Kudos to Dexcom - again

My saga continues with trying to get the receiver to work with a virtual machine running Windows XP under Linux, but I wanted to say a few warm words about Dexcom customer support (again).

Here is the status: Silicon Labs, as you are aware, refused to help me decipher the error code, even though the troubleshooting guide they posted on their website specifically directed me to send them the question in the first place, with specific pieces of troubleshooting information (which I provided).

So boo to them.

Dexcom at first didn't understand my request, and understandably denied it; they don't have the resources to make their software work under anything but Windows. While I again question their decision to write this in .Net, it's their decision.

However, I did manage to get my point across that my question was actually about the Silicon Labs driver for the CP2102 UART bridge, which is a component of the Seven receiver Dexcom sources from Silicon Labs. Joe Gross, their tech support manager, just wrote to me and asked me to hold on and that they will try to talk to Silicon Labs about the problem, since Dexcom is the actual Silabs customer.

So why the kudos? because they could just tell me to shut up and go away. They really could. It would suck, big time, but life isn't fair. In fact, I totally expected them to.

But they didn't. They actually took the time to read my plea, eventually understood my request (even if it took me a couple of attempts to communicate it properly), and are going out of their way to see if they can assist. That, my friends, is why I adore Dexcom so much. Whether we end up resolving this or not is still up in the air; I actually think I've hit on the source of the problem (timer too short, buffer too small) and it can be fixed by altering the related settings. But the effort really does matter.

Gas theft and new Dexcom insight?

If this is happening now, imagine what will happen when gas is actually no longer cheap in this country... because right now, it still is. I wonder why europeans can contain themselves when they are paying $8 a gallon, huh?

Also, I think I hit on something. When you use the Dexcom, make sure that over time there is no discrepancy that slowly increases between the clock on the Dexcom and the calibrating Ultra. Since clocks can and do get desynced over time, this is important to keep track of. I say this because it would seem that if the gap between the two clocks goes beyond the interval on the Dex - 5 minutes - it can result in slowly deteriorating accuracy on the Dex with repeated calibrations. I'm still collecting data on this but the theory is worth noting at this point.

Kublacon 2008

I'm back from another Kublacon. It's weird to think that this wonderful con is now something in which I can consider myself being a regular. Going to the con is, in its own fashion, a measure of stability, since most of my life is rather chaotic. Huh.

In the narrative below, games in general are italicized, and games I actually played are also bold-faced.

Friday

Anyway, I made it to the con around 11:30 on friday morning, having brought only about half the games I have in the past with me. I still didn't expect to play even half of them, but at least I didn't try to stuff my car any which way I could on the off chance that I will. The difference? I knew I was going to be meeting with Gino and his crew, who are boardgamers themselves, so other games will be present. Gino also made a great effort to coordinate us for the con, but I screwed it up somewhat at the end by not fully understanding the spreadsheet part about who brings what doubled-up game. End result? two Amun Re's and no Die Macher, which will remain high on my list of unplayed games.

Having reached the hotel relatively early, I got a good spot right next to the stairs in the parking lot, one flight up (level 2). It was such a good spot that I avoided leaving it for the entire con, or at least, intended so. At the end I had to leave for a half hour at some point but more on that later.

I checked in, put my stuff in my room - which was tiny, by the way, I know the Hyatt remodeled and got rid of the larger rooms under the 9th floor, but the new ones are quite likely the smallest I've stayed in for a long while now. Not that I need much room considering I only really use the room as a combination locker/coffin for when I virtually drop dead after too many gaming hours. Went back down and waited for registration to open and anyone I know to arrive. I tried Bill's phone a couple times but it was off; I could not find Gino's or Lori's to see what their plans were, so I figured I'd go see what I can play.

Happily, a game of Carabande was being set up. I've been wanting to try it out for a while now, so I jumped in. I got real lucky on my draw as the seventh player and got car number 1. Skills I've developed as a teenager flicking coins around in a homemade game called "3-coin-soccer" were apparently not forgotten as I raced ahead after the third flick and never looked back. In fact, beyond my absolute first flick ever, in which not knowing the actual way the little Carabande puck interacted with the surface I way overshot (the organizer let us all have one rookie or practice shot that didn't count, so I immediately used that to retry), I did not miss any other shot and never got delayed even once. By the time I completed my lap and won the game the second car was about 20 track lengths behind. It was great fun and now I need to find a way to acquire Carabande (or Pitchcar, which I hear is very similar) since I would like to play much more of it.

Giant Formula DE was starting up, an event I try to hop into every year, so I mosied on over there and promptly rolled a "1" to start last in an 8-player game, thereby eliminating my chances of winning (in a 1-lap game) but giving me a good challenge. At least I didn't get my car flipped over and eliminated on the first turn like I did last year, and by the time I got the checkered flag I was on the podium, ending third, with no more tread on my tires and running on fumes. Quite a surprising and satisfying result.

The others were coming in by then - except Lori who was only getting in Saturday - and it was time for some more serious boardgaming. I then spotted David and Mesha, the Game of Thrones and Colloseum folks from last year. So of course we played Game of Thrones. A 6-player game, and they insisted on playing with every single optional rule from all expansions. My friends, I have never even imagined this game could get this chaotic, let alone played it that way. It was actually quite fun, although we lost Gino midway as he had to leave for a personal event. Brian who has never played the game took his Stark spot which played in my favor as my Greyjoys ended up taking our last two fortresses from him to win.

Ilan showed up in the meantime and we adjourned for dinner at Max's (Matzohball soup for me, of course) before heading back to the Hyatt. we were discussing what to play and everyone got excited about Race for the Galaxy, which I had never played before, but apparently it is the "hot game" of the moment. This thing has a wicked learning curve. The designers apparently did their best to make it self-explanatory by their liberal use of colors and symbols, but because the game does have a large set of rules, they ended up trading in the need to have the rules around for an even worse need to literally learn a new language. I spent the entire first game asking for symbol clarifications and slowing everything up, but beginner's luck carried me through to a surprising win. Funnily enough, I didn't even know how to count my points so had no idea whether I did well or not until the very end.

I spent the second game getting surprised by even more symbols on cards I hadn't seen before, and slowly getting a sense of how to interpret them. I still had no real idea of how to count my points so imagine my shock when I won that one, too. At that point even though I wanted to stop I was coerced into playing again. I was still going slower than everybody else trying to figure out what was going on, but ended up with a respectable 34 points and second place behind Ilan who had a screamer. Having finally lost one, I was allowed to go and browse the flea market which had opened up.

I walked around and suddenly spotted a copy of Ave Caesar, a game I had wanted for a long time. At $20 it was a no brainer, but I did my "hesitant to buy at this price" show that is second nature to anyone growing up in Israel, and ended up getting Duel of Ages and some other game tossed in for a total of $30. I immediately turned around and sold the third one to the guy behind me who showed an interest in it for $5, walking away happily with the other two for a total of $25.

As I came back to the table everyone was debating what to play, and since there were six of us, I suggested we try Ave Caesar. Oh boy. For the next hour and a half I laughed more than I ever remember laughing playing any other game in memory. It was a hoot. Brian was absolutely frigging hilarious, getting on a roll making lemonade out of lemons as he was shut out of any chance of winning. The guy was so humoristically brilliant that I had tears coming out of my eyes at least a couple times. Everyone else got in the mood too, and the game became a tool for wisecracks more so than competition. In the meantime, Gino and Tom were actually fighting to win and the latter managed it at the end with a 1 point edge. I'm not even sure everybody noticed. It was a fantastic time, and Brian instantly became one of my favorite gamers, period.

We went to bed, and Ilan and I chatted for about an hour before falling asleep around 3AM. Parental habits die hard, and I still woke up around 7:30AM, tired but eager to start the first full day at the con.

Saturday

We walked down a bit after 10AM and wandered around looking for what to do when a guy we haven't met before (Peter?) offered to teach us Pillars of the Earth with the expansion set. I had played Pillars before and so has Ilan, so I went around looking for things to buy while the rules were being taught and stumbled upon two games I had been wanting for a long while - Ivanhoe and the Doom expansion set. I happily grabbed both and came back to play. I love Pillars and the expansion certainly has the advantage of allowing 5 or 6 players to play, but I think the game suffers from it. It adds considerable time to the game length, and not much substance, transforming it from a perfectly fun light euro to a light game that is too long and tries too hard to offer too many options. With that said, I managed to utilize France, one of the new features, to my advantage throughout the game, scoring about half of my almost 50 points with her. It is no doubt the most interesting and subtle option offered by the expansion, and a great way to play a "poor" strategy.

We went to grab something to eat and came back down to again play Race for the Galaxy. We played twice and while I finally felt like I could speak the language well enough, I still didn't warm up to it any more. It's kinda similar to San Juan, and although Race is definitely better, I still don't really connect with either game. Nate then offered to teach us Notre Dame, which got me quite excited since it was a game I had bought and still had in shrink waiting to be played. It turned out to be a classic euro in the making, a fun and thematic reactive game of balancing tactical options. I liked it quite a bit. But then things went one better; we were offered to join a game of Indonesia, which I immediately accepted as it has been near the top of my list of "must play" for a while now. I left Ilan and Nate to play some more Race of the Galaxy and raced to the Indonesia table.

I almost fell asleep while listening to the rules, but once the game started... oh boy. I love economic management games, and this one trumps them all. Everything makes sense - even the microwave dinners - but even better, while the mechanics are simple, gameplay is delightfully nuanced. It's an easy game to get into (it should take me less than 20 minutes to explain), but I strongly suspect it is also one that is tough to master. The only real complaint I have is with the artwork on the board. The designers apparently wanted to preserve the geographic accuracy of Indonesia in the presentation, but at what cost! some areas of the board become extremely crowded very quickly whereas others feel empty even with comparable numbers of tokens, names are next to impossible to read, some board locations are difficult to separate, and don't get me started on trying to understand which lines on the board indicate a border and which are only there for artistic license. The board is such a mess that I am surprised it ever made it through playtesting. With all that said, I fell in love with it and will definitely want to play it again. I will also pay good money to anyone who comes up with a better board. Because it plays into all my strengths, I won Indonesia relatively easily while never announcing a single merger.

After that we were looking for something to do and Lori offered to play Last Night on Earth, a new zombie game I hadn't heard about. We corralled a couple of strangers, Bruce and his son, and funnily enough, it turned out Bruce and Lori worked remotely with each other frequently but had never met. The game went smoothly enough and was enjoyable, but I prefer Doom.

We broke for dinner at Knuckles bar, and afterwards we were a little tired and looking for something simple and fun and I suggested Bang, which everyone accepted. The game went well enough but I did such a good job of emulating the deputy that by the time we were down to the Sheriff, his real deputy (Gino), the outlaw (Lori), and myself as the Renegade, she could not accept that I had lied about who I was and killed mine instead of Gino's character. She was then summarily disposed of and the forces of good won. While one might suggest that Lori also went after me because of being married to Gino, having played with both of them enough times in the past I can easily dispel that notion. She just fell for my ruse, like everyone else did. Dang.

We rounded up the night with Ave Caesar again, which did not go as well as the night before. The main reason was that we had too many folks concentrating on winning and not enough concentrating on trash talking. The game simply can't handle too much seriousness. We ran two races and called it a night.

Sunday

Sunday morning rolled by and I went down looking for the gang only to find out they had already started a game of St. Petersburg. I roamed around the dealer room a bit before I saw a game of Ticket to Ride starting; I joined in as the fifth. I spent most of the game trying to force those folks out of their shell a bit, or in Gino's words right behind me "once Barak is done abusing those folks, he can come play something with us". It was my first 5-player game of Ticket to Ride, and I didn't realize the subtle change in timing necessary to win. I ended up being two turns behind the eventual leader when they ended the game, instead of one, thus not allowing me the time to place the last link I needed to complete all my five tickets and win the game. Still, it was a fun game and a nice diversion.

But as soon as it was done I jumped up and turned around because they were starting a game of Thebes, another "must play". It is apparently Gino and Lori's favorite right now, and having now played it I can see why. Thebes can best be described as a neat mix of Tikal, Colloseum and Thurn & Taxis, with a cool timer twist to make things interesting. Digging for treasure can be gut wrenching, especially when you draw all dirt in six pulls, something I managed to do. I enjoyed it a lot and will definitely pull it out often. Brian and I shared a victory on a 47-point tie.

Breaking the group for lunch, we wanted something light and quick and settled on For Sale, playing a few quick rounds. The game again proved itself to be a neat little diversion, taking 5 minutes to explain, 15 minutes to play, with a totally addictive "once more" factor.

Lori then pulled out Succession: Intrigue in the Royal Court, a game I learned last year and which we both played and enjoyed then. I was entirely in favor, but somehow we managed to hit a major rules gap in the first round and it turned into this big argument between Gino, Chris and I, and at the end when Gino left the table we quickly packed everything up so by the time he came back we were figuring out what next to play. It was sad in a way, for I do like Succession and so does Lori. We must try it again sometime.

A couple of people drifted away and Ilan, myself and I think Brian stayed behind to let Chris introduce us to Mordred. He claimed it was the best 4-player game he has ever played, high praise from a designer, so I was quite interested. My impression after the first game was that I could see where he was coming from, as the game has many merits, but I just couldn't connect with it. It's no real surprise considering that the game is pretty much an abstract with a very thin layer of story thrown around it, and I am not a big fan of abstracts.

It was 5PM so I went to see the shuffler sheet for Golden Gate, the LARP session I signed up for. I was pleasantly surprise to see that I got selected as one of the 35 participants, although a bit disappointed that Chris didn't make it. I had made up my mind following last year's fiasco to basically sign up and ignore the overflow signup sheet; if I got in, great, if not, stay and play more board games. Well, since I did make it we had to play something quick and we settled on For Sale, which again went well. The more I play this game the more impressed I am with just how well it holds up to repeated plays in its entire range of 3 to 6 players.

Golden Gate eventually started at 7:30, after a number of delays. It wasn't as good as Lockdown from a couple years back, but it was still quite enjoyable. Then disaster struck. I have been running on very little sleep for several weeks now, and the first two nights of the con did not help matters. Sleep deprivation can do funny things to you, and it hit me at an unfortunate moment. Around 10PM, my Dexcom continuous blood glucose monitor beeped asking for a calibration test. I pulled out my regular meter, performed the test, and tossed the used strip into the garbage can as I was pulling the Dexcom out to connect to the meter for calibration. Or at least, that's what I intended to do. Instead I tossed the actual meter into the garbage.

That would have been embarrassing but not hazardous. However, when I reached into the can to grab it out, I realized to my horror that it was filled with liquid that somebody had poured in there earlier. At the bottom of this pool of - presumably - water 6 inches deep lay my meter, now dead. I ran out of the room to try and salvage it, pulling the battery out and running to my room to try and dry it with the hair dryer. I then left it there and came back to the LARP, but as I made my way back to my room afterwards the sinking feeling in my stomach was confirmed - the meter was gone.

And my Dexcom still needed calibration. The stress of course didn't help, and my blood sugars were going down like crazy. I think I consumed close to 100 grams of quick acting carbs just to try and keep myself from hypoing. But I just couldn't go to sleep, tossing and turning and looking at my Dexcom every few minutes. I wasn't thinking clearly at all, since the solution to this mess was obvious (as I am sure it is to you). In any case, at 4AM it happened; the Dexcom just gave up on not being calibrated and reset the connection to the sensor. I became blind (from a blood sugar monitoring perspective).

It's at times like this that you begin to wonder about your sanity. I was obviously far too tired to be coherent, which led to this happening in the first place. I needed to sleep but couldn't because of the effects it all had on me. And now I lost my ability to monitor my health entirely, and as a brittle diabetic, this is a very, very bad thing.

Then the rather simple solution finally hit me. Technology came to the rescue. The details of what happened next are a bit fuzzy in my memory but examining the evidence later indicated that it would appear that I pulled out my cellphone - which luckily has an unlimited data plan - and googled "24 hour pharmacy in Burlingame CA". I went out of the room (in a t-shirt at a chilly 4:30AM), got into my car, drove to Walgreens, and bought another meter. Took it back to the hotel, waited the requisite two hours for the Dexcom to require post-reset calibration, found out I was more or less at normal (those 100 grams of carbs managed to get me all the way up to 152; scary), and promptly fell asleep. It was about 7:45AM.

Monday

I woke up just before 9AM when my cellphone rang. I was disoriented and didn't pick up, and it took me a few minutes to call my wife back. Then I called Gino and found out he left the con and was driving down with Lori to be with the kids. Lori SMSed me Bill's number but he never picked up the phone; I went downstairs and found them starting a new game of Amun Re, my absolute number 1 game, and since they only had four, added myself in.

I learned that Sam has recently won the Amun Re world championship, which was neat in itself. It didn't surprise me much as he is a very good player in pretty much any game. The game itself was extremely tight, with everybody playing competently. I built a tremendously strong position in the first age which was undermined severely when I couldn't pull a single bonus power card out of 12 cards I added to my hand. Instead I pulled doubles and triples of farmer and 8-gold bonuses and builders. The last turn was a nail-biter, as my commanding lead suddenly shrank when Sam and another guy whose name I never quite caught managed between them to squeeze me out of pyramid majorities on both sides of the board. Brian took my advice about keeping cash for the money bonus to heart, and spent very little in the last turn. The end result? 3 players tied for 39 points, Brian ending last in the low 30's after a 6-point money bonus with 61 gold, and myself with 37 following a second place money bonus with 54 gold. The player whose name I cannot remember won. I could have won the game by simply not explaining to Brian why he should hoard his money instead of spending it fruitlessly as he was planning to do on the last turn. The 12 gold he kept caused the switch between me and him on the money bonus, and the 2 extra points would have given me the win on a tie breaker. Heck, I would have won it if I were ever able to get a bloody bonus card. But I didn't care. The photo-finish ending was very gratifying and proved again why I love this game so much.

I rounded up the con with another highly enjoyable game of Thebes, and like the last game, it ended on a tie (52 points). This time it was Bill and I. I have to say, it is surprising that the game does not include a tie breaker. We invented one anyway, each drawing 5 treasures out of the balanced blue bag in turn and adding them up. I finally got lucky on this rather critical pull and my 9-point combo was a crusher.

And that was that. A wonderful con as always, great fun and for me, just the best way to spend a few days away from the world. The group I had met there last year - Gino, Gene, Bill, Lori and Brian - were just as fantastic, it was great to see Ilan and a couple of the other folks (Tom, Nate, David and Mesha and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few) again, I met a couple new folks, I had a blast playing games I've been wanting to try for ages, and I actually managed to get into the LARP. If only it wasn't for the meter... seems like I am destined to have something highly annoying happen every year. But I can't complain.

Or like they the rounds they make every few hours during the con getting everyone to scream out loud...

KUBLA!

Dexcom, Silicon Labs, Kublacon 2008

So... even though I followed the troubleshooting guide on Silicon labs' website, and wrote to them as specifically requested IN the guide (read the next-to-last sentence), they refuse to help because the device is manufactured by Dexcom.

Dexcom won't do anything either - either I run a Windows machine or I'm SOL as far as they are concerned (considering this is a medical device company and this functionality is a critical part of managing a disease, I am really curious as to whether this breaks some laws).

Essentially, both companies would rather not even try; Dexcom sources the controller from Silabs so Silabs ignores me, and Dexcom don't understand it and won't help either nor would they interface with Silabs to see if they would be willing to help.

The sad part? it will probably take a Silabs engineer 1 minute to say what's wrong based on the log I sent. The troubleshooting guide published by Silabs is pretty explicit in saying that they can help figure out the error codes which is why I should write them, only when I do, they don't want to help.

Great.

Anyway, I'm off to Kublacon, so I won't be posting again till next week.

Dexcom Seven system - the most annoying feature

Something else that came up in my chat with Andrew a couple days ago was the single most annoying thing I find about the Dexcom:

It will display a "???" on many occasions where I very much want to see the suspect number even if it's wrong.

It's actually a combination of things:

1) the Dexcom has thresholds that are too narrow for rapidly spiking or dropping levels. Blood sugar changes of over 15 points in 5 minutes will generate a "???" result, presumably because most diabetics don't experience such rapid changes. Well, this is not true for brittles. As I've proven before, I can drop or rise 100 points in 15 minutes.
2) the Dexcom has no facility to show the number anyway on request. You see a "???", you're stuck.
3) the Dexcom also has no facility to show you what the presumed issue is, and "???" can be caused by a number of problems.
4) the Dexcom only measures blood sugars every 5 minutes. If you get two "???" in a row, for example, you may end up missing 15 minutes of readings - and when 15 minutes can be 100 points, this could mean trouble. I've actually shown a live example of this to Andrew during the party, when my blood sugars rose 80 points in 15 minutes (probably because of my excitement speaking to him - brittles' blood sugars are funny that way) and the Dex simply didn't show the rising trend.

Please don't try to "protect" me as a user of the device from potentially bad readings. At least give me an option to display a suspect reading if I want to display it (maybe by some button combination). Put a big warning around this or whatever. But this one little problem is the main source of aggravation for me using the Seven, and it's a pretty regular one.

In fact, it creates a pretty nasty feedback loop - when I start getting those "???" and am suspecting that I am trending fast (either high or low) it makes me quite anxious. Then I have another problem to contend with: if I use my regular meter to test, I'll screw up the Dexcom (remember, Dexcom states quite firmly that you should never, ever calibrate a meter result during a "???" measurement, and calibrations are performed retroactively so the next time I hook them up it will mess things up). So now I'm screwed; the Dex won't show me the result, and if I use my meter, it will screw up the Dex so I can't use my meter. That, my friends, is a vicious cycle. And guess what? for a brittle, stress is a big inducer of blood sugar changes (it makes them rise or drop faster than they would otherwise). So now the Dex is actually contributing to the problem. This specific issue will be resolved as soon as I can decouple the meter from the Dex and choose which calibrations to perform - when is that update coming, Dexcom?

The one big appealing thing about the Navigator is the 1-minute intervals. This way, even if a reading or two is missed, you're still only losing a couple minutes, maybe a gap of 30 points in my blood sugars. This one feature alone is extremely tempting, but the downside of having a 10-hour calibration time coupled with a 5-day sensor life is too big. Otherwise I'd be switching over.

On a related note, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that the Dex should not display the last few "good" measurements somewhere on the screen, or with a button combination. The graph is nice to look at but I'm a little anal - I want to know if the last one before the "???" was 126 or 131. Don't ask me why, but it matters. Just let me see it even if you won't let me see what the "???" means. Don't force me to estimate based on the graph. That's cruel.

Traffic School and Liberal Thinking

Just finished my traffic school exam. Did an online course, wasn't too bad; took about 4-5 hours all told to read through the material and finish the test. As irritating as it is, I must admit that it was also somewhat useful; for example, I never actually knew some of the legal definitions of DUI before, nor the specifics of Kaitlyn's law.

On another note, it's difficult to avoid hearing about the issues these days between liberals and conservatives. Yet some folks seem to find it quite impossible to actually clearly explain the basic differences. People get all emotional about it and any attempt to actually clarify what a "liberal" is vs. a "conservative" evolves into a fight about gun control, abortion or whatever.

So as a public service tonight, I would like to offer the following definition of the liberal mindset. If you fit this you are probably a liberal. If it annoys you or you start listing exceptions, you are probably a conservative. It's actually quite simple:

When evaluating an issue that has two distinct viewpoints, consider yourself as the loser on each side; if one viewpoint forces you to accept a pre-defined result, whereas the other allows you to ignore its consequences, then you will support the latter.

Obvious examples:

Gay Marriage - a gay couple wishing to be married have no ability to ignore a restriction on doing so (loser cannot ignore result); a person not enamored of the concept can turn their eyes away and snort in disgust but go on with their lives (loser can ignore result). Liberal viewpoint supports removing the restriction.

Abortion - a woman wishing to terminate will have no choice to ignore her baby if forced to come to term (loser cannot ignore result); a person opposed to abortion can spend friday dinner deriding her choice (loser can ignore result). Note that the whole argument about "protecting the fetus" does not come into play within the constraints of the definition provided above, because a fetus is not capable of choice (cruel as that may be). Liberals will therefore support the right for abortion.

Gun control - a person who loves guns can still choose to live without them (loser can ignore result); a person being shot cannot choose to ignore the bullet (loser cannot ignore result). Thus a liberal will support a restriction.

These are of course quite obvious examples, but the point is that this guideline seems to work well in subtler issues as well, and seems to slice right through the liberal/conservative difference in mindset. It isn't surprising; liberalism is enshrined in individualism (or is it the other way around?), whereas conservatism is generally societal/communal.

Oh, hell. Look what traffic school's doing to me, it's like verbal diarreah. G'night y'all.

Arm placement

One thing that came up in my chat with Andrew was arm placement. Having now done this for about 10 sensors, I feel quite comfortable with the minutiae of best location. And there is quite a bit of detail.

The goals are:

1) get consistent, reliable readings
2) have as little interruption as possible
3) be the least susceptible to the sub-cutaneous "liquid draw" that occurs while sleeping (which skews the Dex results and makes them useless)
4) have the least chance of the painful and dangerous (to your sensor) "shirt stuck on the edge of the transmitter" phenomenon

That last one is critical. The first 2-3 times I had an arm placement I did this constantly; I would take off my T-shirt and it would catch under the edge of the transmitter right as I was pulling it off my head. The result is a painful and worrying ripping of the tape from the inside out - that is, pulling on the center. It's like pulling off a band-aid just worse. And of course, there is the added stress of having potentially dislocated and ruined a brand new $60 sensor.

After some serious trial and error I hit on the best placement. I'll try my best to describe it in words; I wish I could draw so I could put up an image here.

Basically, in order to find what I think the placement is:

1) hold your arm right next to your side, straight down
2) look for the groove that is formed between the top of your biceps and the chest muscle that wraps around it; there is a sort of valley there which is quite well defined, more so if you are muscular
3) line your sensor so that:
3a) it is on the outside of your arm and just ever so slightly towards the back (we're talking an inch here)
3b) the top line of the transmitter holder - the clear plastic part - lines in with that groove

it seems that this placement achieves the top three goals while eliminating most of the chance of the T-shirt ripping because the top of the sticky tape now naturally angles outwards and "covers" the top of the transmitter, making it difficult for the fabric to get caught.

I AM a nerd!

Proof positive, my friends... proof positive.



And then I did the other one, too. So there.



But then I went ahead and took the loser test... and it came out as follows:




Now you tell me - does this actually make sense? Huh? HUH?! I mean, seriously.

Then again, there's something appealing in all that... think about it. According to these highly scientific studies, I am apparently and officially a "totally cool slightly dorky high nerd king".

So... where's my crown?

You DO exist! ... and Dexcom

Last night I had a most unusual and quite wonderful experience - I got to meet an actual, live person who had been reading my blog. Sure, sitemeter tells me I have 10 or so distinct visitors every day (pitiful), but I can never really tell whether these are one-timers, or even some bots who index the data automatically.

So thank you Andrew for sharing this with me; one of the most difficult things about blogging is that you can never tell if you even have an audience. I met Andrew at a birthday party last night, and this leads me to my next point: Dexcom.

You see, Andrew had read some of my postings on my experiences with the Seven, and he knew the lady whose birthday party we went to last night, so he decided to come see me and check the device out so he can decide whether to buy it. We had a wonderful conversation and I learned a few things from it, namely:

1) I need to post more about my experiences with Dexcom and my diabetes. Apparently, there is an audience for it. Speaking with Andrew made me realize how much I hadn't posted about yet; things that may help someone else. If there's even a small (but realistic) chance that by posting about my experience that someone can somehow improve their own lives, I will be absolutely delighted. So expect more frequent postings from me about this topic.

2) I really, really want to know who is reading my blog. I tried to call you folks out a couple postings ago but had no comments, which was a bit discouraging; so are there any other Andrews lurking here? it would be very kind if you could drop a short message in the comment section.

3) I finally met another "true brittle" type-I. I've known they must exist, but Andrew was the first one I ever actually met in person. Even he was surprised by how insane my blood sugars can be, though; my "ability" to drop or raise 100 points in 15 minutes is apparently unusual even in the brittle world. But it was neat to be able to chat with someone who has gone through the same experiences.

4) I am eternally thankful for having met my wife. Her offhanded acceptance of my disease makes it difficult to sometimes remember just how rare and special that is. As someone who has had several relationships brutalized by unaccepting potential future in-laws, misinformed and suspicious girlfriend's "best friends", and girlfriends who just couldn't get "over it", I forget how lucky I am. So thank you wife, I don't say it nearly enough. Love you babe.

5) I need to post more about my Dexcom. Oh wait, did I say that already?

So as far as that last point goes, I'll start by saying: I am becoming increasingly agitated by Dexcom's choice of .Net for their software, and right now I am SOL on being able to use my receiver to download data to my PC. It doesn't work in Virtualbox - the receiver gets recognized, but the data exchange fails. I'm going to try and get my hands on some tools that might help me debug it, but if anyone - anyone - has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Oh, and... Andrew said he's going to go buy the thing now, based on our conversation. So Dexcom, do I get a cookie? how about some help on this Linux thing? err... please?

Dexcom unfriendly to Linux

Well, I finally found something to complain about with regards to Dexcom...

Their Data Manager 2 software is completely hostile to anything non-Windows.

This is surprising, considering they could very well have written the thing in Java, but they chose .Net, and then they chose to use a hardware layer that adds further complexity; the CP210x UART controller from Silicon Labs.

Now, Silicon Labs are actually friendly to Linux; you can download VCP drivers for Linux from their driver page for CP210x devices.

But Dexcom apparently specifically decided that "diabetics don't use Linux". Grr.

I actually have Windows XP installed on Virtualbox, so I thought I could get it to work that way; no dice. While the application installs, there is some problem with the UART controller driver. My only hope is that a newer driver - the one I downloaded from Silabs - will fix it (DM2 comes with version 4.40, the newest is 5.2.2).

My dire warning

Like I said earlier, if there is one thing that will cause major problems, it's this: if banks start pulling credit from consumer en masse, it will start a chain reaction that will quickly - much more quickly than anyone can imagine - throw us into a massive depression. The entire population of the US is dependent on credit. Heck, the population in Israel is just as dependent, Israel simply uses overdraft instead of revolving credit cards. I haven't lived anywhere else but I'm assuming it's true elsewhere too. If the banks in their panic suddenly decide that everything is risky, and pull the rug from under everybody's feet at once, heck, forget the real estate crisis, we're talking complete financial system meltdown almost overnight.

I guarantee that.

What triggered this post is that just like it happened with BofA last month, we just had one of our HELOCs dropped to loan value - luckily, we had been steadfast in our refusal to pay the balance down over the past few months, and thus the overall "damage" was only about $1,500 in credit. I quickly logged in and checked the other HELOC (on the other house), and since that one wasn't "frozen" yet, I took out the entire rest of the available balance straight into my savings account. I don't need the cash, but goddamit, I need the cushion. Better to pay interest on it than not to have it available.

We are now looking at our revolving credit lines - we have around $80,000 available for withdrawal - and thinking of taking every last penny and putting it in savings. We don't need the cash. But if they took those lines away, we'd be decimated with the first unexpected twist (say, an expensive mechanical car problem). I don't think we're the only ones. Big financials are doing the same, drawing credit lines down just so they can sit on the cash. I urge you to think the same way. If you have a HELOC that hasn't been frozen yet, draw it down immediately. Take the money, put it in savings or money market (make sure it's highly liquid though), and pay the interest for money you don't need.

J'e Accuse', big banks. You are causing a meltdown right now, and it is completely and entirely your fault. There is no one else to blame but you.

And I also accuse our congressmen. Will one of them stand up and actually push through a bill that cares about consumers? how about one that doesn't allow banks to retroactively renegotiate terms on credit without actual reason (like missed payments) as opposed to internal changes in risk methodologies? sure, don't extend any more credit if you don't want to, or change your criteria moving forward, but this going backwards and changing things retroactively is the number one danger to our economy which is 70% dependent on the consumer.

Folks, I have been pretty cheerful up til about now. I'm changing my tune. My advice, get whatever you can lay your hands on. Get it now, before it you can't get it anymore. Keep it liquid, and wait. If the worst doesn't come to pass, you will have paid a bit for the privilege. If it does... you may be able to keep afloat longer. And sometimes, a couple extra breaths is all the difference between drowning and getting saved.

Thank you California supreme court

Good job.

Ignoring the emotional arguments for the moment, I am particularly pleased with how chief judge George highlighted the limits of majority rule in a democracy. It was, in fact, the whole point that really mattered to me in this whole affair, and I am absolutely delighted it was used in such a decisive way. To wit: in a democracy, it does not matter what a majority thinks is right; minority rights must be preserved as long as they do not directly harm the majority (... in a significant way). This point sometimes seems to get lost in all those heated arguments about gay marriage, abortion, or what have you. That is the main difference in the gay marriage debate; those who seek to prohibit it are directly harming those who seek to allow it, but not so in the other direction. It was important to make this clear, and Judge George did just that.

So thank you, and to make a little pun, god bless.

Populism

Alright, so Mrs. Clinton has managed to piss me off, together with her alternate, John McCain... leaving only Obama standing, a concept I have been studiously avoiding.

Eliminate the gas tax?

What the hell?

I am not fervently waiting for the one politician who will stand up and have the balls to say that now, right now, is the absolutely perfect time to RAISE the gas tax. Oh yes.

Why?

A number of reasons.

One, Joe Q Public is already adjusting to lower consumption and higher prices. Lower consumption is good, I think everyone agrees. This country would certainly benefit from less SUVs. Of course higher gas prices aren't fair; I'll still be driving my 19MPG sports car even if gas doubled to $8. But those folks who are driving gas guzzlers just barely affording gas costs would be forced to ditch them, and the net effect will be quite positive. It's already happening, anyway, so why not accelerate the process? Furthermore, high oil and gas prices encourage alternative energy, and in particular, make nuclear look really tempting. And nuclear, especially if we build both conventional and breeder plants, is a solid way to make the future a bit easier (and make feeding electric cars actually feasible if done on a large enough scale). I would really hate to kill all this momentum.

Two, psychologically speaking, adding 50c per gallon when gas is at $4 is a lot easier than when it is at $2. Of course, tax-wise, the impact is more or less identical. But percentage-wise it's a lot smaller. So it might be easier to slip by Joe Q.

Three, the government is already bankrupt, but it has at least a few more years of pretending not to be. We need infrastructure projects, especially rail. What better way to fund them than with a gas tax hike? it won't decrease discretionary spending but at least give us some results while the dollar can still buy labor and materials. JQ would appreciate having more high speed trains and metros, especially if they are going to stop using the car due to higher gas prices. As a side note, not that any decrease can really do much at this point, in a strange sense increasing spending is logical if you expect to default soon. Consumers and businesses do it all the time. No, I don't think we'll see hyper-inflationary depression as some pundits predict, but the reason is not that they are fundamentally wrong, but that western economies are so intertwined at this point that (and I'm just guessing here) the leading ones - the G8 plus maybe a few others - will act in pretty radical ways to share the pain (debase their currencies, allow "structured" defaults etc). But that's another topic.

Four, if we raise taxes on gas at the stations, we will find it a lot easier to tax Exxon and co at the same time. It's a double whammy. They can't very well complain about having to pay more tax on their insane profits if at the same time consumers are also being made to pay more, now could they? just make sure the money is reserved in ironclad fashion for infrastructure - and sign those contracts quickly, before dollar devaluation and/or inflation erodes any of these tax gains. Yes, I still think the dollar will get stronger in the short term against certain currencies, especially the euro which is shaping up to be just as useless economically speaking (just lagging a bit), but long term, "third world" currencies (get used to dealing a lot with the Real and Yuan) will appreciate quite a bit faster. The same holds true for the peso, where a lot of the folks building those infrastructures will be converting some of their dollar earnings to. Thus, the quicker the better.

Five... well, isn't it always the trick to be a contrarian?

Who are you?

You know, I've been writing this blog for a while now, and sitemeter tells me there is a slow but constant increase in the number of visitors.

So who are you? what brought you here? do you tell others about my posts? do you ever feel like commenting? (please do) what do you like? what don't you like? should I post more? any particular topics? am I delusional in thinking that my writings could be interesting to more than 10 people per day? if not, how do I get them here?

I'd love to hear from y'all.

Oh, and I forgot this one

OK, so it's another ubuntu post. So sue me.

This one actually matters quite a bit, and goes back to the hardware support issue.

See, when I installed XP on my machine, I overwrote the pre-installed OEM version from Lenovo, because I wanted to put in a full retail XP version. You know, an "out of the box" one rather than a specially designed version that Lenovo worked hard to fit to my laptop (a Thinkpad X61s).

So when installing Windows XP from the retail version, it was never surprising to me that I always had to spend a couple of extra hours just getting extra stuff to work - the volume buttons, the little LCD light for the keyboard, special function keys etc.

Well, I hadn't really thought of this until today, but it's actually quite a shocker. You see, ubuntu straight out of the box enabled all these buttons by default. I didn't need to look for or download anything. In fact, the only thing that requires an extra step was enabling the fingerprint reader, and even that was a lot simpler than doing the same in Windows.

I am admittedly a bit curious about this little piece of magic from Canonical. How does ubuntu do it? why can't Windows do it even after all these years? is ubuntu really Linux, that operating system that no user but an uber-geek could learn to use, or is something else going here? I mean, it knew about all my special laptops buttons as part of its plain vanilla out of the box install! one CD, too; the Lenovo installation pack has 6 of them, just to include all the extra drivers and useless software.

Like, wow.

Yet another positive Ubuntu experience

This time adding hardware.

In Windows XP - which I had before - it was quite a hassle to add my Minolta QMS 2300 DL color laser network printer. It required finding the drivers on Minolta's site, only they weren't really a driver, but a whole package of useless software (including one of my personal favorite hatewares - Crown Print Monitor).

Then you had to run the thing, which wouldn't actually install your printer.

Then you had to know how to add a local TCP_IP p0rt and configure it to attach to the printer, because the printer cannot be added as an actual network printer (which is what you would expect).

Every time I had to do this - once a year or so because of the number of computers in our household and how often they change - it was a 20 minute "scratch my head in puzzlement" type experience until I remembered the whole procedure, which required about 15 steps with at least 2 unusual twists.

Right now I wanted to add the same printer to my new Ubuntu installation. Here is how difficult it was:

Step 1) go into systems, administration, printing
Step 2) click on "new printer"
Step 3) let ubuntu look on our network and find the Minolta, click on it
Step 4) let ubuntu search the internet for the proper driver, then click OK

Voila!

Folks, as much as I am incredulous about this myself, I have to say it again - ubuntu is easier to use than Windows XP for a normal person. It is simpler to understand and friendlier for everyday operations. All the cliches about Linux being difficult for the Windows user to "get" are being proven wrong to me, day after day.

In fact, the only place where Windows currently still has a marginal advantage is in the world of legacy hardware devices - for example, I can't find a way to get my seven year old Corex Cardscan 500 to work. But as far as recent hardware support is concerned - from the last 3 years, say - ubuntu 8.04 is proving itself to be better than Windows XP thus far (and I am totally comparing apples and apples - the same exact machine, a thinkpad X61s, when installing XP vs. Hardy Heron).

Scratch one very popular myth about Linux.

Ubuntu - this is cool

OK, now I'm rapidly falling in love with Linux as a desktop OS.

For all you Windows folks, tell me how cool this is: I wanted to add Skype to my machine.

In Windows, it goes this way - you go to the Skype website, go through a series of screens to find the download for your operating system, register, download it, then run the executable.

In Ubuntu it worked like this: I went to the package manager (think of it as a sort of "add/remove programs").I typed "skype", then checked next to the program that came up and clicked "apply". The OS did the rest; it connected to the skype site, downloaded the most recent version appropriate for my specific OS, downloaded all dependencies, installed it, cleaned it up, and placed it in the most rational place on my Linux equivalent of the Windows start menu (which, by the way, is a lot better than the Windows start menu in terms of organization). Done. Seamless.

Me likes.

It's been like this all morning. The software repository that Ubuntu manages really is quite comprehensive. Anything I want is right there. No thinking involved; I don't have to find the software online, figure out how to download it, register for marketing spam, or anything of the sort. Just say that I want to add the program and Ubuntu handles the rest.

Like, wow. Microsoft aparently still has a lot to still learn as far as uasbility and user friendliness goes. We've known it for years when it came to Macs. But to see it on a general distribution Linux is pretty friggin awesome.

Goodbye Microsoft

Welcome Linux.

This weekend I finally went ahead and did something that I've been wanting to do for years but have been largely afraid of - switch away from Windows and move to Linux as my operating system.

I chose Ubuntu 8.04, also named "Hardy Heron".

My experience thus far has been interesting, for sure. First of all, I went entirely cold turkey; I backed up all my stuff from my Windows installation, then rebooted with the Ubuntu CD, and did a fresh install on the entire disk, completely wiping Windows in the process.

I've played with linux quite a bit in my past, as a server administrator too. But I hadn't in years and I'd forgotten the vast majority of everything about it. I felt a sense of loss; over the years I've developed a healthy amount of intimate knowledge of Windows, and my understanding of Linux is quite limited in comparison. I was nervous and anxious the entire time Linux was reformatting my drive and preparing the OS.

First of all, I want to say this: for a typical "internet/office" user, this works perfectly out of the box. In fact, I'd say it is noticeably easier to install Ubuntu than it is Windows, takes less time, and the OS comes up much more "ready to play" than Windows does. The folks at Canonical have done a pretty good job at hiding much of the behind the scenes, and my laptop came up in a completely functional state in terms of the ability to browse, use office apps, run media files etc. No, actually; the latter did require that I use "add/remove programs" to install the restricted extras, but that was about it. A typical Windows installation requires you to add office, an anti-virus program, a decent browser (assuming you don't want to use IE, and I presume you don't), and a whole slew of updates.

But then I screwed it up. Badly. And I'm not entirely sure if what I've been encountering is that unusual.

The first major culprit was Ximeta's Netdisk, of which I have two at home. These were designed for the home user, with the assumption of Windows. Unfortunately, they also had all my backups, and I had to access those backups to get all my documents and files. I poked around and finally managed to piece together a working plan based on some information available online.

It was the first sign of things to come; what Linux hobbyists consider "perfectly easy to follow instructions" are terribly confusing to a Windows person. The reason is simple; Windows stuff generally does a really good job of taking care of the details. Canonical did this well with the installtion of Ubuntu itself, but this still leaves the rest of the open-source world at large. The instructions I found, while seemingly perfectly reasonable, made a huge amount of hidden assumptions (i.e. that folks will actually read all of them instead of, say, cut&pasting the proposed code), required the command line, and had no troubleshooting in case something went wrong. Which it did.

I ended up hosing the kernel a bit, because in my frustration I used the "-o force" switch to get the NetDisk stuff to compile. This worked fine, except that now every time I tried to do anything else there were these irrecoverable errors. Now, in Windows I know how to fix this sort of thing, but not in Linux; it became so frustrating that I was almost in tears (and about to reinstall the OS from scratch) before I remembered that Linux is different in that you can always rebuild portions of the kernel if you need to. So I used "add/remove programs" again, which took out the offending kernel piece, then recompiled, and all started working well again. But it was jarring. And it still isn't working as well. For example, I can't see the disks over wireless. I have no idea how to go about fixing this problem, but in my old Windows box, this sort of issue never came up.

KVM - the virtual machine manager - hosed me for another couple of hours. I tried building a VM based on some other instructions I found, and lost my network connectivity. I tried remembering how I used to troubleshoot these sorts of things when I managed Linux boxen, and good ol netstat and route and all those came back up, but I knew I was getting lost. Finally I managed to collect enough information to suggest that the bridged interface black-holed my routing table (I enjoyed saying that), and removed it from fstab, and restarted networking, and all was well. Now, with full honesty, can anyone really imagine a typical Windows user even making sense of the last paragraph? Oh, and thank god for Virtualbox.

Getting my fingerprint reader to work was easier, but it's still not functioning as I would like it to. That is, in the logon screen it still requires me to enter my username. I'll figure it out. Also, battery management is gone, and the laptop won't suspend when I close the screen. There are in fact a host of small issues like these that I still need to resolve. But it's obviously a question of OEM makers; if Lenovo sold my X61s with Ubuntu pre-installed, I'd have all of this stuff running out of the box.

Evolution will take getting used to, coming from Eudora. But it works just fine, and in fact was a lot easier to configure than Eudora, with built-in POP3 and SMTP SSL support to access gmail. It works well enough and for an Outlook user, it will be instantly and completely familiar. Compiz desktop cube is cute. I can't wait to spring this on my Windows friends, just for kicks. Fonts are too big for me right now, and I am trying to find out how to tweak this and a bunch of other look-and-feel issues, but I know they are tweakable. In other words, there's that dreaded learning curve, and I'm learning.

Oh, Open Office has sure come a long way. Last time I tried it - when v2 just came out - it was simply not up to par with MS Office. Let me tell you something. I've used Office 2007 for a few months now, and I just had to create a new work document on Open Office. The latter is simply better. It makes more sense, it doesn't try to tell you how to do things, it's significantly faster, and provides a more enjoyable work environment. I applaud Sun for getting it to this stage.

And regardless of what anybody says, command line is still necessary. You can't avoid it, really. Now, I know lots of folks look at this as the "big bad negative" as far as Linux goes, but it really isn't; there is nothing more challenging in using the command line than in typing a URL into a browser.

No, the main difference is in the general approach. Windows has always been a "single user" OS - you buy the PC, you're the only one using it (more or less). Linux has always assumed multiple users. So while in Windows you consider everything on the same plane - if something is messed up, it can be the OS or the program or the user input or the format of the file - in Linux the OS is generally completely separate, a program can function entirely fine for one user and not for another, and things operate much more strictly within their boundaries. It's a mindset. But it has a very subtle but very strong impact on your behavior; I find myself repeatedly having to chant to myself "the OS is fine, it's just something stupid I did" and "I don't need to fix the registry" as I try to troubleshoot problems.

In other words, Windows lets you believe everything's great trying its best to compensate for your shenanigans, inevitably compromising its own integrity in the process. It works great and makes life easy for you, until it melts down. Linux, on the other hand, holds you accountable all the time; it won't allow you to mess yourself up unless you are truly determined (and knowledgeble). But it means you will constantly have to watch your behavior, and we all know how much we all enjoy that.

So should you switch? yes, if you are willing to adopt a learning curve. I'm not sure about whether it will save you much money*, but it will - eventually - make life easier (no wasted disk space, no critical failures, no defragmentation needed, no constant deterioratio in performance, no anti-virus/anti-malware sucking up your CPU time, quick reboots... the list goes on). Ubuntu Hardy Heron is sufficiently evolved for a regular, GUI-trained, desktop user. But a learning curve is there, and you will have to say hi to the command line occasionally.

* I say this because most folks don't pay for their Windows software. It's true. Cracks and stuff are quite rampant. Then again, think about this: all the software you ever wanted for free - legitimately. No more worrying about the software police. No more having to find suspicous cracks through even more suspicious bittorrents. Makes you think, doesn't it?

I wonder what the property taxes are

Am I the only one who thinks this... house... is somewhat, um, over the top?

The real challenges of being an entrepreneur

I've been thinking a lot lately about the way I've come in building my consulting firm, and came to some interesting conclusions. While it is entirely possible that my experience is unique to me - in fact, to some degree and flavor, I'm sure it is, as it is for anyone else doing this - I suspect strongly that the main themes are identical to those in the experience of all others.

First of all, building a consulting firm is the most typical way for an individual to start a business (assuming it's not a franchise business, of course). A product company is a completely different animal, requiring a solid idea that can be commercialized and is free of intellectual property violations. The latter is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve in these days of overly broad patents that are continually misused and abused by patent holders who, it often seems, only register them so they can block creativity and nothing else. Yes, I despise the current patent system in the US, but that's a topic for another post (I wish all the luck from the bottom of my heart to the EFF for their patent busting efforts, as Don Quichottic as they are).

Indeed, when we talk about the vast number of small business in this country, we refer largely to the sole proprietor shops, maybe with a few helping hands, folks who were good at something when they worked somewhere, and who then decided they could live better if they did it themselves and offered those same services to several companies at once. They usually start by quitting and making their former employer the first client, and often, keep them as clients for years. Companies, of course, are happy to shed expensive labor that is only becoming more expensive as states add new laws and rules to protect employees, trading them for capped costs in the form of a fixed-fee or hourly rate, and generally improved results. The latter comes from the simple yet instinctively grasped principle that the people who do this are usually the better skilled ones who get tired of corporate politics, just want to do a good job, and have to be generally much more efficient when their 40 hours per week are spread across 3-5 clients rather than just 1.

That works pretty well for everyone. However, a few of these same folks end up growing their business to be much larger than they themselves - which is how larger consulting and services firms get born. They have a range of motivations to doing so, and they all share certain traits, and they are the classic entrepreneur. I won't go into the traits, because many a word has been written about those, and it's not what I wanted to discuss. Instead, I want to talk about another aspect of this role that I have not seen discussed often if at all. For you see, my company is now growing firmly around and beyond me. And I think it's important to share.

Anyway.

When you start out, you have a well-defined set of challenges, mostly revolving around replacing your income as a wage-earner. Usually, this problem is solved to a significant degree by signing up your last company as your first client, but it is not always the case (it wasn't for me). I have to believe that this is the source for most entrepreneurs well documented and highly persistent sense of paranoia; suddenly, you have to learn to be a sales, marketing, legal, finance and operations person, in addition to actually doing your job. Then you realize you've acquired the worst boss in the world - you - and that your new boss can be kinda fickle about paying you regularly. And that's only the beginning. Don't take me wrong; it's a great feeling when you are able to go out there and sell yourself, rather than somebody else's product, because it is the ultimate ego-builder: the people and companies who pay you - your clients - are paying you for you. But no matter how good you are at what you do, there are others who are just as good, and unless you are one of the very rare few who have a truly well established name before you go solo, you'll be fighting all of them for business.

Luckily, there is normally quite enough of it to go around. And no, you are not fighting the large consulting firms; they target a much different client base, because when you grow beyond a certain size, the cost of making a sale becomes a significant factor in establishing a floor around the dollar size of an engagement. In other words, they can't serve smaller business effectively. But you can. So you're not competing against them. You are, however, competing against the army of professionals like you, some of whom may have already built a small business around their services and have been around for years. So you gotta hustle, but if you try to hustle too much you'll end up running on empty and exhaust yourself. I'm gonna say something that's borderline heresy. Get ready for a year or two of mostly free time. Use it to have fun, not just for the business. It takes time to build, and it's a process that can be optimized, but not rushed.

I guess that's again a topic for another post. But I do want to rush forward a few years, to the point where you suddenly realize you're quite popular, you have built a substantial client base, you're doing well, but are still in constant panic because you have become a battle-hardened veteran of competition and you know how quickly you can lose it all. You have learned about reputation, reached the inevitable conclusion that it's all about your reputation, and then the even more advanced conclusion that unless you do something truly egregious, it's difficult to really harm it (go ahead, tell me how wrong I am, and I'll point you to the 5 million businesses in this country that have 10-20 employees and can use your services).

And now let's assume you are ambitious. You want more. You didn't go into this just to replace your wage-earning job; you wanted to build a legacy, an enduring business, a company that is far more than just you.

And now I finally get to the main point of my post.

You get dirty.

Hold on. What? Who said anything about getting dirty? Don't service businesses grow organically, on the strength of their service and customer loyalty and all that? Well, yes, they do,
but guess what; if you're trying to win enough business to become a business, you have to, well, get down to business.

What do I mean by that? I mean that you can no longer keep the moral high-ground to the nth degree, because you'll be eaten alive by small companies who have taken the next step. Have you ever wondered why there is typically a disconnect between sales folks in organizations - even really good ones - and the services staff? Thing is, when there is somebody else making the sale, they bring their own view to the table, and their view is that they need to sell as much as possible so they can earn as much money as they can. They don't own the place like the founder does (that's you), they don't usually have a vested interest in keeping the moral high ground, they just want to sell. So no matter how great of a job the "company" does, and how fantastic its people are, the sales process will become a little more oiled and smooth as it should. Which means all sorts of things: for example, full disclosure is no longer a priority, just enough to make the sale. The prospects no longer hear about reservations you may have that aren't material to the discussion, or pay you what you think you're worth but rather what your sales person can charge (this is - normally - a good thing for you, because most good people underestimate themselves), or god knows what.

I remember my big dilemma about referral commissions. In my line of work, I end up recommending products and services regularly to my customers, which they end up buying based largely on my recommendation. In other words, I serve as a pretty effective outside sales rep for a surprisingly large number of companies. But for the first three years of my life in consulting, I steadfastly refused to take commissions from those vendors. The theory was that it was a conflict of interest; if I took the commissions, I would be more likely to recommend those companies who were paying them.

This is quite a legitimate argument - but it's quite shallow, too. It makes a lot of hidden assumptions. For example, it assumes that the person making the recommendation is not an expert, just someone out there for the money. In other words, an outside sales rep. But this fails when you're dealing with a founder of a consulting business, who is (typically) an expert, and who already understands quite instinctively the value of their reputation and the happiness of their clients. In other words, such folks (that's you) generally come from such a moral high ground that they can take years to descend to a level that mere mortals (not you) can aspire to. They take the long-term view on things, they take their clients' interests to heart usually more than the clients do, and they generally get very upset if anyone even gets the slightest impression of favoritism.

Another thing that is assumed is that the buyer gains no added value from the transaction except the product they buy. This is a terrible assumption, and one that comes from the fact that people writing and thinking about business in this country are so used to thinking and writing about large companies, not small ones. Large companies have staff that is dedicated to comparing products, they can afford to run 6-12 months bakeoffs where they analyze things to death until they find - supposedly - the best solution for their needs. Thing is, most companies aren't large. Most companies hire you, the expert, to provide them with a very powerful shortcut around these very expensive processes. In fact, I've found in my years as a consultant that companies hire me precisely because they can trust me to give them the best recommendation possible for their specific needs, without needing to compare multiple products and solutions and run bakeoffs and do a whole lot of stuff that distracts them from doing their core business. The value-add, for them, is tremendous.

These are powerful arguments, but the thing that finally convinced me was a chat I had with one of my mentors. He suggested to me, quite plainly, that by refusing to take those commissions, I was cutting my nose to spite my face. How so? because most vendors have two very distinct buckets: one on the sales side where dollars come in, and one on the marketing side where they go out. And these do not mix. In other words, the commission I'm paid is paid as part of a marketing expense, not the replacement of a sales discount. He was absolutely right. I was already getting the best possible discounts for all of my clients, because the vendor clearly understood the value of having a non-attached but highly trusted outside sales rep at a client site, so they were willing to give up some margin. But they would not discount further even if I didn't take a commission I was generally entitled to. Different dollar buckets. The other aspect of this is that by taking commissions, my firm can get exposure and opportunities that it didn't have before, because the vendor's money people suddenly have very clear visibility to the business the firm brings them - by having to sign those checks.

But it sure feels dirty. So I did my best to tell the clients where I was and wasn't compensated. But the clients all started getting anxious about it, because they felt - erroneously - that my judgment was compromised. What to do? so now we disclose all relationships on our site, and we mention which vendors we have a relationship with when we make recommendations (we recommend others regularly too), but we don't make a big deal about it.

And this is just one example of getting dirty (in the entrepreneurial sense). Here's another one: "placing" your friends as contractors and taking a margin on their services. Oh, how I hated that one. Think about it: you've known someone for years, know how good they are, and then you detect a contract opportunity for them with a client of yours. Instinctive response: connect the two and everyone's happy. But at some point you realize that you are driving a lot of value for both your client and your friend. A recruiter charges 20% of first year's salary. A placement firm takes 30%-40% off the top for their contractors. There's a reason for that. So you shut your eyes and put your friend on a 1099 with you, then resell them to your client with a 20% markup. But your friend now knows that you are making free cashflow off their backs. Trust me, it feels much dirtier than the other one. I solved it by creating a strict policy of fixed margins that are fully disclosed to my friends; we charge whatever they want + $20 an hour which we keep as margin. Since most of them earn more than $100 per hour, our cut is 20% or less, and it keeps everyone happy (if slightly smellier than before). For now, that is. I'm sure as we grow this will change, too.

The question of course, remains: why even do it?

Simple. To grow the business beyond yourself you need money for support and administration and to pay folks in advance (because you get paid on your invoices much later than your folks get paid by you on theirs, another little trick of being a business owner). You can get that money by taking it out of your own billables, of course, but that doesn't really work unless you don't need to make money. Why? because remember, when you start this growth, you're the only one growing the firm. You still have to generate the billable hours, but you also have to sell them, and you also have to do all the support and administration yourself. So you need some sort of growth engine, and I know that you already maxed out all your credit cards just to get to the point where you think you can grow the business. Where is the free cashflow coming from?

Commissions. Margins. You know, dirty stuff.

Now, to be perfectly honest, none of these little things are really dirty. They are established and well respected business practices. They just feel dirty to the high-minded entrepreneur. They feel like compromises on their integrity (it sure did - and still does - to me). But they are, as they say, a necessary part of growing up. I think the one thing that really matters is not to lose your gut. I now have the luck of several people being involved with the business that are helping to grow it, and I no longer control everything, but I still put up a damn good fight if I don't like something, and it helps because I get fresh viewpoints and ideas and perspectives I didn't have before. But in the end, if it makes sense, I'll concede, usually adding my own flavor to the new practice or process to mask my memory of the rotten smell. I guess it's the main source of sarcasm for experienced entrepreneurs.