Diabetes Nostalgia

Today I cleaned out my medical cupboard. Since I've been 7, the second shelf from the top in our hallway closet has been mine and mine alone. It's housed anything related to my diabetes that hasn't needed to be kept refrigerated. I took absolutely everything out and laid it on the couch and then realizing the historical significance of the collection I had before me, I organized it into a picture! Detailed comments about those pictures can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23210&id=751740071&ref=mf

That's right, those of you counting can see that I have 17 meters in my collection. There's actually 18, but I lent one of them out to a friend. The picture doesn't account for the many boxes of strips and lancets and the cartridges of insulin in the fridge.

Looking at all the technology that I've avoided throwing out really shows how far the technology has come in development since I was first diagnosed - never mind the advancements that came before that. At the same time, looking at the machines from the last say 6 -7 years, not a lot has changed. While the 1 minute down to 10 second change in test times was significant, tests can't seem to get any faster than 4-5 seconds, which is about industry standard. I'm fine with that, actually that is quite fast. If you don't have the patience to wait for 5 seconds, there is something very wrong.
I just bring it up to draw attention to it being the next big hurdle. I think we've reached the limit to how fast spot checking of blood glucose can be, the only improvement can be to make it instantaneous. If it could be instantaneous, then that would alleviate the problems with continuous systems as they currently exist.
Nevertheless, I'm not complaining. I'm actually rather happy with the way things are right now. Today was just a nostalgic day, that's all. While I'm certainly not going to bring all of my old meters with me, I'm definitely not going to throw them away, so I'm gonna put them somewhere and leave them at my parents house until there is a need for them in some sort of diabetes museum....