Warning: The post below discusses both a fitness tracker and
poop. If either of those things make you queasy, you should stop reading now. You've been warned.
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| Fitbit Flex |
I got a Fitbit a few months ago as an award from work. For
those of you who don’t know, a Fitbit is a little device you strap to your
wrist. It tracks your steps, active minutes, and sleep. There’s an app you can
download on your phone that displays all of that data in shiny graphs. As an
engineer, I can get behind more graphs. I gave it to my wife to see if she’d
like it. She used it for a few weeks and decided that it wasn’t for her. So I
let my brother-in-law try it. He decided it wasn’t for him. So I tried it.
It turns out, I’m not a huge fan either. It was good for what
it was. It told me how far I walked. If I was walking consistently, it tracked
my “active minutes.” It told me that I sleep like a log when I get to sleep (I
have small children, sleep is a precious commodity). And if I walked more than
10,000 steps, the Fitbit would vibrate and flash lights in sort of a celebration
of meeting a goal. That was neat the first time. Yay me. I walked… a lot?
After four of five days of use, I decided that I don’t
actually need all that data on my day. The idea behind the Fitbit and other
fitness trackers is that I’d see how much I was moving and then want to move
more in sort of an internal competition. And then I’d get fitter. But what
actually happened is that it showed me that I’m pretty consistent with how much
I walk each day. Also, I’m pretty consistent with how active I am on any given
work day. I looked at that data and said, “Yup. That looks like about enough of that.”
Having passed through my wife’s hands, my brother-in-laws
hands, and my hands, I passed it to my three-year-old son. Not to track
his data. I know he exists in constant motion. He wanted to wear it because I
wore it. That means that Dad is still cool. I expect this phase to be short, so
I’m enjoying it while it lasts. Shortly thereafter, tragedy struck the poor Fitbit.
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| Not pictured: Fitbit in poo |
Without going into too many details, it will suffice to say
that the computer insert of the Fitbit ended up in the toilet resting on top of a monster poo. I thought about cleaning it off. You know, de-pooing it
so someone else could see if they liked it. But I’d have to tell them that it was
rescued from poo. I just can’t see anyone learning that and saying, “Man, that
was really thoughtful. Thank you for giving me that thing you didn’t want that
was, at one time, covered in the excrement of your child. I will be honored to
wear the precious nugget that you rescued from the gloppy clutches of a
tenacious deuce.”
The Fitbit is dead. Long live the Fitbit.
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