone 5, iPhone 5s or iPhone 5c, you can Reduce Motion, which turns off Parallax and limits the animations of other apps and icon badges, by going to Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion.
Additionally, you can Increase Contrast and enable Bold Text - some users have informed us that that has helped them reduce the perception of motion they encounter in iOS 7.
Apple is aware that some users may need additional motion control options. We do appreciate your feedback and will forward this information on to the appropriate people for review.
At this time, we cannot comment on when a possible solution will be made available.
Apple Accessibility
Please also visit our sites
http://www.apple.com/accessibility/
http://www.apple.com/support/accessibility/
_____________________________________________
11/21/13 - Update #1: The 7.03 update to iOS 7 provides significant relief from the aspects of the iOS system that were causing my distress. I have the following settings under Settings>General>Accessability:
Bold Text ON
Reduce Motion ON
These settings provide less animations (with Reduce Motion on, most animations change to "fades") and larger type that does not seem to "vibrate"
THANKS APPLE!
]]>The following Letter has been sent to "Apple Feedback" at http://www.apple.com/feedback/ as well as being emailed to accessibility@apple.com and tcook@apple.com
__________________________
Dear Apple
I am experiencing a problem with iOS 7. Specifically, the thin lines (text and objects), parallax motion, and aggressively swooping animations are causing me nausea, similar to feeling "car sick."
I have turned on "REDUCE MOTION" to cut down on the parallax effect, which helps. I have reduced the brightness. I have turned on "bold" for my font preference in accessibility to help with the overly thin "vibrating" fonts on the screen, again, this provided some relief, but the interface is still full of objects that are composed of lines that are simply too thin, and there is way too much unnecessary motion.
Despite all the changes, I am still experiencing nausea when using my phone with iOS 7 due to the aggressive swooping animations throughout the system. My phone is a 4S, which I have had for two years, and this issue stared with the upgrade to iOS 7, it never occurred before that. I also had a 3GS for two years before that, no problem with nausea there either.
I went to research the issue, and have been finding similar reports that many many other people are having issues with this on twitter and in the blogs.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5322295
http://www.stuff.tv/apple/ios-7s-motions-effects-are-triggering-vertigo-and-nausea-symptoms/news
I am writing to ask that that you consider prioritizing an update that allows us to scale back or turn off the unnecessary animations, similar to the preference that allows me to turn off the "genie" effect in the dock of an OS X Macintosh.
Thank you for listening.
Greg Gehr
]]>These are two original songs by Chris Martinez of Darien Gap. These are live acoustic solo recordings done at my home in July of 2013 with my Tascam DR100mkII and a Shure 57/58 mic combo, using a Behringer mixer and mic preamps. They have been compressed into 192k mp3 files and uploaded to Posthaven.
(copyright 2013, Chris Martinez)
]]>
(updated, see end of post)
My kid is turning 7 years old soon, and they have decided to ask all their friends to help them do something different for their birthday. They are starting a donation drive for the local Animal Shelter. I am very proud of their idea and wanted to share it with you.
Jay's bedroom is full up on toys and games, so we asked what they wanted to do instead. Earlier this year, our next door neighbor adopted this handsome dog Django Reinhardt from the shelter. Also, Jay and Susan recently visited the shelter to donate old towels and meet the animals. So, instead of giving them a present for their birthday, they're asking for their friends to help in putting together a big care package for the dogs and cats at the Humboldt County Animal Shelter.
The shelter says that they can always use the following items:
• Cat treats
• Dog treats
• Canned food (no dry food, please)
• Cat toys
• Dog toys
• Peanut butter to put in KONG toys for dogs
• Used blankets
• Used towels
• Donations to the shelter's emergency medical fund (make checks payable to Friends for Life Animal Rescue and send them to PO Box 962 Eureka, CA 95502 or donate online at www.dogrescuers.org)
Update #1
The donation drive for the local Animal Shelter was a great success! Here is a photo of Jay with all the great items that were donated at their party. In addition to what you see in the picture, there is a whole bin of towels, and $50 in cash!
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is the law under which Aaron Swartz and other innovators and activists have been threatened with decades in prison. The CFAA is so broad that law enforcement says it criminalizes all sorts of mundane Internet use: Potentially even breaking a website's fine print terms of service agreement. Don't set up a Myspace page for your cat. Don't fudge your height on a dating site. Don't share your Facebook password with anybody: You could be committing a federal crime. (Read more here.)
It's the vagueness and over breadth of this law that allows prosecutors to go after people like Aaron Swartz, who tragically committed suicide earlier this year. The government threatened to jail him for decades for downloading academic articles from the website JSTOR.
Since Aaron's death, activists have cried out for reform of the CFAA. But members of the House Judiciary Committee are actually floating a proposal to expand and strengthen it -- that could come up for a vote as soon as April 10th! (Read more here.)
UPDATE AT END OF POST
I took my car to Mid City Motor World (between Arcata and Eureka) this morning to have the oil changed and some other minor maintenance completed. I have been buying Honda's from Mid City, and having my cars serviced at Mid City, for many many years and I highly recommend their sales and service. I feel that they are a very customer-oriented business.
They also offer a lot of nice amenities for customers waiting in the lobby. There is real coffee, ground from fresh beans, real cream for the coffee, fresh bagels with cream cheese (they need a toaster), tables next to wall outlets for you to set up your laptop, and free guest WIFI. The service writers all recognize me and they are all very professional. They even offer to wash your car for you before they give it back!
However, this morning I had a rude shock. I decided to wait for my car to be done, instead of using their free shuttle service and coming back later. I set up my computer, hooked up to their Guest WiFi, and proceeded to try and read some of the local political blogs. One pair of blogs I occasionally read (although sometimes I don't know why) is the Humboldt Herald and the Humboldt Mirror. For those that don't frequent the cage-lining pages of these two political blogs, they are the opposite of each other, The Herald is what I would consider strongly left of center, and the Mirror is way out in right field. (The comment sections of each of these blogs are a petri dish of toxic waste. It also looks like they both may be dying a slow death with no new posts for three months for the Mirror, and no posts in the last month for the Herald.)
Imagine my surprise when I opened a window for each of these two blogs, and found out that the network administrator was censoring/blocking the Humboldt Herald, but not the Humboldt Mirror. The exact message read:
|
|
|
I did what the message said, and asked the receptionist if I could talk to the System Administrator for Mid City. A nice gentleman named "Scott" came out and explained that their system uses a blocking system from Sonicwall, their router provider, and that he just checks "categories" of blocking, the specifics of deciding what individual site(s) to block is coming from information provided by Sonicwall (Sonicwall was recently bought by Dell Computer).
Scott thinks that the Herald may have generated more visibility on the internet and has become listed as a political site within the Sonicwall database, where the Mirror has not generated that much coverage or interest and therefore is probably simply "not rated" which will not trigger any blocks. I asked Scott to check it out for himself and perhaps even consider not using the "political/advocacy groups" category for blocking guest access, since the Sonicwall blocking list is not filtering this category in a fair and impartial way.
I will report back next time I am at Mid City and let you know if the situation is still the same.
...and yes, I am a "card carrying member of the ACLU", how did you guess? :)
"Thank you for bringing to my attention the problem with the two web sites that you were trying to reach while having your vehicle serviced at Mid-City Motor World. I have attached the SonicWall rating for each of the sites that you tried to reach while visiting our store.
]]>Humboldtmirror.wordpress.com is rated as: Information Technology/Computers and Web CommunicationsHumboldtherald.wordpress.com is rated as: Political/Advocacy GroupsWe have adjusted the settings of the SonicWall, to allow the humboldtherald.wordpress.com.Again thank you for bringing it to my attention and sorry for any problems that it may have caused."
We had a bit of a rough night. The boy was not feeling well and we were not sure if he was going to be up to the traditional Easter Egg Hunt, family gathering, and celebration of the birthday of Cesar Chavez or not. But he bounced back this morning, and we were back on track for our countdown to the Great Santa Easter Egg Hunt!
I should explain. My son has figured out (with my learned assistance) that if the Easter Bunny goes to every house on the same morning to hide eggs, then this bunny must have some special superhuman powers. In fact, as we all know, the only person that has the power to visit every participating house around the world in one day is Santa. We all also know that nobody just works one day out of the year. My son strongly suspects that this "Easter Bunny" thing is just a costume/disguise that Santa wears while hiding eggs so he can work off-season. He has his suspicions about the Tooth Fairy too, he says he thinks Santa has a tutu in that closet.
Anyway, to get back to my story, Logan had a two stage hunt this year. The first part was a traditional egg hunt, providing eggs filled with jelly beans, chocolate candies, and tootsie rolls. (including multiple easter packages with iTunes cards in them, and one with a spot of cash, that easter Santa knows what kids want!).
Then, his sister and her fiancee, Joe, along with their friend Leeann had a clue driven hunt for him. He had to decipher six clues, each leading to the next, to find his easter basket from her which not only had candy and treats, but two movies he has not see yet as well, Goonies, and Coraline. I especially liked the twist on the final clue. The basket was hidden behind Logan's iMac. For the sixth and final clue, he had to "buy" hints from the adults using his candy as currency. I told him his basket location would get him "all keyed up" for a tootsie roll. His sister told him the present would be the "apple of his eye", this clue cost a chocolate. Finally, his mom told him "once you go Mac, you never go back" for some Jelly Beans, at that point he figured it out and searched his computer desk, finding the basket!
Here are a few photos from today:
I have made the switch from the soon to be defunct Posterous, to the new Post Haven blog hosting service for my personal blog.
I was somewhat reluctant to move at first, when you are getting a great service for free, there is a certain amount of inertia to overcome in making the switch to a paid service. Don't get me wrong, I believe in paying people for their work. However, when you have been getting something free for years, it takes a certain amount of mental gymnastics to make the switch to a paid service. (hey, I am talking BLOGS here ok?) :)
It is also not always successful. As twitter has changed (and not for the better) I tried really hard to like the paid alternative service, app.net. I paid for an app.net account, and tried to make some new relationships in that paid alternative to twitter, but it just did not work for me. App.net seems to be a very closed club of developer types that have their own cultural reality, it just did not replace twitter for me. So, despite all the things I DONT LIKE about twitter, (including cutting out APIs and third party developers, sponsored ad tweets, changes to the format, etc), I still use Twitter.
However, I think I am going to have a very different reaction to my switch from Posterous to Posthaven. The import of my Posterous blog seems to have gone without a hitch. Everything moved, even the comments. I am looking forward to all the features that the developers are committed to adding to this service, and growing my blog with them as they continue to refine and improve their interface. I really like the idea that even if I quit paying for the editing service, the blog archive STAYS UP, and I can start paying again anytime I need to edit.
I don't have the time, energy, or patience for Wordpress. I want and need a KISS principle blogging platform. While $60/year is a fair amount of scratch in internet terms, I think I may be here for a while!
Another problem, another solution.
I have been having some weird problems on my new retina MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion 10.8.2.
First, Time Machine backups slowed way down and eventually quit working, then my email started being unsearchable, and finally Spotlight itself appeared to simply quit working.
After much investigation, I believe that not only did Spotlight corrupt the search index, it also corrupted Apple Mail and Time Machine. I had to fix ALL THREE to make things work right again. I went through several steps to rectify this, which I thought I would document here.
Here is what I did to fix the issue for me.
First, in Apple Mail I did the following (hat tip to Glenn Leblanc for this tip, posted here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3888378?start=0&tstart=0 )
Quit Mail.
Go to the Home Library folder. This is hidden in Lion. To get to it, select GO in the Finder menu while holding the option key down. Select Library in the submenu. Then navigate to Mail folder/ V2 Folder/ MailData folder. Find the Envelope Index Files. Move just those files to the desktop or trash and restart Mail. Select continue in the message box that comes up. The rebuild could take a while depending on how many messages you have.
This resulted in being able to search for contacts, and subjects again in Mail, but whole message searches (body text) still did not work.
Then, I tried to force Spotlight to reindex by following the traditional route:
System Prefs > Spotlight > Privacy Tab
Add your startup hard drive to the “prevent Spotlight from searching these locations” list (use the “+” symbol at bottom)
Close and reopen System Prefs
Remove your startup hard drive from the same list using the adjacent “-“ symbol
This did NOT work for me. When I would check the Spotlight popup from the right side of the main top menu bar, no indexing activity was shown.
Then, I tried a Terminal command to force reindexing (Applications folder > Utilities Folder > Terminal app) as documented here:
http://jonathansblog.co.uk/how-to-force-spotlight-to-reindex
sudo mdutil -E /
I got back a cryptic message that stated “indexing is disabled” (this would account for why I was still unable to do context search of mail messages)
I found this link and implemented “Solution 2” using another terminal command to re-enable indexing:
sudo mdutil -i on /
This started Spotlight indexing again, which was verified by checking the Spotlight search box on the main menu bar again, and seeing the “thermometer bar” indicating indexing in progress.
After the indexing was completed, I formatted the Time Machine external backup hard disk drive, and started a new Time Machine backup. The backup performed a 40 GB backup via USB 3 in less than one hour.
It appears that I am now back up and running, able to search Apple Mail, do normal backups, and use Spotlight in the Finder. I hope it stays fixed! I will post any updates, good or bad, here.
________________________
Update 11/5/2012
Time Machine bogged down again, slowed to a crawl. I read another tip on how to fix this issue via posts by others folks here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19316035#19316035
This is another terminal command and can be summarized as follows:
How to run tmdiagnose
1) Launch Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)
2) Enter the command text below followed by the Return key on the Terminal command line:
sudo tmdiagnose
3) Enter your admin password when prompted and wait for all of the tmdiagnose processes to finish.
I did this, and then hooked up my backup drive and ran Time Machine - it backed up 3 GB in a few minutes over my USB 3.0 connection.
Hope it stays fixed this time!
_____________________________
Update 1/7/2013
Still broken! :( Time Machine will work for a time or two and then go back to it' old slow sluggish, freezing self. Not happy. This has been going on for months with no fix from Apple. I am trying a tmdiagnose, as described above, to see if I can get it to work even temporarily again.
]]>
Logan has cracked his first iMac. The hard drive in his early 2008 iMac (2.8 Intel Core 2 Duo, EMC 2211, 8,1) was going bad, and 2 GB of RAM was getting cramped. So, he undertook a hard drive and RAM replacement project.
We ordered a matched set of 2GB RAM strips and a 1 TB enterprise class hard drive from OWC. We got the glass removal suction cups on sale from Harbor Freight. I already owned the Torx drivers and other tools. Susan had the Spudger.
We watched this video, and looked at this guide for instructions while we did the deed.
Logan took responsibility for most of the jobs, except when it came to the naked LCD panel removal, that one he left for me.
The operation was a success, the iMac fired up, Logan held down the C key and started from a system CD, and breezed through a system install (10.6). Migrated all his stuff from his Time Machine backup (three cheers for Time Machine!) as part of the 10.6 install, and he is up and running.
Not bad for a just-turned-six-year-old.
According to a communication sent to Macworld, as of April 8th, AT&T will unlock any iPhone meeting certain conditions. "The only requirements are that a customer’s account must be in good standing, their device cannot be associated with a current and active term commitment on an AT&T customer account, and they need to have fulfilled their contract term, upgraded under one of our upgrade policies or paid an early termination fee.” So in other words, if you complete your contract, or pay off the contract with the early termination fee, they will unlock your iPhone for use on any network. No "jailbreaking" necessary.
I have an old iPhone 3GS from a completed two year contract, that has now been replaced by an iPhone 4S. I decided to take advantage of unlocking the old iPhone while AT&T is in the mood to do so, and before they change their policies/mind. I called the local AT&T store where I bought both iPhones (the nearest Apple store is several hundred miles away), and asked what the process was. The answer stunned me, they didn't know. They speculated that I would get a code to enter into some secret box on the iPhone to unlock it (not true). The very friendly salesperson at the AT&T store told me that to get the actual info I wanted, I would have to call AT&T support on the phone, and ask them what the procedure was for unlocking an eligible iPhone. The local salesperson even gave me his email address and asked that I let him know what the process was, so he could tell others in the future! (I am emailing him the link to this blog post.) He went on to recommend I just call 611 on my current iPhone, putting me in touch with AT&T support, and ask them to walk me through it.
Taking his advice, I called 611 on my current iPhone, and spent about a minute fishing through some of the automated phone attendant choices, found nothing that applied to my situation, and then I started repeatedly stabbing "0." Amazingly enough, this worked! I got a very nice AT&T phone support tech in less than 3 minutes who told me that she knew about the new unlocking process, and asked me to hold for a minute while she pulled up the procedure for starting the process. First, she wanted the IMEI number for my old iPhone 3GS. Fortunately, the old phone was charged and booted, so I just went to Settings > General > About, scrolled down to the IMEI number, and read it to her.
She then verified my identity with a couple of account details including my home zip and last four digits of my Social Security number. She also wanted me to formally state the reason I wanted to unlock the old iPhone. I think she typed my answer into her computer. I simply told her that it was in anticipation of future international travel, and that with the unlocked phone, I would be able to purchase a local carrier sim card that would work in the unlocked iPhone in whatever country I was visiting. She typed that up and told me that "was a legitimate reason" for my request, and moved on. (what would she have done if I told her I was just doing it because I could? I guess I will never know.)
After this process was over, she transferred me to a higher level tech that was going to complete the process. There was no wait, this second tier tech came right on the phone. The second tier tech made me confirm all the data that I told the initial operator, (she did apologize for the redundancy, but said that policy required her to verify everything). Then she told me that she had entered the unlock authorization for my iPhone.
This was confusing at first, but she explained that to complete the process, and have my iPhone receive the unlock code, I would have to back up the old iPhone via iTunes, then do a restore to original settings in iTunes, which would wipe the iPhone and reinstall the iOS, with the unlock code imbedded in it. I would get a notification that the iPhone was now unlocked when I completed the process. iTunes would have to have a good internet connection for all this to work.
I did as instructed, and it worked perfectly. One caveat when you do the restore, if you are not at the current version of iOS, it will pretty much force you to upgrade whether you want to or not. This was of some concern to me as I did not know if iOS 5.1.1 would bog down the old iPhone 3GS. Sometimes it is better to stay at the older system with older hardware. In this case, that does not seem to be true, if anything, I think the 5.1.1 upgrade improved the operation of the phone with snappier responses to loading apps and doing tasks. There may be a way to circumvent this "mandatory upgrade" with SHSH blobs and downgrading and such, but that just makes my head hurt and I'm glad I didn't have to deal with it!
The last thing the AT&T tech asked for was my best contact number, she said that they would be doing a followup call to see if I was able to successfully complete the process as part of their customer service.
This is interesting for a couple of reasons. It appears that AT&T does not control the actual unlocking. I am speculating that they simply send an authorization for unlocking to Apple, and that Apple is totally responsible for the actual unlocking process during the restore in iTunes. If In fact, since AT&T is planning on calling me back in a couple of days to see how it went, I don't think they even know when I complete the unlocking (i.e. AT&T must have no direct access to Apple's system, they have to physically ask me if unlocking was competed successfully.) On the other hand, I guess Apple knows exactly what I am doing, even when I am restoring an iPhone that no longer has a voice, text, or data plan.
Now, what exotic international destination shall I visit with my newly unlocked iPhone? Recommendations?
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