MattR

And there you have it, the reason I'm starting to look elsewhere to give my time. It's becoming too much. The idea that a massive online MB class is scouting is just telling of deeper problems we've already discussed. I tried bringing this up a week or so ago and the response was that kids already know how to have fun on the internet. That would work. I think you could even take a hike "together" assuming there is cell service. Split the patrol into buddy pairs. Everyone brings a map to the trail head but can't get out of the car until they're called by the pair before them. Th

Water bottles and tennis balls? My kids did that and it was fun.

My wife is making masks. I found plans and ordered some N95 equivalent fabric. We'll see how the filter fabric works. One thing that seemed good to me was a vimeo video from a doctor in NYC (below). I have been sent this link from 2 different people. A couple of important points: if you're not in a hospital then the most important thing a mask will do is keep your hands off your face. The primary mechanism of transfer is people touching a contaminated surface and then touching their face. That's it. Wash/disinfect your hands. Keep your hands away from your face. If you're in a hospital wi

Four trout? That's all? Nice trout.

We do it all the time. Who, at your council, told you otherwise?

I agree that a meeting is not high on anyone's list. But social interaction is going to become more and more important. Extended solitude is hard on the spirit. This could go all the way through summer. I'd love to be proven wrong but, we all know the motto. I was wondering about different ways to have social interaction for kids without the contact. Make a pioneering project out of pencils, string and rubber bands. Patrol chess or checkers via zoom with side channels to strategize. Make a treasure map using google earth or maps. If one can set up multiple meetings, one for each room in a

Ours always said high adventure.

I hate to be the grinch, but most likely all high adventure and summer camps will be cancelled or limited to August. Cancelling the entire summer would actually mean good news with respect to number of hospitalizations because the curve will be stretched out. Italy thought China was an outlier and now everyone thinks Italy is an outlier. And yet the US is not slowing things down as well as Italy is now. The US population density is much lower than Italy and we are younger, so that's good news, but it's still going to be rough. My county went from 7 to 19 cases in a day (that's likely due

Not just rechartering but all the data. For some reason the BSA has very important information that must be guarded by humans. That is the reason that this whole thing can't be just a simple web interface that every parent can use. I understand the need to ensure adults have YPT but nothing else needs to get above the unit. What other youth organization cares about all the data we require? Advancement, training, knots. When my son was on a soccer team all they cared about was his address, that a parent signed a consent form and that he paid. Each year they just started over. In software that's

All good ideas. But this is more than rechartering and even more than software. Making robust software that scales to a million users is expensive and there is no money. My guess is there needs to be a simpler goal rather than an easier process. What is all this data used for? Part of it is doing background checks. Part of it is collecting money. Tracking training and advancement and membership. There are also security issues that add a lot of complexity. Rechartering is a big pain for us mostly because of tracking down parents that don't respond. So if this process were pushed down to t

Concealed Carry Map, Medical Alert and 29 Super Hot Flight Attendants. No, this is what ads I got. I admit, I did click on a Daily Mail news item. I think we need a different competition for funniest mix of ads served.

Maybe nobody failed? Or rather the issue is the perception vs the reality of eagle. Eagle is a list of requirements. Our perception is that it's about character and self sufficiency and other subjective ideas. I don't see how any list of requirements ensures any of these traits. I truly see where you're coming from. I've been there but I don't see a way to improve the situation. What character really gets down to is a desire to do the right thing. How people get there is a much bigger topic than scouts and orders of magnitude bigger than a rank patch.

Welcome to the forum! Most troops have custom activity shirts and someone is printing them. My troop sure does. I have never heard of anyone getting upset. Honestly, I say go for it. As for patches, some patches have a loop of the edging thread that makes for a button hole so the scouts can easily attach them to their uniform temporarily. If your serger can do that then that would be nice. I have no idea how those loops are made, though.

I'm going for a hike.

Yep, I understand why you're saying that. There are a lot of long discussions about detail that probably doesn't make that much difference to the end goal. In the OP I was more interested in how the patrol leaders were being developed, they're the most important leaders in the troop. If the SPL is helping develop the PL's then this troop(s) are better than most. If not, they're missing the same point that most others are missing. I'd rather see descriptions of different ways of doing things that all work.

You might have a cached copy of a bad home page. Try clearing your browser history. I have no problem loading scouter.com

I can, and did. If it's not what you want let me know and I'll change it for you.

Welcome to the forum, @atrox79. Going from 7 scouts to 3+1 patrols sounds great. I'd be interested in hearing how that happened. As for a female SPL, hopefully the response from national will be: you have two troops so you need two SPL's, a boy for the boy's troop and a girl for the girl's troop. Here's another idea. Get rid of the SPL. The girl's troop doesn't need one as there is only one patrol. For the three boy patrols the PLC can consist of the three PL's working together. They can figure out how to have a single, senior PL to cover events. They might go round robin. They

Leather laces are still available. Firefighters use them, or at least those fighting forest fires. I would get white laces, dye one part blue, one part red and then carefully tie a woggle that had a blue, a white and a red stripe.

I don't think it's intentional. The training doesn't emphasize it so it's just fading. It's a constant battle to get parents to accept it and it takes a critical mass of adults to both teach the scouts and pull back parents. And a parent that's eagle is not necessarily helpful. Often they don't understand the difference between being an adult and the spl when they were 17.

Those posters are great! Taking a ship to a world jamboree would be a great adventure all by itself. Thanks for sharing.

So you didn't get the nginx message? The site was unavailable while the fixes were being made and I suspect the nginx message was a temporary landing spot while the server was up but the site wasn't. If that's what you were getting and it works now then I don't see an issue now. Thanks.

Why make these programs different? I have never understood that as it just seems confining. Why not have more opportunities within scouts for adventure or just organizing fun with your friends as soon as you turn 14? Eagle track, adventure track, service, environment, a mix, let the scout(s) decide. Make it an expectation. When you get old enough you have a responsibility. Make that the vision and maybe scouts would start practicing more leadership.

Well, maybe I'm not so sure. There was a problem with new users completing their signup process. I assumed this was related. Could you please tell me what you were doing to get this message, including hardware platform and browser. Thanks.

@TAHAWK, @SSScout, @T2Eagle and @Chadamus, the forum software was being fixed. There was a problem with new users getting set up correctly. It works now. Thanks for your patience.