@DG: Thank you -- It totally works! My phone didn't 3 finger salute before and it does now.
Info about my phone in this thread:
xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=8693181&postcount=129
Now for my newb question: should I do whatever to "brick" my phone, so long as I have a update.zip in /sdcard, the 3 button combo will boot it, yes? Basically, my goal is that if I don't have to worry about this, I won't take my phone back and whine to get another one that does 3 finger. If I'm OK without that, then that's cool. So an answer like "you're fine stfu and enjoy your captivate" or "mmm, man, I can't sleep at night if I had gotten your phone..."
Thanks!
Chris
PS - I made 2 very simple windows batch files for updating via adb and the command line. There's also one which copies everything from /sdcard onto your computer. I also zipped up the 3 files you need to issue adb commands. I tried getting the whole android dev but it doesn't include them.