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?