Scott Hanselman

Sometimes my diabetes really gets to me. This is year twelve for me and I have no (known) complications and I'd like to keep it that way. I do pretty well, with blood sugars averaging around 130-160. Ideal is 100, but I'm not doing to bad. However, I had some Indian food last night and I was up until 4AM "chasing blood sugars." I even took an intra-muscular insulin shot in an attempt to bring it down. It can be very tedious.

The insulin pump is nice, but folks often forget that it's just a delivery device. It pumps insulin through a tube into me, and that's it. All the input comes from the blood sugar meter via a finger stick.

However, very soon I should be able to get a Continuous Glucose Monitoring System. This would be yet another device that'd be 'implanted/stuck' to me, but it would talk wirelessly and continuously to the pump.

This device is rolled out in seven cities; they are apparently taking it slow. I can't wait. I have no words to explain to you, dear reader, what it feels like to prick your finger 6 to 10 times a day for 365 days a year for over a decade. You get so addicted (in a necessary way) to the feedback provided by the number that is your blood sugar. Your blood sugar's current level becomes a sixth sense that is as important as any of the other five.

Every time I prick my finger it costs about 80 US cents. It gets spendy. Sometimes I get a little Mulderesque and wonder if they will ever cure diabetes as it's so profitable. Getting my blood sugar reader 10 times a day isn't enough. If you refer back to my Diabetes Airplane Analogy, you wouldn't want to check the altimeter in your airplane only ten times. you'd want to check it continuously.

This continuous meter will connect to me on the other side of my body - the opposite side than the pump - and talk to the pump wirelessly. I'd still have to make the decisions and "close the loop." NONE of this happens automatically. Insulin is never delivered without me deciding. Getting the BG (Blood Glucose) reading continuously will make my life easier.

Here's a little (I think) exclusive. I got this from a "source"...it's a PDF version of the training manual for the new Continuous Meter:

File Attachment: Paradigm Real teaching 1.pdf (999 KB)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Random thought: I like the whole XmlReader philosophy. I use it much more often than XmlDocument. I haven't made an XmlDocument in a while. Every once in a while an XmlDocument shows up when you need an XmlNode for some SOAP stuff, but for the most part, I like XmlReaders.

Someone wanted a chunk of code that grabbed RSS Enclosures from a feed. They didn't care about the content, they just wanted the enclosures' attributes. Here's what I sent them 2 mins later.

Sure this code could have been done with XmlDocument.SelectNodes (and I'm sure one of you will show me how) but without getting to much into premature optimization, I know that using an XmlReader will always give me better performance. Always. If use it for little one-off stuff like this, I know when I need real performance for a real app, the usage will be fresh in my mind.

Now playing: Rent - Rent

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I noticed via Larkware that Scott Bellware had created a series of Visual Studio 2005 Code Snippets for NUnit. Very cool, I said. However, we're not all using Visual Studio 2005 at my company. Much of our bread and butter is 2003/.NET 1.1. But, many of us have CodeRush. Ah! I said, I should duplicate ScottB's work as Code Rush templates!

I rushed into the Templates section of CodeRush only to notice that they are already there! Damn you, Mark Miller and your forethought!

Anyway, I looked at Scott's List and added a few from his, and there's a few built into Mark's that aren't in Scott's, blah blah blah, union, blah blah, intersection, and here's the Code Rush Templates file if you're a Rushie and want to import them. This file includes the whole NUnit folder with my few changes.
File Attachment: CSharp_NUnit.xml (100 KB)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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My eighth Podcast is up. This episode is about a few useful VS.NET tools and some interesting websites. I'll talk more about the many other tools that are available in future shows.

We're listed in the iTunes Podcast Directory, so I encourage you to subscribe with a single click (two in Firefox) with the button below. For those of you on slower connections there are lo-fi and torrent-based versions as well.

Our sponsors are Automated QA, PeterBlum and the .NET Dev Journal.

Do take a look at TestComplete from Automated QA. It integrates with Visual Studio 2005 and I'm going to try to get a formal review of their stuff probably week after next, particularly their functional Web Testing and Recording.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

• Each show will include a number of links, and all those links will be posted along with the show on the site. There were 15 sites mentioned in this eighth episode, some planned, some not. We're still using Shrinkster.com on this show.
• The basic MP3 feed is here, and the iPod friendly one is here. There's a number of other ways you can get it (streaming, straight download, etc) that are all up on the site just below the fold. I use iTunes, myself, to listen to most podcasts, but I also use FeedDemon and it's built in support.
• Some other clients are Doppler (also suppose Windows CE), FireAnt, Nimiq, and PrimeTime Podcast.
• Note that for now, because of bandwidth constraints, the feeds always have just the current show. If you want to get an old show (and because many Podcasting Clients aren't smart enough to not download the file more than once) you can always find them at http://www.hanselminutes.com.
• I have, and will, also include the enclosures to this feed you're reading, so if you're already subscribed to ComputerZen and you're not interested in cluttering your life with another feed, you have the choice to get the 'cast as well.
• If there's a topic you'd like to hear, perhaps one that is better spoken than presented on a blog, or a great tool you can't live without, contact me and I'll get it in the queue!

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

Now playing: Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant, and Karl Pilkington - Ricky Gervais Show: Season 2, Episode 1

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I'm growing increasingly frustrated with the Motorola DVR that Comcast includes with their HDTV package. Alex Scoble (who works at Corillian) had similar problems and recently gave up. He went to DirectTV. However, apparently the big draw towards DirectTV, the DirectTivo unit, is being phased out and DirectTV is passing out crappy no-name DVRs again. (Can anyone confirm?)

Just this moment I noticed that Comcast added channel 706 - our local CBS affiliate, KOIN - after a protracted battle, they've worked something out. However, the compression artifacts are ridiculous. It's so hard to watch, even my wife noticed them. When Mo notices MPEG artifacts (in the guise of, "what's with the picture" questions, then it's BAD.

I just want:

• 5.1 Audio out via optical
• 720p HD video out via DVI/HDMI
• Dual Tuner DVR with 20+ hours of storage
• No blips, bloops, skips, stutters, random reboots

What's a dude got to do to get a single wire into a single box to get HD in this town? Get me this for $50 a month and we're done. (Comcast has it down 90% if the DVR sucked slightly less. If it glitched less, you'd never hear from me on this subject.)

What are my choices?

• Comcast
• Pros - reasonably priced, around $50 a month for more channels than I care about, over a dozen in HD and a (crappy) dual tuner DVR with quirks for only $10 a month with no big lump fee.
• Cons - increasingly bad DVR, only 120gig ~15-17hrs in HD.
• DirectTV
• Pros - They aren't Comcast. 250gig DVR ~30hrs in HD.
• Cons - A dish hanging off my house. Need a receiver for every room in the house. $399 (actually $599(!)-$200 rebate) for a HD DVR (whose performance I can't be sure about). Regular HD Receivers are $199!
• Dish Network (Are these guys even a player?)
• Pros - DVR supports PiP. Upconverts SD beyond 480i.
• Cons - A dish hanging off my house. Dodgy HD lineup. Only two tuners, one SD, one HD - the difference is called out in the interface, and forces the user to think about which tuner tapes what show. $300 up front HD fee and it's a lease not a buy. 18 month commitment if you want to save money.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

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