Dexcom is amazing - and new knowledge

My most recent sensor has been behaving strangely. When it works, it works well; but already in five days it has basically reset itself (claiming a failed sensor) three times.

I only connected the dots a bit yesterday when it almost happened again when I was taking a rare afternoon nap; the signs were all there (the scattergram, where all points seem to go everywhere just before it shuts down). I called tech support and they opened a case and asked that I call today.

I got Kristen. She listened to my story, and as I was uploading the data to their systems, she asked if this was when I was sleeping. I said yes. Then she gave a new bit of knowledge I had not previously possessed.

Apparently, intrastitial fluid tends to get "pulled back" a bit from some areas of the body when one is not in motion. If the sensor happens to be in such an area, it will have trouble reading during periods of non-motion - that is, sleeping.

Excellent! at least I know. But then she one more. She's gonna send me a new sensor. I told her she doesn't have to do that; it was pretty much user error in placement, but she insisted that they want my experience to be the best it can, and she understands these cost a lot of money. In other words, even though I fully accepted the explanation, and let them off the hook, they still insisted on climbing right back on it and back up their product in a way that is not usually seen elsewhere (go get Abbott or Medtronic to cover you in these circumstances).

I am again impressed at the level of attention the good folks at Dexcom pay their customers. It's getting to the point where not only am I not upset about the reoccurring cost of the system, I am at a loss as to how to repay their kindness. So I'm doing it the only way I can think of.

As of a minute ago, I put in an order for Dexcom shares. A small amount for sure, but if there is any justice in this world, any company with this kind of product and customer service is bound to succeed.

On incompetence

Even just the title for this article is golden...

Incompetent people really have no clue, studies find

Word.

Unexpected, but nice

So the medical examiner came in today to do our checkups for the new life insurance policies we're issuing.

In the application I stated what I knew as my height and weight - 6'4" and 212 lbs. I mean, weight is something that fluctuates, but one's height tends to stay more or less fixed... or so I thought.

The first surprise came when he measured me in at 6'2". That was such a surprise that insisted on doing it again. It came in at 6'2.5". So I stood against a wall. Finally we agreed on 6'3". I still think that's strange, but maybe I'm getting shorter with age.

Anyway, that wasn't the big deal. That came when I got weighed. Remember the number on my application? I tend to be conservative, and I thought I'd lost a couple pounds in the past few weeks, but imagine my shock - and delight - when the scale, after being calibrated, showed me as... drum roll please... 197!

To be honest, I don't believe it for a minute. I think I'm probably around 205. I've been struggling for a long time trying to get back to 195, which is what I consider my ideal weight, But you know something? the medical record says 197 now, and that's what I'm sticking with publicly.

Just don't tell anyone what I really think, OK?

Eighteen!

This is a new record... my most recent sensor lasted 18 days.

That's more than a day better than the most recent record holder.

Interestingly, one of the side effects of using them on my arm is that they seem to work quite reliably all the way to the end - and then they sort of crap out immediately... there is much less of a deterioration effect. It's still noticeable once you know what to look for, but much less so.

How easy it is to forget...

... that we live in a tremendously advanced country, technologically.

We take so many things for granted. For example, pretty much every single hotel, motel and bed and breakfast in the US can be booked online, through consolidators like Expedia and Orbitz. Want to negotiate? Priceline is a click away. Find that super special hideaway? Google will find it, give you the contact info, summarize reviews, and hand you their website, all in about 5 seconds.

In fact, the services industry is just amazingly available online here in the US.

Not so, however, in the rest of the world. In Israel - arguably one of the most advanced countries in the world technologically - things work... differently.

I've posted already the story about the funny policies of that hotel in the north of Israel. Today I'll speak to my experience trying to book another hotel for the period. The challenges, as I encountered them over and over again:

1. Not even close to all hotels are available on the consolidator sites. Maybe 50% in big cities. Maybe. Worse, each of the sites is relatively small and fragmented in terms of its offerings, which is odd; one would expect some of them to merge and create an Expedia-like entity. Nope. So instead of going to two or three large sites, you have to dig through about a dozen to get a semi-reasonable view of each location's availability. And that's in large metro areas.
   
2. The sites themselves, by and large, do not support anything other than Internet Explorer. Hello? Firefox already has over 20% of the personal browser space... and what about Opera? The funny thing is that the sites still seem to work in Firefox, but they get messed up if you try to make a booking; the dates get posted wrong, or the site reverts to previous pages without warning.
3. Most sites make an attempt to have an English version, but it's poorly implemented. So you may see a great English start page, but then you try to book something and the booking engine is all-Hebrew, or maybe a hybrid. Gah. Speaking of which, quoted prices tend to change between the quote page and booking page, so pay attention to what you're committing to pay.
4. Even on English pages, the dates are presented in Euro format - even when presenting prices in dollars. You know, day and month switched. I'd expect to see the euro format when quoting prices in Euros, and the US format when quoting in dollars. Not a single site does this.
   
5. Poor coding abounds. Referrer links that are improperly coded in HTML cause browsers to dump sessions. Try going through the booking process here and then here - it's the same site, but going through the former will result in "expired session" notices when attempting to book, whereas the latter will work fine. If you happen not to realize this, you will get frustrated very quick, especially when this site also tends to show the best rates across the board.
6. Major rate differences across sites. I suppose this is dependent on individual agreements between some hotels and some sites, but it can drive a person nuts. You really do have to check every single one of the dozen or so poorly coded, poorly implemented, inconsistent and language-schizo sites to get the best rates, because each one seems to have the best deal on something. And the differences are significant (as much as double the price). Compare to the US where it's more a question of brand loyalty and flavor whether you will book through any of the major travel sites, but where prices are always relatively close if they are different at all.
7. Non-confirmed confirmations. Another little surprise for people used to the US. You may book a place, get a confirmation, and even get your card charged, only to get an email two days later "uncomfirming" the booking, and a reverse charge (thank god for that). The whole thing is truly bizarre - what I suspect is going on is that the sites are booking based on inventory information that is not up to the minute, and then the hotel's reservation desk is "unbooking" those same reservations. What I don't understand is why they charge in advance, because the chargebacks on these cross-border transactions must be killing them.

There are more issues, but this should give you a picture. Another interesting problem is places that have a site that is not working, but which are not connected to any consolidator. I am trying to book one night in a place like that, and I've been emailing back and forth with their reservation desk, and they keep referring me to their site - which is not running. Whether I will actually be able to book the place is yet to be determined. Nuts. At least I found their email - posted in a review by a helpful fellow traveler who apparently encountered the same problem quite a while ago. How long does it take to create a website?

Good ol' Israel. It's a common joke amongst Israelies that we are a happy-go-lucky bunch - the country of "three screws". That is, when something comes with instructions that require four screws, we will always only put three in, and figure that should cover it. If we even go that far. A lot of stuff is done in this fashion - get it up to the place where it's sort of working, and then move on. It's why a lot of Israeli hi-tech companies never get beyond a certain size, and why they need American managers so badly in order to succeed. Brilliant folks, not so good on execution.

Ah, yes

I am planning a short trip to Israel and was working my schedule and trying to book my hotels... when I realized again how much Israel marches to the beat of a different... um, Tuba?

Like it's a whole different instrument.

The reason I was reminded of that was that I tried booking two nights in a hotel up north that I like. They have regular rooms, suites, and one apartment suite, and I tried booking a suite.

The reservation was confirmed, then declined.

So I called them and asked what was going on.

They said the hotel was full. I asked if all suites were booked, too. They squirmed but said yes. Then I asked if the apartment suite was booked. The lady asks me how many people in my party. I say one. She says it's booked too.

Here is the thing - I KNOW it's not booked. Why? because prodding a bit allowed me to find out that they won't rent suites or the apartment to single guests... they are reserved for families.

Yup, that's right. They would rather have the rooms empty than rent them to a single guy wanting a bigger room.

Huh.

The "recession"

(warning: the following is a bit, err, populistic)

OK, folks, I'm gonna write something that's going to sound completely ridiculous for many of you, especially if you are following mainstream media, or worse, if you are like me a subscriber to Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.

Here it is.

The main and most interesting aspect of this so-called recession is that, for the first time that I can remember, the common man has won.

Whoa, I hear you say. What the hell is this lunatic talking about?

Consider. Where has most of the damage been done thus far? CDOs (those investment vehicles based on subprimes), and investment banks and hedge funds that engaged in loose risk management under the same sense of entitlement to money that pretty much all bankers, and particularly investment bankers, seem to possess in such high amounts.

But the damage is NOT to the folks getting the loans; most of them didn't deserve them in the first place (the $60K wage earner getting a $500K loan), yet quite a few are still managing to hold on to those properties that they would never have gotten otherwise. And the government is helping them, too. In an economic environment like this one, property IS a good investment, because rising inflation will eventually cheapen the loan principal quite significantly. It was the engine behind the rapid rise and level resetting (more than doubling) in property prices in the late 19th century, and it will be again. To put it in layman's terms, if everything becomes 50% more expensive in the next 6-7 years, as most predict, and wages more or less grow at the same pace, which also most predict (notice how in this whole discussion everybody repeatedly says they can't fathom why american corporations are doing so well; I'll tell you why down below), then your house will be easier to pay off. Even more so if the dollar continues to weaken, because you'll get more dollars (to make up for the fall in value) to pay off a fixed amount (your loan principle).

I see the difference already in my hourly-based business, where it is becoming a tad easier to charge what used to be considered top dollar only a year ago.

Most of the "credit crunch" damage is being done to very rich folks, make no mistake about it. When Carlyle Group folds, it doesn't hurt you and me in any noticeable way; yeah, sure, maybe your pension fund lost a bit of money, but it won't be much because pension funds are so highly restricted in their structure of exposure to any single risk, that their losses end up small. Who it does hurt are the uber-rich who were betting literally hundreds of millions or even billions each on the ability of hedgies to get them more, more, more. When Bear Stearns gets creamed, the main sufferers are not you and me; and if Jimmy Caine gets taken down to size because he loses a couple billion, oh well.

In fact, the main point of this "credit crunch" is not really noticed by the man on the street, except if they let themselves be scared by it. And you know something? while most of us have this unexplained sense of foreboding, because, well, they all tell us we're doomed, it just ain't happening. So we go about our lives worried about stuff we don't understand, but we go about our lives. Because in reality, we don't need to understand these things, they don't impact us much. Yes, interest rates may go up a bit on credit cards, but folks are still getting the money from the bank, who is even more eager to give it out because they have to make a profit somewhere. The truth is that the credit crunch squeezes tight on those high-risk, under-collateralized financial institutions who have thrown caution to the wind, their shareholders, and most importantly, their investors.

In other words, the main impact of the crunch is the narrowing - for the first time in a long, long time - of the gap between the poor and rich.

Interesting reversal of roles, don't you think?

That's why you hear them talking about systemic failure. Because when the system is working, no matter how poorly, Wall Street makes money. It's only when the system itself breaks down that they start losing it, and the more they rely on it working properly, the more exposed the end up being to it breaking. And let me tell you, they were, not to put too fine a point onto it, quite brutally exposed. The amount of hubris and self-importance engaged by many in the banking world in the past few years has been educational.

They couldn't imagine this happening, so why not "ride the gravy train"? That train, mind you, is that which is directly represented by that rich-poor gap, which has been growing, growing, growing...

Consumers have been doing OK - not stellar, obviously, because everyone gets affected, but from a man on the street standpoint, they have been mostly shielded (and likely will be more so by democrats coming to power), feeling more the impact of the rise of commodities than that of the credit crunch. Corporations have been doing quite well, so well in fact, that for many bankers it's become a sort of head-scratcher, along the lines of: "we're all in this terrible mess, I'm losing billions, how do all these companies keep making record profits? huh? HUH?!". The anger is palpable. But see, many - in fact most - corporations are not exposed as investment bankers to this stuff. Never have been. When you go beyond public companies, it gets even better, because while small and medium business are squeezed for credit (I should know, owning one), they are also not as dependent on those credit lines, and their sales and margins, for the most part, are growing. So as a business owner you trim some unnecessary costs, you grind down, and you make it through just fine. Except, of course, if you sold to a hedgie and are in debt to the hilt. Then bye bye Charlie.

Heck, even the worst predictions put unemployment at 5.5%, just about at the reasonable "maintenance" level for inflation. Did I say "oh well" already?

Guys, this is the other facet of "democratization of capital" (or money), that famous concept so lauded by Wall Street. Most of the time, it has the major impact of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. That's how financiers set up the system. I don't begrudge them, I would do the same if I was in their shoes (which most of us secretly wish for, I think). But when the tables turn - and they have to turn suddenly and brutally or otherwise the more-or-less carefully designed system will take care of it - then the transfer changes direction, and it changes direction fast, and it changes in very large magnitudes. It won't last for too long; that won't be allowed. But for a while here we get to witness what happens when the gap narrows. I, for one, am propping my feet up on my very simple desk in my very simple home office and munching on some peanuts, because right now it's the best damn show in town.

Israel again

These two videos are just too funny... or maybe it's because I come from there.

A happy moment

A couple days ago I finally received my new sports goggles, and today was the day: I finally went and played a bit of basketball. That's when I discovered the truth so conveniently ignored and suppressed:

I'm getting older.

I wasn't even planning to do much, honestly. Just a 45 minute shooting practice, to get the old muscles moving again. The last few years have seen me fall into a pretty sedentary lifestyle, and while I haven't gained much weight, I know I'm out of shape. I just hadn't realized how badly.

Anyway, I got into the 24-hour fitness, and made another momentous discovery: it really helps your shot if you can see the basket.

No, really.

See, I've been using the same sports goggles since I was about 18 years old. Thing is, my prescription has changed some since then. Not by much, about 1 1/2 diopters in total, but still. Since that's a relatively small change for someone with a prescription of 10 1/2 to an eye, I discounted the effect.

Today I discovered that this approach was, well, short-sighted.

You see, in my younger days I used to be a pretty darn consistent shooter. Midrange shots I'd sink all day long, covered or not, double-teamed or not, falling, sidestepping or back jumping. I could drill 3-pointers with surprising regularity. Then, in the last few years, on the rare occasions that I did play, I'd have a terrible time hitting my midrange shots, let alone long-distance ones. I always put it down to simply being out of shape; you know, my body not doing things the right way. But my technique had never deteriorated.

Well, today I discovered that having appropriate prescription goggles makes all the difference. All those marginal shots that I used to make with a high percentage back then, and which I stopped making later, were falling in again with the same ol' regularity.

That was kinda cool.

But that's not the main point of today. As I was practicing, a couple of guys asked me if I wanted to join them for a game of "21". Now, I'd watched them a bit myself; they were in far better shape than me, were better shooters, stronger and more agile. I told them as much, and that I would probably be kinda annoying for them to deal with. They said not to worry about it, they looked at my practice and I'd do OK.

I acquiesced. Then I found out their version of "21" was based on shots from the 3 point line. I am nowhere near being back to a level where I could make those at all, let alone with any consistency. Oh well. At least I stated in advance I was going to embarrass myself. They had no cause to complain.

In fact, they had all the advantages, except one, and it's been the "secret sauce" that has always carried me even in places where I was hopelessly out of contention. I'm efficient. I may not do as much as everybody else much of the time in terms of running around, but give me the ball and I'll make something out of it, points or an assist. In defense I'd be terribly anemic but still tend to be in someone's face at the critical moment. And so on and so forth.

And so it went. They first guy drilled his first three shots, then missed one, and I grabbed the rebound. Worked my way to scoring from the field. Then did the same on the next two plays. Then they got the ball again and started scoring, mostly playing against each other because, well, I was outmatched and outclassed. In fact, throughout the whole match I saw maybe 20% of the balls, and each of them 40%. Heck, at some point I literally had to stop and sit on the sideline for a few balls because I couldn't breath anymore.

But when I did get the ball, I usually made my points. Efficiency. Then I'd go to the 3-point line and miss, of course, but I'd still make those field shots. And then I made another one, and they both came and high-fived me. Apparently I won. I had no idea. I was simply trying to survive the ordeal, make my shots, catch a breath.

I told them it was a victory for opportunism, not skill, and they nodded. I actually felt bad, because I had no right to win. But inside I was secretly overjoyed. It was a delightfully unimportant victory for an aging man.

Coffee again

I must be needing some caffeine, because I can't seem to stop making coffee related posts...

So... Decaf Poopacino, anyone?

Sensor life

Alright, I guess I can call it official now...

Sensors placed on the arm last longer.

Period.

At this point I've gone through a box of them, and every single one finished at least two full cycles, or two weeks. In fact, 14-16 days seems to be the norm.

Combined with much more accurate readings, a lot less aggravation from missed readings at night, and significantly increased comfort, there is simply no excuse, at least for me, to return to the recommended abdominal placement.

And dropping to effective cost of the sensors by 50% due to increased life is a huge difference when one pays for these things using one's own credit card.