Diabetes & DSMA – Does Social Media Make a Difference?

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I missed the DSMA twitter chat/discussion on Wednesday, 2011-10-26. The topic for this DSMA chat was particularly important though. That said, they are all important to a PWD like me (each chat is enlightening & unique in its own way). Why? Well, not to state the obvious… But knowing that I am not alone in my personal Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) Adventure (D-Adventure) makes all the difference in the Universe! :)

So, I share my answers to those 8 DSMA chat questions (questions Copyright © 2011 Diabetes Social Media Advocacy) with you here instead. Notice that my answers are my own & do not directly reflect the opinions of others. And though I will try to keep them short (in the twitter spirit), each one will most likely be longer than 140 characters. Enjoy…

  • Q1: How long did you (or your loved one) have diabetes before you found social media? What was life like prior to SM?
    • Prior to SM, I had been living with diabetes for 25 years. Well, the one thing about my D-Life before SM that pretty much blows everything else out of the water was the sheer loneliness of it all. I am talking about lonely in the D-Sense of the word.
  • Q2: How were you introduced to social media? (example-message board, search term)
    • I was introduced to social media during my internship with Glucose Buddy in the summer of 2009. That is when I joined TuDiabetes & Twitter if I remember correctly. Though, I am no longer on TuDiabetes.
  • Q3: Did you have any reservations about using social media to discuss your health/diabetes? What were they?
    • No, I did not have any reservations (not that I remember anyway). I imagine if I had… Then, I would not be writing this post here & now ;)
  • Q4: When did you feel comfortable discussing your life with diabetes with others? What was your turning point?
    • I have always been comfortable with the idea of discussing my D-Life (both in real life & online). So, comfortable discussing my D-Life from the get-go I guess you could say. I guess it helps that one of my older sisters lives with T1D too. So, I was fortunate that I already knew what it was in a way, and I think this helped to obliterate D-Fear from my brain (Fear Is The Mind Killer)!
  • Q5: What is your favorite usage for social media related to diabetes? Why?
    • Oh, that is easy… It is #bgnow & #dsma & being in the company of other humans who “Get This D-Thing” because we all live it!
  • Q6: How have you used social media to help in your diabetes management?
    • Mostly for motivation to do what I know I need to do. Mostly from just listening & lurking. In this way, my fellow D-Peeps in the DOC help to keep this D-Ship of mine sailing when it might otherwise sink…
  • Q7: Do you think social media makes a difference in your life with diabetes and the lives of others? Why or why not?
    • Yes, it makes a big-time difference indeed! Why? The simplest way I know how to put it is with a twist on “E Pluribus Unum”… And this twist would be that “from Many D-Folk Comes One D-Universe of D-Compatriots”. This idea gives me hope that the combined D-Force of our many ones can change our collective D-Universe for the better! :)
  • Q8: What advice would you give someone who was trying to figure out how to use social media?
    • Well, just jump in & give it a go… Do what you are comfortable with doing (e.g., listen, lurk, and let your comfort level develop however it works best for you).. Also, if I may, remember that perfection is highly overrated!

…
Well, that is the long & short of it. Yes, social media does make a difference (a big-time difference for me)! :)

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osh-20111027 (latest release)

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The latest official release of osh is available via:

Due to the untimely passing of Dennis M. Ritchie (dmr) in early October of 2011, I hereby dedicate osh-20111027 in his memory. You can find further info via the DEDICATIONS file. Here’s to DMR!

The osh-20111027 release has been announced on freecode.com. So, what’s new in this release? The following describes the major points.

Bugfixes: This release fixes both a mkconfig problem on older OpenBSD releases and an unrelated globbing problem caused by an unsigned integer overflow.

New Features: This release adds a new command aliasing feature that is similar to csh(1) aliasing in some respects & two new parameters: $# (as a synonym for $n) and $*.

Other Changes: Style changes (e.g., bold, italic, `literal' text) were made in all of the manual pages to make for easier reading, an “Aliases (+)” subsection was added to osh.1, and a “Metacharacters” subsection was added to osh.1 & sh6.1. The included examples/dot.* files were also updated.

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Taking Today Off (No-D-Day)

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No-D-DayThis is my No-D-Day Post (thanks George). Feel free to learn about other participants too if you would like. What does this mean? It means we’re taking today off from talking about Diabetes. Maybe this should be a Worldwide Holiday or something. 1 point! :)

Plus, FRINGE is on tonight! 2 points!!

I wonder what will do today then..? Honestly, I don’t know. Wait! Yes, I do. Instead of working on the next osh (v6shell) release (which is almost ready to roll BTW), I’ll take the day off from that too.

And learn something new by revisiting something from before, the Go programming language, in which I wrote a couple simple programs for fun & learning a few months ago. I’ve never really had time to dive into it completely though and haven’t done any network programming for a good while. So, on Google+, some folks shared a link to Network programming with Go a couple weeks ago, and I’ve not had a chance to read the whole thing yet.

So, this is my quest for today. It’s something I need to do anyway & is an excellent way to invest my taking today off time. 3 points!!! Yay, I win :)

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