6,759,939 Steps

Hiding in a drawer, beneath last year’s Christmas cards, various charge cords and
other random bits and pieces, was this old guy — a vintage Fit Bit. Once I put a
bit of charge into the old friend, I am greeted with, “Go Glenn,” and
“Hey Hey” and “ucandoit.” Feeble cries from the digital
beyond. But sadly, your day has come and gone, Ye Olde Fit Bit. You are not
even the original one, which was bought around 2011 and lost in 2012. And you
began your drawer time once your owner upgraded (ha, so he thought) to a
so-called Fit Bit “Smart” watch, which was way more expensive than
the Fit Bit and not a very good watch. So, the watch was given away sometime
around 2015 and you, Grandpop Fit Bit, have been sitting around since then.

Originally, I believe we kept you around, thinking someone else in the
family might like a Fit Bit. It still seems to work simply fine, but the time
for Fit Bit has passed. It is time to let it go, just like the Pebble Watch. In
keeping with the spirit of this blog, let me tell you what I liked about the
Fit Bit. It seemed to keep reasonable track of steps and was motivating to see
if you could sustain/maintain a certain amount per day. My goal was 10,000
steps a day and once I had several friends and family connected via the Fit Bit
web site, we could each see how we stacked up against one another, so I liked
the gentle friendly competition that came out of that. And I had some big days.

According to my stats in my very dormant Fit Bit account, in October of
2013, I walked 12.16 miles or 24,434 steps. My profile stats do not give me a
top ten of days I hit a goodly number of steps, but I will take this in any
case, or “in stride” as it were. Overall, the thing tells me I
collected over 6 million steps or 3,200 miles walking during the time I was
FitBiting. And I like all of that, it is fun to believe in that and to think it
really happened and maybe it helped provide some additional exercise I would
not otherwise have had. All to the good.

Bad Fit items included: one, the feeling that it really wasn’t capturing my
steps accurately, ever. One reason was that when my wife and I would walk
together, we always had quite different number of steps and total miles. I also
did not like that it was easy to lose or misplace. I would typically carry it
around my pocket, and it got lost quite a bit. The charging was fine, it could
go for days without needing a charge and in charging it, the thing would synch,
so that was all okay but now as I think back on it, the Fit Bit was a transitional
technology.

Looks like they are still in business and still selling the trackers along
with an array of more sophisticated gear but it is all so 2014 now that I don’t
see myself going back to the Fit Bit. So, I am going to see if someone else
would like this guy and will update the blog once I have found a final resting
place for him.

Update: Posted it on Nextdoor and got someone interested to come get it pretty quickly. Hope it continues happy tracking for a long time to come.