Happy birthday soaraway Shoot Up

Happy 7th birthday Shoot Up!

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy biiirrrrrthday dear soaraway Shoot Up
And you smell like one too!!!!

As you may have guessed, today is your soaraway Shoot Up’s seventh birthday. Our amazingly snappy domain name was registered on April 1st 2009 (the irony of starting on April Fool’s Day isn’t lost on us) and our first article followed a few days later, with a review of Lifescan’s OneTouch UltraSmart, which clearly established Shoot Up’s reputation for in-depth quality reviews, with brilliant insights such as “…the Ultra Smart is pretty much the same as any other blood glucose meter…”

This article also established how incredibly boring it is to review blood glucose meters and goes some way to explaining why I’ve got an attic full of meters that I’ve never bothered reviewing.

Alison’s first article arrived after a week or so and asked “25 years of diabetes – are we making any progress?” The answer to which was “yes, we are” and included Shoot Up’s first mention of a pump and CGM combo. Never say we’re not at the cutting edge.

Both articles had quite a lot of comments – mainly from American bloggers, as I recall – which were all lost in the Great Database Explosion of 2010. Pity really.

I also had a look through my inbox and found the very first email correspondence between Alison and me where I invited her to join the blog. Talking about the sort of thing I thought we might write about I noted “I have a draft article about the discovery of insulin called “Fred Banting: Dog Murderer” written from the dog’s point of view. This might never be published…”

I think it’s a crying shame that this never saw the light of day; but maybe, perhaps, fingers crossed, sometime in the next seven years it will!