While on the ranting path...

Our company setup a deal with some people that provide little clip on pedometers (with our company name on them) and a web site that allows you to track your steps as miles on one of several famous paths. You go to the web site to sign up for the free deal and they send you your unit. So far, so good.

One of the first things you are supposed to do is calibrate your pedometer to your "steps". Now, one of my friends at work went into a whole spiel about how the mile came from the Romany military where 1,000 steps was a "mil" which became a mile. Pretty cool, and neat to learn some history as part of this. He mentioned that the way they counted was each time their right foot came down was 1. Great. So I look through the manual that is telling us to set the thing to low sensitivity and then take 100 steps and see what it says. If it is saying something too low, up the sensitivity. OK, fine. Not hard. But first, how about if you define a step? Turns out that I couldn't find out from their manual OR their web site what the heck a step is (each time you put a foot down or each time the right foot comes down like those Romans). So I finally find on their web site - not the definition of a step - but a statement that 2,000 steps is roughly a mile. OK - so now I know - I have it set wrong because it is counting like them pesky Romans. My friend had his set that way all weekend. We had to re-calibrate the things (again not hard).

But --- how hard could it have been to put in that darn manual or even on that web site what the heck they counted as a step? Come on, that's pretty lame.

So, anyway the family and I took a nice walk this morning before it got hot (It's 106 now) and I got in 11,147 steps. Measured the way the web site people want it.

Update: OK today the thing started counting about twice the steps it should have and I had to change the calibration again. It is still clipped onto the same shorts in the same spot as it was yesterday - but apparently that isn't good enough. Seems these units aren't very good at counting steps...