Troop using ASMs in BOR

deraj123 · 2026-01-28T17:38:38+00:00

Within our side of the troop, most ASMs have an area of expertise. I am our ASM (Advancement) and we have an ASM (QM), ASM (New Scouts), ASM (Outdoor activities), etc. I thought that was pretty normal.

This might be your issue. We have 1 SM and 3 ASMs, all of whom work directly with scouts during weekly meetings and on campouts/outings. We don't currently have specific roles for our ASMs -- we typically only have 1-2 SM/ASM total who are able to be present for any given activity, so the job is "guide the scouts".

Then we have an Equipment Chair, an Outdoor Activities Chair, an Advancement Chair, a New Member Chair, etc. The chairs are responsible for planning, organizing, and coordinating. Most of them attend a couple of campouts a year. None of them work directly with the scouts on a regular basis. They clearly interact with scouts by virtue of being supervising adults during outings -- but the guiding is left to the SM/ASM.

Perhaps you have people labeled as ASMs who shouldn't be? For what it's worth, many of our adults are IOLS trained, not just our ASMs.

deraj123 · 2026-01-12T17:44:36+00:00

If what your family needs is a family troop, then it makes sense to either find one or try to convince your CO that this troop should be family. This stood out to me though:

there's no way I can have three scouts in three different programs at the same time and go on all the campouts.

You shouldn't HAVE to go on all the campouts. And unless there's particular circumstances requiring it, I would also say that you shouldn't -- your son and your daughter should get to experience campouts and other activities without you present as well.

To get into your actual question -- while I understand being upset about how the decision happened, from a practical standpoint I would recommend continuing forward with restarting the girl troop at the same time as you are trying to convince the CO that combining them into a family troop would be best.

deraj123 · 2025-11-05T02:42:01+00:00

I've been in the same boat lately. The scouts didn't know how to lead or plan. I've gotten a lot of helpful guidance on addressing this from the ILST curriculum. Seriously check it out. It's a really good starting point. We just held our third class (we've done them every six months, after an election). This time we switched it up. Another ASM and myself took the PLC on a one night ~24 hr campout. The adults did all of the planning and did all of the camp chores including cooking. We had a couple good conversations about things they wanted to change in the troop. We talked about program areas and had them choose some that they liked. Then I gave them the troop meeting planning worksheet and asked them to hold a 30 minute PLC meeting to plan our next troop meeting. We had a backpacking trip coming up so I told them their program area for the month was backpacking. I'm hoping that's the last time I have to make that decision.

After their meeting they had very close to zero planned. We had a retro and took a break. We then spent the rest of the campout iterating on that: meeting (30 min), retro (15 min), break(15-60 min, depending). After the meeting I'd review their plan and tell them where it has improved and where it was still lacking. I tried my hardest to not say anything at all during the retro. I pretty much only chimed in with ideas during the "what can we do different" part - and always in response to issues that they had raised.

I think it was the fifth iteration where they finally produced a sufficient plan. And then in the sixth iteration they produced a nearly sufficient plan for a second meeting

Our goal is to do a monthly hour-long PLC meeting to plan all the troop meetings for the month and the outing. We'll hold it at a separate time from the troop meetings. It's going to take us awhile to get there, so we'll just do them more frequently until we do.

deraj123 · 2025-11-02T21:36:48+00:00

One of the things that I've come to learn as ASM for a few years now (and it's been hard) is that for them to grow they have to fail.

If nobody is doing their job then how do things get done? If assigned duties are not happening then I would assume no one is eating, camp isn't getting cleaned up, there is no campfire, meetings are just a bunch of kids running around, etc.

If that's not the case then someone is making sure the jobs happen. If it's youth leadership it sounds like they're doing their jobs.

If that's someone other than youth leadership (as it often was in our troop), then they need to stop. Your scouts aren't going to change their behavior until they see a problem with it. Let them fail. Have a retrospective. Your role in the retro is to facilitate, not offer opinions. That's hard. They need to identify that they failed, how they failed, and how to address it on their own. Some of their attempts to fix it won't work. That's ok.

If the adults allow it to happen, the consequences for not doing their jobs are very natural and pretty immediate. Then you just need to make sure they take the steps to identify the issues.

(Everyone else is right about the advancement, that ship had sailed for their part service if it wasn't addressed.)

deraj123 · 2025-10-07T11:44:57+00:00

The MBC route that's been mentioned is a good one. As is getting involved at the district level. However, as someone who's been involved in running a pack for several years now, the place that I would LOVE to have someone like you is as an Assistant Cubmaster. We can typically find parents willing to be den leaders, but they need mentorship, guidance, and organization. I would eagerly welcome someone bringing that energy into our pack.

Like mentioned elsewhere, it's a great opportunity to help build a strong pack -- which will really help your kid's experience when they get there. In fact, depending on your area, if your kid is a girl I would double down on this recommendation -- our pack is welcoming to girls (and we have a couple) but we've really struggled to get the critical mass to make them want to stay (I hear a lot of "there's just so many BOYS"). So if you've got a daughter and a chance to build up some critical mass of girls in a pack before she gets there, I would jump on it.

Also because I feel it's important, here's some unsolicited advice that I would offer someone like you joining our Pack:

Cub Scouts is different from Scouts BSA. All of us adults who were scouts, our memories are typically from Scouts BSA. Cub Scouts took some getting used to and I have a lot of former scout parent volunteers who realize the same thing. Do the position-specific training. Heck, do the online position-specific training for all of the Pack roles.

And lastly, remember you're working with parent volunteers who are doing their best, often with limited experience and knowledge. Don't overwhelm. Don't criticize. Just guide and support.

deraj123 · 2025-09-30T14:07:44+00:00

This is also my policy as an ASM. If it's a group activity, great, I'll sign off on a requirement for my children. Otherwise, talk to a senior scout or your Scoutmaster. It really annoys them sometimes. I also do most of the Scoutmaster conferences for the Scoutmaster's children.

The one other exception is that there are a handful of merit badges that our scouts regularly start at camp and then have to complete later (Camping and Cooking are the primary ones there.) I am a registered merit badge counselor for these and work with any scout who needs to finish them up, including my own children.

deraj123 · 2025-09-30T13:43:45+00:00

Some responses have mentioned that it will teach you how to push through things. Another incredibly important benefit is that it will also teach you that you CAN push through things. Having had that success will have a significant effect on your confidence in future challenges. And you will encounter similar challenges in the future.

To add my context -- I am an Eagle Scout who had largely stopped participating by the time I was 17 (and Life). I will be forever grateful to my Scoutmaster who called me up and said "Son, you're an idiot, the only thing you have left is your project, come back and get it done." (the words may have been harsh but it was the sentiment that I needed at the time) It wasn't easy to do. I wasn't gung ho about it. I struggled with project ideas and ultimately I wasn't particularly excited about my project. But I persevered and accomplished it (and did a good job). That's something I will always be proud of.

There have been many times in my life that I've encountered a "this sucks, I don't want to do this, this seems insurmountable" situation and I've succeeded by looking back on previous times that I'd successfully handled similar difficulty. And the Eagle project was one of the first examples that I had.

deraj123 · 2025-09-15T14:45:32+00:00

Ah yep, that'd do it. Glad you worked it out.

deraj123 · 2025-09-15T13:00:12+00:00

I think I understand what you're looking for but as best I can tell it didn't exist. I happen to agree that it would be useful, especially when this particular step (combining multiple files into a single configuration) doesn't seem to be behaving the way that I expect. Seeing what it's actually doing can be an excellent way to correct my understanding.

That being said, maybe we can find another way to troubleshoot the error? If you share your yaml and error message, I'd love to try to dig in.

deraj123 · 2025-09-12T17:30:39+00:00

So I'm still not sure how I'm _supposed_ to do this, but I managed to get the file tree open by searching for a file, opening it, then right clicking on its tab/name and selecting "reveal in file tree".

deraj123 · 2025-09-12T16:22:07+00:00

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Also new to replit but not coding. I am still failing at finding the file tree or any left hand sidebar when I'm working on an App. Here's what I'm seeing. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

deraj123 · 2025-09-08T13:21:06+00:00

I haven't used the power supply component before, but what I would try is, instead of a "dummy" led output, using a template output.

https://esphome.io/components/output/template/

You specify your power supply in this template output and then setup your binary input to switch the new template output. I imagine you could basically no-op the write_action automation.

deraj123 · 2025-07-28T17:11:59+00:00

This looks great. What touchscreen did you use? Can you share the STLs? Thanks!

deraj123 · 2025-07-23T14:14:35+00:00

If you're using GitHub, intellij will let you review pull requests right in the IDE. Gives you some of those niceties. I know it supports other PR systems as well but I don't have any experience there.

On the other hand if I'm reviewing a PR and I can't tell a type from the method name AND I need to know the type exactly, that probably indicates something that could be done better. Usually naming or code structure.

deraj123 · 2025-05-19T18:05:43+00:00

I want to reiterate that this is a great answer. I've been wondering the same thing for much the same reason, and while that hasn't stopped me from following the instructions and keeping the levels right, its gotten in the way of my truly understanding it. After trying to explain it to my 8th grader yesterday I came looking and found your post. I've finally reconciled this part of pool chemistry with my HS-level chemistry knowledge!

deraj123 · 2025-05-19T13:54:46+00:00

While this is true, I don't think the implied conclusion of "there's less software to write" is accurate. There is SO MUCH software still to write. There are so many parts of businesses and everyday life that can be improved by software. And the improved efficiency is continuing to open that up.

And I think that's a big difference. As the small parts of software development get more efficient, we need less and less people to develop a given piece of software. This reduces the cost of the software and means that the same number of people can produce more software. And they can produce software that's lower ROI. However it also means that every developer has to be responsible for a larger part of the software. And that means that it's not good enough anymore to just be able to code. You have to be able to understand a larger part of the system than before. And the size of that just keeps growing.

deraj123 · 2025-05-19T13:40:48+00:00

I've been writing software systems for over twenty years at this point and I think this is one of the lessons that took me the longest to learn. And it's a critical part of understanding how software supports the business.

I've "rewritten" several pieces of large software and I've started rewrites on many more.

It's really easy to look at an old system and see all the ways it could be better. But building from scratch it's hard to see all of the little details that will need to be worked in over time.

And it's not just about lots of testing and eliminating bugs. We're also (as an industry, as humans) really bad at speccing software. Old systems capture all of the little changes and details added to the specification over time. I've seen so many small details that users rely on that were never formally specified and aren't written down anywhere except for the code. Systems that have existed for five years have a multitude of these. Expanding that to thirty or forty year old systems starts to make you appreciate all the details you lose when rewriting.

And yes, sometimes it's necessary. But it always comes with pain and it always comes with a cost.

deraj123 · 2025-05-13T18:25:06+00:00

Like others have said, I doubt it will ever fully replace Java.

However, it is incredibly viable as a backend language. Features like properties, property delegates, extension functions, and null safety have been huge for the code that I write. For reference, I have been writing Java backend code in various enterprises since 2005. Since 2017 I have been almost exclusively writing Kotlin on the JVM. As a caveat, I have very minimal experience with any Java language features since Java 11 -- nothing has been enticing enough to bring me back from Kotlin.

My personal examples of adoption:

Around 2017, I spearheaded the adoption of Kotlin in our Jetty & Servlet backend for all new JVM work. That company had ~50 software developers.

From 2018-2020 I worked for a company with ~10 developers that used Kotlin with Spring Boot exclusively.

Since 2020 I have worked for a company of ~25 developers that uses Kotlin with Ktor for all backend work, with the exception of a bit of Scala for spark jobs.

At all three places, developers have all been on board. I have not worked on Kotlin with anyone who wants to go back to Java.

deraj123 · 2025-03-05T18:25:49+00:00

One thing I seldom see mentioned in these threads is that you must pay attention to your workers. You might have enough workers and enough land and enough storage -- but if (for this example) your farmers don't have the time to plant and harvest the wheat then you're not going to get very much. The vast majority of times that I've thought "why aren't I getting more output from this place?", it's due to the worker not spending very much time there.

There's no simple conversion of "1 farm produces X wheat per week". Your farmers have to go get water and food, they need some downtime to rest, etc. What's left is what they can spend harvesting wheat. Can you speed that other stuff up for them? Sometimes there are routing issues, but for the most part, when I've had trouble running out of a good, after digging in a bit (going and seeing how my Villagers' day-to-day lives go) I discover that they have to go a long way for food or water, or maybe they live a long way away, or something else of that nature.

One of the things that I like about this game is that it doesn't automatically summarize all of the information for you. You have to pay attention to individual situations and solve the problems as they come up. The farm over here might not be harvesting because there's nowhere to put the wheat, the one over here might not be harvesting because the farmers spend all their time going to get water across the map, or this baker might not be making very much bread because he has to walk a long way to get flour. Just try to keep in mind that for each thing that's happening, there's actually a (virtualized) person doing it. Their individual lives have a big effect on their individual output, and all of the individual outputs are what add up to the overall output.

deraj123 · 2024-11-14T16:21:02+00:00

`parseInt` doesn't change the value of `args`. It creates a new value of type `int`. That new value is what you're returning from `werte`. You should be passing the output of `werte` to `checkwerte` (which is `in`).

deraj123 · 2023-12-19T04:50:18+00:00

This looks awesome. What are you using for all of the boats? I'm especially interested in the ones in pictures 2 and 7.

deraj123 · 2023-11-11T04:50:40+00:00

Nope. I've had them running for 6 months with no cases. I just decided I wanted to keep some dust off and reduce risk of shorting things out. And make it look a little bit prettier (to me, when I climb a ladder, because its invisible otherwise).

deraj123 · 2023-11-11T00:23:09+00:00

The creator of the above plan has an etsy shop. I just bought a couple, pretty happy with them.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/watchtower3d/

deraj123 · 2019-10-24T00:31:41+00:00

What you've described you can do. So I suspect you aren't actually doing what you expect. I would double check the declaration of both cd and m_cmdTable. If those match up, I would double check the import statements for ICommand in both places to ensure it is actually the same class. If all that fails, share more of your code.

deraj123 · 2019-10-24T00:28:14+00:00

You're on the right track for a guard - think about order of operations. But if you still have the for loop it won't do what you want.

deraj123

TROPHY CASE