Lombard Street Optical Illusion

There are early adopters of technology and then there is us. Some technology companies should close the door before we ever arrive. We bought two new iPhones today, an iPhone 5S for Anne and an iPhone 6 for me, plus an iPad mini too, which is still sitting in its box and two Life Proof cases for the phones. The reason for this haul began at work this week, a friend of mine, James, had his AT&T iPhone 4 hacked, cloned, used to steal two new iPhone 6s and then disabled. His iPhone 4 runs the 3G network protocol, which has a vulnerability. Anne was still running her 2010 era iPhone 3GS, which also has this same vulnerability and just happens to be our AT&T account’s controlling phone. Since James’s mishap occurred while he was on vacation, we resolved to fix our problem, before we went on vacation later this summer.

Going into the AT&T store, our going in position was to simply upgrade Anne’s old 3GS with Dave’s slightly newer, iPhone 4S, which has been sitting in a drawer for a year and a half. Our fallback position was to upgrade to two 5S iPhones. Well, we meaning me, quickly melted under the onslaught of our AT&T salesman, Chas. He must have been gloating with himself at this point, but he was more than glad so see us go, two hours later. The crux of the problem boiled down to our habit of sharing online accounts. We have always used one Apple account, which apparently you can’t do any more. Like I said, two hours later we were shown the door. I’m still wrestling with the upgrade’s aftermath.

The photo with this post was lifted off Dave’s old phone. It is from our 2012 tour of California. We were walking from the motel up Lombard Street in San Francisco, which is a very steep hill. On the opposite side of the hill is the more famous part of the street, with all of its tight switchbacks.