swilliams

Slightly less than the rumored $70-100, but that’s a significant jump. Ouch.  That’s an increase of about $2,000 for our troop, assuming council dues stay the same. 

Meanwhile, our fundraising numbers are down for the fourth straight year. 

5 hours ago, Thunderbird said:

Are you able to put the items in using Scoutbook?  Scoutbook seems more reliable (overall) than Internet Advancement.

Unfortunately, no.  Because we don't use Scoutbook (we use Troopmaster), I can only view items on Scoutbook.  The good thing is that the MC for the COH is a super bright kid who understood my instructions to ignore the merit badges with an 'R' next to them when creating the program, and add in the list of merit badges and awards I emailed him last night.

My daughter asked me this morning if fixing the BSA software would be considered an Eagle project.    The project of the century, haha. 

AGAIN!  The software is doing it again. I can’t even.  I work 50+ hours a week. I don’t have time for this nonsense. 

On top of that, all of the merit badges listed in the file from our last COH have disappeared. I double- checked in June, after uploading the file, and everything seemed fine. I can only see which merit badges a scout has from the Scoutbook site. IA won’t load the scouts’ approved/pending/started info. 

So o now I can’t update flags in Troopmaster, and can’t manually enter the missing merit badges. What a mess (which is not what I really want to call it).

9 hours ago, njdrt-rdr said:

Can you tell me where you saw this requirement?

I'll have to ask our Committee Chair.  A scout came to the last committee meeting to give us his Eagle proposal, and the CC brought it up then.  It seemed to me like it was a new requirement, but I couldn't say for sure.  We had always gone with two adults on Eagle projects, one with YPT,  and one was always a parent.

Gave this some thought last night after my last post.  This fee increase has the potential to be an enormous hardship for my family.  I guess we'll explore financial aid first, but from what I've seen from both BSA and other financial aid programs, it doesn't usually help quite as much as we've needed.  Still, we won't go anywhere.  My kids like scouting too much, and I like what they gain from it.  We'll just have to find a way to work it out.

At the same time, I'm worried about our Troop.  For the last five-ish years, we've had scouts from two towns.  The second town now has it's own Troop that has been doing well, so we don't have any incoming scouts from that town anymore, and our incoming group is already smaller than even before the towns combined.  After this year, eleven of our 44 scouts are aging out - a full quarter.  If the financial end of things further restricts the number of scouts coming in, my youngest isn't going to have anyone to be a leader to.  Not sure he'll get as much out of scouting at that point, so I may revise the 'not going anywhere' in a couple years' time.  We'll see.

Daughter's Crew is doing well, and is based in an affluent town.  Any fee increase might affect them less.

7 hours ago, 5thGenTexan said:

I can not speak for everyone, but $100 recharter fee is a deal breaker for me,  I have a Bear, I have a daughter who I am working on creating a Scouts BSA Troop in town, I am a leader as is my wife.  We are not paying $400 a year just to send to National.  

Yeah, I don't know what we'll do if it's that high.  We're a family of five, and all of us are in scouting.  Hubby just agreed to be an ASM for the troop, as nearly a quarter of our scouts - and therefore their dads - will age out after this year.  Our troop pays for adults, or at least they have.  I don't think our troop can absorb that cost if it tops $50.  Maybe our crew and our troop can split my registration cost, lol.

Then you have the new cash-grab requirement that all Eagle projects must have two registered adults present.  Prior this, we were debating having the Eagle candidate's parents register.  Might have been a tough sell, even before the increase.  What a mess.

9 hours ago, Chisos said:

That's exactly it (even the part about getting the  badges recorded so an Eagle app can get turned in!)

Ordinarily, we upload all the advancement after the COH, but that's next week.  His appointment at council is today, I think. 

The good news is, it was working at 7:00 this morning when I logged in to try again.  The bad news is, the scout starts school earlier than that, so I don't know that he'll get my email in time to print this before heading up to council for his appointment.  I'll call them today and let them know what happened, and will attach his Advancement History now that it's complete.  I would hope that they'll accept it from me, if he doesn't have a physical copy.  The Eagle coordinator (not sure that's the exact title) at council is one of scouting's gems, so it will probably be okay.  It will be a very sad day when that person retires.

2 hours ago, Chisos said:

So, my cheat sheet from before seems to not be working anymore.

When attempting to enter a merit badge, I get to the "Item" field and instead of popping up a list of MB's to pick it just says "No Data".

Is anyone else seeing an error like this?

Yes.  Not only that, but I'm trying to enter a handful of merit badges for a scout so he can finish his Eagle application, and can't enter any of them.  I keep getting an error message, and the forum "help" has stopped replying to my request for help.  In addition, NOTHING shows up when I try to view his current badges.  Nothing under 'Started'.  Nothing under 'Pending Approval' and nothing under 'Approved'.  And that's after waiting 15 minutes for the page to load.

I will be showing up at council tomorrow with a handful of blue cards and they're going to have to enter them.

Edit: I get the list of merit badges, but when I click on any of them it says "Checking Advancement Status" underneath, nothing happens for a few minutes, then above the dialog box it says "Error".

Thank you!!  Part of the problem was the browser I was using. It didn't show the box next to the scout's name, so I had no idea what to do from there.  It's done now! 

Well, someone from the Scoutbook forum answered my question, but I can't try to follow heir instructions. I'm at work now, and Scoutbook has decided the version of Safari on my 2 year old iPhone is too old to work with their software. Ugh. Whatever happened to backward compatibility?  Two years isn't that ancient. 

(Sorry for all the complaining.  I'm on my 19th consecutive day of work, averaging 10.5 hours a day, with over 12 hours yesterday. I'm tired and grumpy, and don't have time for software that is over-engineered without being helpful.)

14 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

My understanding is that Internet Advancement 2.0 is only compatible with Scoutbook since BSA took it over. 

It only takes reports directly from Scoutbook, but all records have to be sent to council through the site. It's a PITA. The old site was fine. Bare bones, but really, do we need the ability to make sub-groups of leaders online, or have an activity calendar?

 Does anyone have experience with the new Internet Advancement 2.0?   Our troop uses Troopmaster for record keeping.   So far I've been able to upload our court of honor report into Internet advancement with no trouble,  but now I want to manually enter to merit badges for a scout who's working toward eagle.  

 In searching for help, I've found plenty of sources that state you can enter information manually but nothing that shows you how to do it.  The user interface is so horrible.  Nothing is remotely intuitive. 

21 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Those cards came about before computers. Most folks just hand write the info.

Given the amount of griping from him last year about having to hand write...

Sounds like I have to find a scout who knows more about mail merge than I do, lol.

I bought some of the perforated blue cards from the scout shop and figured I'd pre-print some with scouts' names for our Scoutmaster to take to camp.  Well, the only template I can find anywhere is one that prints the entire text.  The blue cards from the shop already have some of the text on them, so if I use the pdf I found online it will print over what's already there.  Does anyone know whether a template exists that works with the cards from the scout shop?  Why does BSA have to make everything so dang user UN-friendly?

On ‎6‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 5:41 PM, Liz said:

swilliams - I'd be concerned about the bear that you couldn't scare away. Not so much the ones that don't come close enough to the house to get the dogs barking. Those ones have a little wariness. 

We have bear around here too, but I never see them. Occasionally we'll see scat or footprints or once or twice a year a neighbor will catch a photo. I don't let my kids go outside at night without an adult and I teach them never to approach ANY wild animal, but especially a bear or cougar (those are our predators) or of course a rattlesnake, but I also teach them not to be afraid; just follow the safety rules. Also, keeping the bears wary of hanging out around the house is why we keep large dogs. 

In 43 years of living here, I don't think I've ever seen a bear although I *might* have seen the tail end of one disappearing into the bushes once while driving down the road, and my mother has seen a bear exactly once. I've never seen a cougar and I've only seen one rattlesnake (when I was about 3). 

Deer around here are as acclimated as you describe your bears to be. They'll come up on my porch to eat my container garden (I won't even TRY to keep a regular garden). But you can still scare them away if you try. They won't just stand there and let you walk up to them and grab them. Some of them will let you get within 5 or 10 yards though, if you approach slowly. Run at them and yell and they'll bolt... except once in a while one won't. We had a doe here when I was a kid who would chase dogs and people. 

It's been years since we got rid of the dumpster.  I have no idea if that same bear is still around, or not.  We do have a color-phase bear that circles around from time to time.  I came face-to-face with him; within about 20 feet.  (That's the second time I've been so close to one.)  Because it was twilight, and at that point I didn't know black bear didn't have to be black, I actually thought this cinnamon colored yearling was our distant neighbor's Rhodesian Ridgeback at first.  NOT!!  The other time, the bear was right in the woods outside the garage.  Again, under 30 feet.  Feet, not yards.  That time our bigger dog was out with me, and he's the one that alerted me to the bear.  He started to chase it, then the bear turned back toward him for a second or two.  This is in the north-central part of PA.

While I didn't see it, there was a black bear that came through our yard here in NJ.  Our next-door neighbor let us know.  Even in this suburban location, they've been sighted.  Then there was that incident a few years back where the college kid was killed by a black bear in NJ.

Near my parents' house in Utah, they had a deer attack and kill a small dog.  Stomped him to death.  Wildlife can be both fascinating and scary.

Okay, I can't help myself.  What a poorly written article in the first link.  It says the boy was injured, but then says that the bear scratched the tent.  Which is it?  Both?  How/where/to what extent was the boy injured?  Ugh.

Now that I got that out of my system...  we have black bear all around our place in PA, as we're in the middle of the woods.  It doesn't take much for a black bear to acclimate to humans. 

When we first built the house, we used to have a dumpster that was picked up every-other week.  We couldn't keep the bear out of it.  One of them even broke the top.  One evening, we started down the driveway to go into town, and I found a bear on top of the dumpster.  I was so angry/annoyed at the thought of having to pick two week old trash out of the woods again, that I got out of the car and screamed at him, waving my arms.  I got the kind of look from that bear that I get from my teenage son sometimes.  Honked the horn, nothing.  Slammed the car door, nothing.  It wasn't until I turned out of the driveway and headed for the dumpster in the car that he finally moved.  Even then, he only wandered about 30 feet further into the trees.  That was the end of the dumpster.  I bought a rack that attached to the trailer hitch and we haul the trash to the transfer station.

Even with the trash gone, we still get bear that wander around the house.  They usually keep just far enough away that they don't set the dogs off (they're usually inside the house), but if you go more than a few yards into the woods you'll see the scat.  I can't decide how worried to be.  We've have a lot of single-track in the woods around the house, and the kids ride their mountain bikes through.  Cutting a new track a couple weekends ago, I was in a thicket of hemlock, cutting away dead branches, and was seeing more droppings than usual in this area.  We have a black lab, and he unexpectedly came up on me.  He growled, probably because he's not used to seeing a human in that part of the woods, and I screamed because in my peripheral vision and with the growling, I thought it was a bear. I don't know which of us was more freaked out.  The kids mostly ride during the day, but with the weather getting hotter the temptation to head out after dinner is hard to ignore.

Our Troop and Pack are both 368.  I've never seen a leading number, but like others have said, you wouldn't necessarily see it anywhere.  We also have a Troop 68 in town, and we used to have Packs 268 and 468.

For the Venture Crew, which is in a different town (was the only active one in the area), we're Crew 28, and one of the two Troops in that town is also 28.  The other is Troop 8.  They use a single digit on their uniforms.  It almost looks strange to me, lol.  When the town started their girls' troop, they could've used 18 or 38, I suppose, but they chose to go with 280.

Does your CO also charter other Troops/Packs/Crews?  Maybe go with something similar if they do?

On ‎5‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 5:50 AM, qwazse said:

Just a general point: I go with what the scout records in his log, regardless of if it is in troopmaster. This does mean that a scout may have an event as one of his ten that his buddy who also participated does not. If a scout asks for a calendar of events, that's fine, otherwise adults should not be auto-filling requirements. I find that mindfulness is an important tool for the scout to have.

Looks like we record our attendance a lot differently.  None of our scouts keeps a log, and as much as it drives me crazy, the troop doesn't record any advancement in the scout handbooks. The scribe takes attendance, then gives it to a committee member who enters it into Troopmaster.   To mark progress, the ASPL of advancement has access to Troopmaster, so he prints out sheets that show which requirements scouts still need.  He marks any completed requirements on the sheets, then I review it and enter the info.

The one exception was for my younger son, who crossed over from a different pack over a month earlier than our pack in town.  It took a while to get him entered, so most of his Scout requirements are recorded in his book.

I'm not sure why we do it that way.  When I was shown what my predecessor did, I never thought to question it, being somewhat new to Boy Scouts (vs. Cub Scouts).  It sure makes a lot more sense to have a scout keep a log.  We've had a few errors in attendance; my older son wasn't credited with summer camp last year, for example.  It would be nice if the scout had his own record to check against that in the software.

Thanks.  The question came up because we have one scout who is very anxious to rank up (which is a separate issue the SM will tackle).  When he was talking to me about advancing, I let him know that he still needed a bunch of troop activities.  Everything he's done lately has been a service project, which is awesome in that he's doing a lot of service, but he hasn't been on a single camping trip since last year's summer camp.  Of course, this means he hasn't fulfilled the camping/tenting portion - unless he's counting every night as an activity, haha.   But it raised questions for me, the SM and the CC as to what other things we might consider.  We'll bring it up at our next committee meeting.  I thought I'd put this out there and see what others do; maybe be able to present some new ideas or reinforce what we're currently doing.  Strangers on the internet, yes, but at least scouts. 

To that point, your mention of a class reminds me that we did a flight simulator day at a local airport in February, and that event isn't showing up on any of the scouts' records.  That, imho, should definitely be a troop activity.  Secondarily, I'll need to check and see how the person who enters attendance is marking things in Troopmaster.  Since the software automatically generates completion of this requirement, there's got to be some distinction that must be made so that the software isn't counting regular meetings.

I'm sure this has been asked before, but a quick search didn't turn up quite what I was looking for.  Does BSA have any guidelines as for what constitutes "Troop Activity"?  Obviously they spell out the requirement that the activity can't be a regular troop and patrol meetings.

If there aren't any real rules, what does your troop consider an activity?  In the thread about girls advancing quickly, one forum member posted a list of activities his troop as done since the beginning of the year, so that's helpful.  It included some service projects.  Our troop does service where the project is arranged by the service chair.  Individual scouts who need help with their Eagle projects set up their own times and hours.  Does your troop include Eagle project service as an activity?  Any help is appreciated.

On ‎5‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 2:17 PM, The Latin Scot said:

Webelos SCOUT! 

I'm sorry, it's in my signature so I am obliged to be a pain about it. 

I don't entirely understand this logic. Does your pack meeting attendance vary that much from month to month? Ours is pretty consistent throughout the year, so a boy crossing over in October has as many "witnesses" as a boy who crosses over in May. And with fewer Scouts with to share the limelight, the focus on him is all the greater. Though, this reminds me that it's not about how many people are there as much as who those people are.

Also, my point about "catching up" wasn't actually referring to the Scouts - it was more about their parents, who at this age are, unfortunately, the ones who seem overly concerned about getting their kids to the same "level" as their peers - a mindset which perpetually troubles me, deeply. In the end however I agree with @mrkstvns' main point: there are advantages to every crossover strategy which ultimately depend on the child for whom they are designed.

Our pack meetings had about the same number each meeting - which was probably about 2/3 of the total membership.  By having the crossing over at the same time as the Blue and Gold, it's the one time that we had near-total attendance because it was a special occasion.  Parents (and scouts) tend to be so busy that having a single afternoon makes it a little easier on the schedule.

One big difference between meetings and the crossing over/B&G - and this will vary with each pack as well - is that a lot of our parents let the younger Cubs run wild during the meetings, and our CubMaster pretty much lets it happen.  The only time I've ever seen them fairly attentive, as a group, was when we did the mystery-solving skits.  (Adults dress up as different characters and present a scenario where a crime has been committed, and the scouts have to try and figure out 'who done it'.)  At a specific, more formal ceremony, the parents do a better job of keeping the Lions and Tigers in check, so it automatically feels more special; more reverent.

6 hours ago, nchg2 said:

Your TM admin (probably your CC) will need to give you membership update permission before you can add/edit scout profiles.

Thanks.  That would be the CC.   LOL, so much for not bothering him.  At least by now he should be somewhat rested.

No problem with these directions up until the "Add New" part.  There's no tab on the right - or either side, for that matter. 

Our Committee Chair is our Troopmaster guru, and while I'm sure he could answer my question, our troop just came back from hiking the AT in less-than-perfect weather and with a 5:00am wake up time this morning.  I don't want to bother him.

What I need to do is probably very, very simple, but I can't figure it out, and I can't even find an answer with Google (or DuckDuckGo).  All I need to do is add a new scout.  His application has been processed by council, and I've updated our roster in the council's Internet Advancement, which gives me his BSA number.  I don't see anything in either Troopmaster or the council site that would allow me to sync, and nothing in Troopmaster that allows me to manually input a new scout.

If any of you out there knows how to do this, or if you have a good online resource for Troopmaster, it would be much appreciated.  Would love to get this done in my very limited free minutes this morning.

On ‎3‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 8:37 PM, Cburkhardt said:

Our 25-girl Troop had an enjoyable Saturday hiking in Rock Creek Park in DC.  The three patrols split up and practiced their map reading and compass skills, at trail lunches together and finished their fire building advancement requirements is a patrol competition.  Our advancement co-chairs are enjoying our unusual “all-beginner” Scout membership by assuring our meeting and events are getting the girls through Scout and Tenderfoot requirements before summer camp.  Please share simple things working with girl units you are aware of.

I missed the part about trying to get to Tenderfoot before camp when I first read this.  This is the one thing that troubles me about the new girl troops.  Understandably, there's a desire to be in that first Eagle group, but rushing through shortchanges the experience.  I'm not saying your troop is doing that, mind you.  My comment is coming from my own shortcomings.  It's tempting to want to see my own sons make rank quickly, and I'm a little too focused on advancement sometimes, since that's my job with the troop.  Many times, as I watch the scouts in our group, I have to remember that a huge part of what they're doing when they seem to be aimlessly wandering around or horsing around and not paying attention, is enjoying themselves and learning about each other in the process.  After all, if they're not having fun while scouting, they're not going to keep doing it.  Plus, the older scouts who stick around for meetings and activities even after they've reached Eagle (or are really close) seem to enjoy the outings even more than some of the younger ones do.

I'm sure I'll look back on my boys' experience and wonder how time flew by so quickly.