There is a website - fitness.gov - where we can join a Presidential Challenge for exercise. When we meet a goal, we can get a medal.

I am proposing that we 3FC ladies join that challenge & post thoughts/ideas/feelings/successes & problems here on this thread.

Who will join me?

Lynn

My Progress:

12/9 - 40 min
12/10 - 30 min
12/11 - 60 min
12/12 - 0 min
12/13 - 60 min
12/14 - 0 min
12/15 - 45 min

I remember doing this in elementary school! I was most emphatically NOT excited about it at the time, though. I'm kind of amused that they've now expanded the program to the general public, and I'd be up for redoing it as an adult. I always felt so helpless and desperate as a kid when the President's Challenge rolled around every year. This time I'll kick its butt!

I just went over and signed up. My username's the same over there: nienna.

I signed up!

Maybe we should have a "group" over there?

I'm in. I'm happy to participate, but I'm not a leader right now -- crazy work schedule. If someone else wants to make a group there, the link is

http://www.presidentschallenge.net/g...min/login.aspx

Over there I'm astrophe27.

I messed up my first star week -- so I didn't nail all 5.

Looking much better to get the full star this week -- not as work crazy. I have 3 days to go.

A.

I just created a group for us over there. The Group Name is 3FatChicks and the Group ID Number is 96671.

I have to blame hubby for my involvement. He works a government job and I guess there was a memo to get people to sign up, so he did and I did. So I am already a member of the Department of Commerce group. But I don't think he has logged there in an age. I know I have had periods where I skipped logging, I've been a bit off and on with exercise since I originally got my PALA award. But now I feel like I need to earn that blamed Platinum Award before I die. Those folks are evil, since I never guessed there was such an award until I hit Gold.

Maybe when I get to have an avatar, I'll take a picture of my PALA pin on my hat and use that for a while. Anyway, I am now part of the 3FatChicks group.

I'm not sure that you can exactly. It's not like a discussion group or anything. Once, long ago, I created a group for a diet newsgroup on Usenet, and as administrator of the group, I could see the participants and how they were doing, but I don't think anyone else could view that, without the login/password.

Now, there *was* a "compare with others" feature, that is currently disabled, I believe it is being re-vamped. With that, you could see how you were doing percentage wise compared to the rest of the group.

If you ask me, I think they should figure out a way to do more with groups, but I suppose at least we have our support here!

You had to create an individual profile/login first and then you have the option to add a group. I was able to add the 3FatChicks group.

Great! I'm there.

Today was my day off, but tomorrow will complete my first star. Yay!

A.

Excellent! I pretty much rested over the weekend, but should be able to log some activity tomorrow.

I just tried to log into the Challenge site & got a message that it is being updated. Apparently, there will be new features when it comes back. Maybe we will be able to figure out how to connect with our group members?

Lynn

Gah! I managed to log in the other day and got the same message, but today I cannot even seem to log in!

Worse, the site seems painfully slow to bring up anything. I've been trying to load the "trouble logging in" page for minutes now. And further bleaaargh... it finally loaded and it is just assuming I don't know my username/password, so no real help there to explain why the login page isn't working. I don't get an error message, I just enter my login and get re-directed back to the home page instead of my account.

I hate when sites roll out stuff before they have everything working smoothly.

Great. Tried the form for a new password, but they don't even list the security question I have on file, so all that does is tell me that my answer is incorrect.

Except, giving my security answer to a question it didn't relate to whatsoever (i.e. I just randomly picked the first question on the list) has, oddly enough worked. I'm in with a new password. So if anyone else has trouble, and you know the answer to your old security question, you can try that. Not exactly intuitive, sigh! Now that I've reset my password and security answer, the new password I was able to type in is limited to 10 characters, whereas my old password was longer. That's probably why I had trouble.

Life got more interesting... I checked my awards page, and my point tally was much less than it had been and it seems to have restarted me earning a Bronze Award instead of continuing me towards my goal of Platinum that I had started towards in mid-November. They are about to get an annoyed email, including screenshots! I hope no one else's goals and awards have been messed up! It might just be me, because I've been a site member for a while.

At any rate, the only good news is that the Activity Tracker is back online, I was able to add the last two weeks of activity I needed to log.

And they *have* added new stuff!

If you go to Groups and click on a group name, then you can select a members/compare/connect tab. The members tab shows who is part of the group, however, you can opt for each group to "hide from group" or "show in group" for privacy. If you click on a member's username, then you get an option to send them a PM, but otherwise, it doesn't show any personal info or anything. I may just start over with a user name that matches mine here, since my award points are messed up anyway.

Compare gives an average point total for the group and ranks where YOU are in the group on YOUR point totals. It only gives YOUR rank, it does not provide listed ranking of everyone. Good if anyone feels shy, so they know that others won't see where they are in the group. It does show the lowest points for group members vs. highest.

The connect looks like it might be kind of like a discussion option. It invited me to start the groups first topic, but I couldn't think of anything to say, LOL!

OK - I have posted a couple of messages to our group on the President's Challenge site. So far, I think I am the only one posting. Would you check to see if you can read?

Lynn