Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

Hello! Perhaps you've just arrived at my blog after watching us today on Good Day Oregon from 5am to 9am.

Please do visit the Diabetes Category on this blog and read my personal story about my Type I Diabetes. If you can, please do Donate to the American Diabetes Association. If their site is down, do try again!

If you want to spread the word or email this to your friends, just send them to http://www.hanselman.com/fightdiabetes. We're trying to raise $50,000 and the folks on Team Hanselman and this blog have raised $25,000 so far! Thank you very much to those who have donated! Your money will go directly to diabetes research funded by the American Diabetes Association.

Video: Step Out for Diabetes on KPTV's Good Day Oregon

Here's some potentially interesting Diabetes Links for you to read:

• Scott's Diabetes Explanation - The Airplane Analogy - If you read one link from this post, read this one.
• Twitting my Diabetes - I was on NBC11 in the Bay Area when I blogged my Diabetes every few minutes for an entire day.
• Team Hanselman and Diabetes Walk 2007 - My Personal Story about Diabetes and information on how to join us on October 20th for the Walk to Fight Diabetes. There are also banners and badges you can add to your blog or MySpace page.
• A Call for Good Design - One Guy, an Insulin Pump, 8 PDAs and an iPod - A post about the sad state of design around Diabetes Equipment.
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 14 - Travelling as a Diabetic - Here's how I travel to a different country in Africa each year or so and all the things a diabetic has to deal with when out and about.
• The First 12 Hours - The Medtronic Minimed Paradigm REAL-time Continuous Glucose Monitor - This is some information about the Continuous Sensor I use as well a brief history of Diabetes.
• Diabetes Walk 2006 - The Day of the Walk - We raised $12000 last year. Here's some pictures of Team Hanselman at least year's walk.
• Type 1 Diabetes will likely be cured in my lifetime - and just in time - Will Diabetes be cured in my lifetime? I hope so, as Diabetics die of Diabetes.
• Symlin plus Insulin equals new Diabetes Therapy - I am not only on an insulin pump, but I still take shots. (A lot of folks don't know that.) Here's why.
• What is the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes- - Here's my definition. Be sure to read the comments.
• Technology and the first insulin pump - Here's a picture of an early insulin pump.
• Garrick Neal's Ten Commandments of Diabetes - My good friend's tips for good control.

Thanks for visiting! I'll chop up the video and post it here when I'm back. We're on Good Day Oregon theoretically every 12 minutes, during the weather update, from 5am to 9am.

Hey look, it's me on NBC! Well, it's the local News in the San Francisco Bay Area (even though I live in Portland), but it's coverage!

Marianne Favro, the Health Reporter from NBC11 contacted me for an interview after hearing about Twittering My Diabetes , so I went down to the local NBC Affiliate and recorded a bunch of footage.

Of course the footage they used was the least awesome, including me saying (at one point during the 90 minutes) that diabetes "is wicked hard, and doesn't get any easier." It's magical how that kind of quote can get pulled out of an hour and a half of raw footage and make me sound like an idiot. ;)

Anyway, it turned out OK. The only major glitch is when they showed my Glucagon (sugar shot for major lows) and called it Insulin, but who notices that but me?

Go check out the Video up at NBC11 with the creative title: Diabetic uses Twitter.com. It also featured Biz Stone, one of the co-creators of Twitter.

Action Item and Note to Self: Come up with new Web 2.0 name like "Biz Stone" or "Guy Kawasaki", as "Scott Hanselman" is very Web 1.5. Any ideas?

Last week in order to increase awareness of Diabetes and raise money for the ADA I twittered my diabetes. I twittered (tweet'ed) every blood sugar test, every time I stuck an needle in me, refilled my pump, had a low, had a high, went for a walk. Every time Diabetes stuck its nose in my life, I twittered it.

Here's the transcript. Thanks to everyone who donated! The transcript is ordered NEWEST twitters first, so read it from the bottom up if you want the full experience. Finally, a use for Twitter. ;)

Big thanks to the folks at Twitter for featuring me on the their home page last week in support of the idea.

Please do note this is experiment was designed to generate empathy and turn that emphathy into action. No one's looking for pity and this wasn't intended to inspire fear, only to spread understanding.

For more information on why one ought to manage their diabetes closely and an analogy that explains how insulin and blood sugar relate to either, do check out "Diabetes Explanation: The Airplane Analogy" and the Diabetes section of this blog.

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The day (++) of Twittering for Diabetes is over. Thanks everyone. http://hanselman.com/fightdiabetes 05:27 PM May 19, 2007

Blood sugar is 110mg/dl but heading low fast. I'm off to burgerville. *http://hanselman.com/fightdiabetes/donate* 03:22 PM May 19, 2007

Blood sugar is 150mg/dl...crept up some before lunch. 12:53 PM May 19, 2007

Sugar is 122. Nice stable night. Don't get to many of those. *Twittering my diabetes* to raise money for the ADA - http://hanselman.com 09:04 AM May 19, 2007 from web

Blood sugar is 110mg/dl...looking like I'll be in for a stable night. Thank goodness. 01:23 AM May 19, 2007

Looking stable at 140mg/dl. Never a good idea to go to sleep with blood sugar that's "moving"...makes nighttime dangerous 11:27 PM May 18, 2007 

Blood sugar starting to inch up...now at 140mg/dl. I'd like an apple, so I need to do some calculations. 10:42 PM May 18, 2007

*Twittering my diabetes* to raise money for the ADA - http://hanselman.com 09:00 PM May 18, 2007

Salad was a good choice. Don't want to have a low while putting the baby down. 08:50 PM May 18, 2007

Blood sugar heading up, turns out tortilla strips have more carbs than I thought. 07:34 PM May 18, 2007

Going to have a chicken salad...should not be much insulin, but it's HUGE 07:15 PM May 18, 2007

Italian food tonight, but going to try lower carbs...I'd rather not "disturb" good blood sugar. 07:00 PM May 18, 2007

Getting ready to drive home....gotta check sugar before I drive. Looks like a lovely 105mg/dl. Don't want to have a low while driving. 06:49 PM May 18, 2007

Had to have a 15g granola bar to "level off" blood sugar. In a good position to start dinner with good numbers. 06:43 PM May 18, 2007

Blood sugar are 96mg/dl...kind of "sliding" into a low blood sugar...no action now, but soon. 06:09 PM May 18, 2007

Levelling off nicely. 108mg/dl, fitting nicely in the 80-120mg/dl goal that you, dear reader, the non-diabetic has. 05:53 PM May 18, 2007

Blood sugar is 122mg/dl...looking much better, but still "coming down hot." Don't want to have another low. 05:30 PM May 18, 2007 from web

Blood sugar is 177mg/dl...the delta/slope is great....40 points drop in 20min...I need to soft land this plane.... 04:59 PM May 18, 2007

*Twittering my diabetes* to raise money for the ADA - http://hanselman.com 04:44 PM May 18, 2007

Blood sugar starting to fall...224mg/dl now. Aiming for 100mg/dl, remember. Not sure why lunch was a failure. 04:43 PM May 18, 2007

I think my blood sugar has topped out (apexed) at 232mg/dl....I hope I'm heading back down... 04:24 PM May 18, 2007

Crap...totally messed up lunch...sugar is 228mg/dl and climbing... 04:14 PM May 18, 2007

Alarm just went of...blood sugar is 177 and heading higher. 03:39 PM May 18, 2007

There's free granola bars at a booth here at the conference. I'm grabbing 4 in case I have a low later. 03:34 PM May 18, 2007

There's lots of candy here...snickers, piles of the junk. Everyone's eating. Not I. 03:29 PM May 18, 2007

Blood Sugar 138mg/dl. Nasty low, now I'm afraid I'm going to "overshoot" my low and now I'm going high. 03:26 PM May 18, 2007

Found a cookie in the exhibit hall...gotta wait 10 min to see... 02:14 PM May 18, 2007

Insulin has a "half life" in the system...I've underestimated the power of the walk...I've got 2.5U still "pending"... 02:10 PM May 18, 2007

Alarm just went off...I can feel it, having a low. Shouldn't be...meter says 65...pump says 70... 02:09 PM May 18, 2007

Starting to get really nauseous...the secondary drug, Symlin, causes an hour of seasickness after injection... 01:41 PM May 18, 2007

Just walked 0.5 miles, back from the Restaurant. Can feel the sugar rising... 01:21 PM May 18, 2007

Blood sugar is 155mg/dl. Took 5U of Symlin, that slows digestion. Set pump to deliver 5U with 2.5U now and the rest on going. 01:07 PM May 18, 2007

Most insulin starts working in 2 hours, but most food starts raising your sugar in 10 mins. 12:34 PM May 18, 2007

Blood sugar 120mg/dl...good start to have Ethiopian food. Going to take insulin now in anticipation of a large meal. 12:18 PM May 18, 2007

At Queen of Sheba, trying to count carbs. 12:09 PM May 18, 2007

Walking to Queen of Sheba Ethiopian....walking takes the edge of blood sugar... 11:54 AM May 18, 2007

It's always a good idea for a diabetic to enter a meal with stable blood sugar... 11:31 AM May 18, 2007

I'm well positioned for lunch, blood sugar seems stable at 120mg/dl. Good for a diabetic. 11:02 AM May 18, 2007 

Blood sugar is 110mg/dl...trend is downward... 10:43 AM May 18, 2007 

My insulin pump is currently set to deliver 0.6U of insulin per hour. I take 30U a day total, including this "background insulin." 10:20 AM May 18, 2007

Doing more walking today than anticipated...I may need to take less insulin. 10:19 AM May 18, 2007

My continuous meter just alarmed, says I have to calibrate it with a blood test within 2 hours. Have to keep them in sync. 10:02 AM May 18, 2007

Blood sugar is 140mg/dl. Coming down, good. Safe to drive. Under 80 would not be safe. 09:56 AM May 18, 2007

Driving somewhere, gotta check blood sugar first....diabetics can lose their licenses if they have a "low" 09:55 AM May 18, 2007

I'd like to get my blood sugar back to a more normal level before eating lunch... 09:43 AM May 18, 2007

Sometimes when you have high blood sugar, your mouth tastes sweet, like you're marinating in your own juices. 09:36 AM May 18, 2007

Refilling my insulin pump reservoir. I don't "trust" this bottle of insulin. Insulin only lasts 28 days unrefridgerated and sometimes "dies. ... 09:32 AM May 18, 2007

Sugar is 160mg/dl. The goal is always 80-120. 160 is too high given I haven't eatten yet. 09:30 AM May 18, 2007

Sugar is 172bg/dl. That's high for a fasting number. Has the correction I took not hit yet, or do I need more insulin? 08:56 AM May 18, 2007 

Out of the shower, reconnecting the insulin pump tube to me. The tube is 43" long. The pump has 4 days worth of insulin. 07:20 AM May 18, 2007

*Twittering my diabetes* all day to raise money for diabetes research. Info at http://hanselman.com 07:14 AM May 18, 2007

Getting in the shower. I can disconnect the tube that connects my insulin pump, but then there's no insulin...can only d.c. for 30min. 07:09 AM May 18, 2007

Blood sugar went up around 5am, now 166bg/dl. Taking 1.25U to 'correct.' This is called the "pre-dawn effect," and is hormonal. 07:05 AM May 18, 2007 

Sugar is 104. Got to remember to refill my pump, and change batteries. http://hanselman.com/fightdiabetes 03:13 AM May 18, 2007

Took a 1/2 unit too much insulin...alarm just went off, having a fig newton. 02:02 AM May 18, 2007

Blood sugar seems ok after the apple an hour ok, I'll go to bed now. I'll wake at 4 to check. 01:20 AM May 18, 2007

When eatting large meals, I use the pump *and* take an additional shot of a drug to slow digestion, and slow the sugar rise. 12:58 AM May 18, 2007

Some diabetics take shots, I'm connected 24hrs a day to a pump. I keep it under the pillow. 12:56 AM May 18, 2007

Running out of insulin in my onboard pump....I need 30U (units) for 24 hours. Got 14U on board...change the whole thing now or in the mornin ... 12:06 AM May 18, 2007

Going to eat an apple. Blood sugar is 102mg/dl. Gotta take 2U of insulin, but I'm also eating cheese, so I'll do 3. 12:05 AM May 18, 2007

blood sugar is low...74mg/dl. Starting to feel it. I took too much insulin for dinner. Damn low carb soup. 10:39 PM May 17, 2007 from web

A non-diabetic's blood sugar is between 80mg/dl and 120mg/dl (milligrams/deciliter of blood). 10:23 PM May 17, 2007

Tomorrow I'm going to "twitter my diabetes" - all day, to help raise awareness. hanselman.com/fightdiabetes 07:10 PM May 17, 2007

UPDATE: This event is now over and the complete transcript of the Diabetic Day's Twittering's are now available.

Twitter is a new thing on the 'net lately. You can send text messages of up to 140 characters into the cloud, and folks who are your "friends" or "followers" (read: digital stalkers) can receive those updates. You can send your updates to twitter via their Web Interface, via their Mobile Browser interface at http://m.twitter.com, but the really compelling way is via their 5-digit SMS code "40404." Here's a Twitter SMS Cheatsheet. For example, to "subscribe" to me, you'd SMS/text "follow shanselman" to code 40404. To stop, you'd SMS/text "leave shanselman."

Personally I find it a little silly to need to be THAT connected to folks, but I've found twitter to be useful in temporary situations, like conferences when you WANT to let folks know what's going on and what you're doing. It was very useful at Mix to meet up with folks I wanted to talk to, so from a just-in-time networking point of view, it was brilliant. I didn't update after Mix, though, until RailsConf2007.

I've been trying to raise money for Diabetes Research as I'm a Type I diabetic. Driving home today, I had an even better idea on how I could use Twitter.

Tomorrow, Thursday, May 18th, I'm going to "twitter" my Diabetes for one day. By this, I mean, every time I take a manual shot, update my pump, prick my finger, have a high blood sugar, have a low blood sugar, eat, calibrate my continuous meter, or do ANYTHING related to diabetes, I'll send an update to Twitter.

My hope is that this will give folks who don't think about diabetes a little insight into how often I, and 20 million others, either do, or should, be thinking about their diabetes. I'd also like you to imagine if a small child had this disease, and how a parent of a small child deals with it.

Please spread the word by , and I encourage you and yours to subscribe to my Twitter account just for 1 day. If you don't want to make an account, just visit http://www.twitter.com/shanselman throughout Tomorrow and watch the updates. I hope it'll give you some insight into diabetes, and maybe open some eyes.

Hopefully you've taken a look at http://www.hanselman.com/fightdiabetes and read my personal story. Many of you have donated and I appreciate it, more than you realize.

As of this blog post we've raised $13,808 in 22 days. That's 28% of our $50,000 goal! That's truly amazing, but we're not there yet.

Here's my ongoing "rolling thunder" plan to hitting this goal. There will be more ideas as we get closer to the day of the walk.

1. Portland, OR - BONUS "Silverlight" .NET User's Group Meeting with ALL proceeds benefiting diabetes research.

We're going to have a BONUS May Meeting of PADNUG, the Portland Area .NET User's Group. I'll be talking about Silverlight and sharing and demoing everything I learned this year at Mix. We're asking for a small donation for this meeting to benefit the ADA.

You can make checks out to the "American Diabetes Association," or you can paypal me at 'my first name at my last name.com.' I will be matching PayPal'ed donations personally.

The meeting is at the Corillian Cafe at 6pm this coming Thursday, May 10th, 2007. Please do join us and bring your friends. Even though we're a .NET Users Group, we're not religious zealots. Bring your Macs and Open Source Friends! Bring Python People and Ruby People! Do join us!

2. Blog "Donation Matching" Challenge

A number of folks have put this badge up on their blogs and linked it to http://www.hanselman.com/fightdiabetes or http://www.hanselman.com/fightdiabetes/donate.

Brian Hewitt, former co-worker, friend and world-traveler, wanted to a do a matching challenge, so we came up with the idea to do a 48 hour blog-matching challenge.

Starting Weds, May 9th at Noon PST until Friday, May 11 at Noon PST we'd like to ask any bloggers who'd like to be involved to volunteer to match donations that come in during that period up to a specified ceiling.

I'll keep this list updated with bloggers who are participating in the match:

• Brian Hewitt is in! (It was his idea!)
• Michele Leroux Bustamante will match donations up to an private amount.
• Clemens Vasters will match donations up to a private amount, and since he works for Microsoft, they will match HIS donation again!
• Brian Randell will match donations up to a private amount.
• Peter Provost will match donations, and since he works for Microsoft, they will match also!
• Scott Swigart will match donations also!
• Phil Haack will match donations as well!

If you've been hanging back and waiting for the right time to give, next Weds to Friday your tax-deductible gift will have even more kick and be doubled, tripled or more!

Let me know in the Comments of this post or in a Post on your own blog if you want to be involved in this matching challenge and I'll add your name here.

Thanks to everyone who has given or spread the word. You're making this the best walk ever, and giving me hope that we're going to fix this thing. I'm off to check my blood sugar.

3. Update - MicroISV Donations

The very awesome Martin Plante, lead at slimCODE Solutions, has offered to give all the earnings from his slimKEYS product during the May 6th to May 11th to help fight diabetes. An amazing idea and a very nice gesture.

I talked about slimKEYs in my post "Replacing Start Run." It's a Universal HotKey Manager with easy-to-code-to plugin model. As Martin says, "Help a good cause and get a lifetime slimKEYS license at the same time!"

Thanks Martin!