It was bound to happen. I knew it was only a matter of time and today was the day. I’m talking about sitting in a Starbucks prepared to pay my $9.95 ransom charge to hop on their access point so that I could do some email w file attachments no doubt in the midst of a several hundred mile trek through Texas. Almost the moment I turned on my laptop I was connected to (linksys) - Excellent (connection quality that is). Naturally intrigued, I searched for all available wireless network access points and sure enough the friendly t-mobile service was there and waiting.

So, I feel pretty confident in saying that the days of paying for broadband access are numbered. How much longer can Starbucks take the hit for charging due to some ancient contract they did w T-Mobile so many eons ago (in Internet years anyway)?

I could go on about how this impacts medical data and patient care… yada yada… but I think sharing my newfound ‘freedom of information access’ experience today of free Wi-Fi in a normally hostile environment is plenty all by itself!

And if my experience isn’t enough for you, link to the rest of the story to learn about Starbucks partnership w Apple and their iTunes service which, you guessed it, doesn’t require you to pay for access via T-Mobile.

You can follow the progress of Desert Dingo’s Baja 1000 Class 11 VW here at ChallengeDiabetes.com over the next several days. Stay tuned as they prepare to start the 1300 mile trek (an additional 300 miles added this year). I guess 1000 miles through the desert must have been too easy.

HomeCheck-A1c and GlucoMON are proud sponsors of Car # 1146. We’re also sporting the website url on the hood (not shown) for the newest patient resource for assisting in reimbursement for continuous glucose monitoring systems at http://cgmscentral.com.

Recent research out of Northwestern shows that there may be a link between loss of insulin receptivity in the brain and Alzheimer’s disease. The article suggests this may be a new form of diabetes and calls it ‘Type 3″. This probably isn’t going to happen especially since there are already at least 6 forms of ‘diabetes’ that I know of.

• MODY
• LADA
• Type 2
• Gestational
• IDDM
• Diabetes Insipidus (DI)
• and at least a few more…

However, if the tie in is proven to cause Alzheimer’s, this brings yet more support for renaming type 1 diabetes as so many people with type 1 would like to see happen. It could also mean further segmentation and renaming of type 2. After all, with diabetes are we naming a cause or an effect? Seems like a good time to clean things up but in so doing, does this also have the potential to fragment fundraising efforts, care models, insurance, etc… Obviously I have more questions than answers and more discussion on this topic might lead to rationale that would support renaming the various conditions that have a common thread of inadequate self-regulation of blood glucose levels in the body.