So while Mizzy is getting an injection of BloggyBotox (and lookin’ fabulous I might add) I’ve decided to come off the steroids and simplify things around here.  This is Fitarella’s 3rd incarnation and I think genuinely reflects where I’m at right now: Simplifying & Focusing.

I have been struggling for a while to figure out where Fitarella fits in with all of the health, fitness, and healthy living blogs.  Is it an informative article driven blog? a revenue source? a personal blog?  To a certain extent it has been all of those things, and while I have gotten nothing but generous support from you awesomatastic lovelies, I think its time I just pick something and stick to it for a while.  So, Fitarella will now be home to my fitness journey and wherever that may lead.

Here are a few of the changes:

*New Tagline: The old tagline “Food*Fitness*Family definitely spoke to all of the things I like to talk about, but it was also very broad.  In defining the focus of my blog I also had to define a tagline that reflected that. And so “a {fracture} fitness fairytale” was born.  Fitarella is not just about me trying to help other people on their health & fitness journey’s (which I LOVE to do), but also about my own journey. And while fitness has completely changed my life for the better, I’m not perfect, and have my own day to day issues.

*No sidebars: Ooooh getting rid of my sidebars was a HUMUNGOUS step for me because I’m a sidebar whore. I love me some sidebar action! But I spent more time playing & pruning my sidebars than I actually did posting. So now I have a very simple & lovely footer with all of the necessary info that won’t distract me.

*My shop: While not completely new since I announced it a few weeks ago, I’m really really excited to have it.  Its a place where I can genuinely recommend to you amazing products that I love and use while knowing you will get the best service possible.  Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about any of the products in my shop and be on the look out for lots of great sales & promotions.

I know that some of these changes might not be everyone’s cuppa Joe and some of you may not be interested in following along on my journey.  And to that I say: I get it, it’s cool and I’ve got nuthin’ but love for ya.  For those of you that will be sticking around, I thank you, and I’m honored that you share your time with me.

So, I sent in my Girls On the Run intent form with a fat check which basically holds my county for a year while I go through the entire process.  Its not official until they contact me and acknowledge the intent, so hopefully I will hear back from them soon.  In the mean time I have been poring over the manual and application process info and there is A LOT. This will certainly be a daunting task and my program, if all goes well, would probably begin by Fall 2012 at the latest, but I’m gonna give it a shot.

In other news, here are some pics from the #140 Conference in NYC  last week and some super awesome peeps:

@MC Hammer & me

@ajleon , me & @ohdoctah

L to R: @bethfrysztak , @jeffrago , @laurelkaufman , @zaneology & me

@laurelkaufman & me

me, @zaneology & @lizrabban

me, @ohdoctah & @bethfrysztak

My view of the East River in NYC

Ok, now you: tell me something juicy please! Nothing but snot rags happening here.

]]> http://fitarella.com/2010/04/i-hail-from-my-germ-infested-bed/feed/ 12 http://fitarella.com/2009/10/golds-approved/ http://fitarella.com/2009/10/golds-approved/#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:25:17 +0000 Fitarella http://fitarella.com/?p=839

I’m excited to announce that Fitarella has been given the honor to be one of Gold’s Gym Approved bloggers!  The purpose of the “Gold’s Gym Approved” program is to help the general public better navigate the web to find sites that have the most credible, reliable and accurate health and fitness information.  And since I am a HUGE Gold’s Gym fan, I happily accepted.

The first Gold’s Gym opened in 1965 in Venice Beach, California (aka Muscle Beach) and was dubbed “the Mecca of bodybuilding”.  It was frequented by Arnold Schwarzenegger and featured in the 1977 movie Pumping Iron. The movie brought attention not only to the gym itself, but also to the world of bodybuilding and physique in general. Today Gold’s Gym is an international chain that is frequented by ALL ages, shapes and sizes.

In their letter to me Gold’s stated”

Fitarella has been identified by global fitness leader, Gold’s Gym, as one of the top health and fitness sites in the blogosphere. Fitarella was selected by the Gold’s Gym Fitness Institute as a “Gold’s Gym Approved” site for achieving high marks in a number of areas. This includes:

•Encourages and energizes others to be fit and manage weight healthfully

•Promotes a lifestyle that’s balanced with healthful nutrition and habitual fitness that promotes quality of life

•Promotes the benefits of creating health and not solely the prevention of disease

And who am I to disgree?

Thank you Gold’s Gym for including me in your list, I am honored to be in such great company!

THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR INCREDIBLE SUPPORT!
xo Jacq

*FYI – “Josie” is another contestant that is also a friend. She writes the fabulous blog YumYucky.

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Josie wrote:

Hi L:

myself and a friend (who I copied on this email) are involved in the Sam-e blog contest.
Not sure if this is your department, but we think there might be a glitch in the voting. There’s feedback from friends who are trying to vote for the 1st time that a message tells them they already voted. AND, some people are able to vote twice while others cannot.

Can you pass this on and maybe have your the tech people look into it?

Thanks,
Josie

L- Ignite Social Media wrote:

Hi Josie,

Thanks so much for pointing this out about the voting situation for the SAM-e Good Mood Gig. I have passed that along to the team that is handling everything for that. What I’ve been told this morning is that the voting is restricted to one vote per IP address, so it’s possible that if your friends are voting from an office or something, if one person has voted, the voting for that IP address as a whole will be cut off, even if different individuals are trying to vote. As far as some people being able to vote twice, if they are on home networks, home network IP addresses do not always stay the same so it’s possible that if someone voted Friday morning from home, they may have been able to vote again Saturday morning. Our tech team is looking into this though and will explore alternative voting restriction methods in order to hopefully fix this problem!

Thanks again,
L

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Jacqueline wrote:

Hi L

Thanks so much for getting back to us. Just to clarify so that you can pass the information on (please :

-a friend tried to vote from her personal laptop (never having voted before, or anyone else on that computer) and it told her
no because she already voted.

-a friend voted twice from the same laptop using two different days from a work laptop.

-when my husband tried to vote today on firefox it said he voted already (he hadn’t), when he went to explorer it worked

-more than one person from my office has voted, it did not block the office IP.

Thanks,
Jacqueline

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 16:36:39 -0400, G- Ignite Social Media wrote:

Hi Jacqueline,

Thank you for your entry in the Good Mood Gig. We’re glad you’re interested in the job. In reviewing your entry, however, we found 3 votes that violate our terms and conditions, specifically those allowing one vote per person and IP address per day. See: http://www.sam-e.com/job/terms for more information and the complete terms.

As a result, we are removing those 3 votes from your vote tally. The terms allow us to disqualify the votes or disqualify the entry. At this point, however, it seems fairest to disqualify only the votes. You do still have 242 votes, which is an excellent start. There’s lots of time left in the contest for you to build upon that.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Happy to chat about them. Otherwise, good luck with your entry.

~G
Director of Technology
Ignite Social Media

Tue, October 06, 2009 4:34 pm, G – Ignite Social Media wrote:

Hi Josie,

Thank you for your entry in the Good Mood Gig. We’re glad you’re interested in the job. In reviewing your entry, however, we found 64 votes that violate our terms and conditions, specifically those allowing one
vote per person and IP address per day. See: http://www.sam-e.com/job/terms for more information and the complete terms.

As a result, we are removing those 64 votes rom your vote tally. The terms allow us to disqualify the votes or disqualify the entry. At this point, however, it seems fairest to disqualify only the votes. You do still have 184 votes, which is a good start. There’s lots of time left in the contest for you to build upon that.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Happy to chat about them. Otherwise, good luck with your entry.
~G
Director of Technology

Tue, October 06, 2009 4:41 pm, Josie wrote:
Hi G:
I’m still in. Thank you! I got feedback from voters that some are voting twice, three times even, and some couldn’t vote at all. It’s been confusing. To clarify. A person can vote once daily from their computer (IP address)? If another computer user has the same IP address (like in an office), the vote does not count? I read the official rules and this is what I gather based on what your telling me, but please correct me if not.

Thanks so much,
Josie

*So of course I picked up the phone an called G to discuss this email and go over the technical issues with the voting system. Also, there was a new contestant that had over 500 votes within minutes, and then 1024 in a few hours which seemed rather odd. He assured me that they were being looked in to all of it.

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 16:56:05 -0400, C- Ignite Social Media wrote:

Hi Jacqueline,

Thank you for your email and concerns. Unfortunately, the short answer is this is not an issue we can fix. G and the rest of the technical team have done everything they can possibly do to ensure that what’s happening is not due to error on our part.

The talent search allows one vote per IP address per day. A mechanism has been put into place to ensure users with a shared IP address can still cast one vote each day; however, certain security and firewall settings may prevent multiple users with a shared IP address from casting individual votes. Since we can’t control firewall settings, we can only suggest voting from another location.

Regards,
C
Ignite Social Media

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:05:03 -0400, Jacqueline wrote:

Hi C

Thank you for your email. However, I do not share an IP address with anybody and even I can’t vote and I know for sure it is not any of my firewall settings. Also, I know two other people in the contest and all of their friends & family are experiencing the same thing. While I understand there is only so much you can do, it is frustrating because it poses an unfair advantage to the contestants getting votes from “unblocked” computers. I know for a fact that I lost 17 votes today from people that contact me that they could not vote because it would not let them, and some of these people never voted before at all.

I truly appreciate you getting back to me and looking in to this, but having people getting blocked from voting continuously over the next 5 weeks will surely cause a lot of frustration.

Thank you for your time.
Jacqueline

And I got no response…

So…

Thu, October 08, 2009 11:19 am, Jacqueline wrote:

Hi G

As of today I would like my entry to be removed from the Good Mood Gig contest. As per my previous emails & our phone conversation, I know you are well aware of the technical glitches in the voting system. From the last correspondence (see below) with Christian, his only suggestion was to “get people to vote from another location”, and to me this is not acceptable. Friends and family have been contacting me on a daily basis because they have been blocked from voting, some have never even voted but still are blocked. How is it a fair contest when contestants are missing out on votes because of technical glitches? Its is disrespectful of me to continue asking people to take time out of their day to vote for me, when they will only be blocked anyway.

So again, please remove my entry from the contest effective immediately.

Thank you for your time,
Jacqueline

Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 11:32 AM, Josie wrote:

G:

I also share Jacqueline’s views on the situation, as I have encountered repeated frustration from friends and family attempting to vote for me. It has become an embarrassment.

I also request that my entry be removed.

This contest has been handled in a poor fashion and it is a poor reflection on the Nature Made brand that I have patronized for years and personally promoted on my blog when your company approached ME to get the word out on vitaminID.

I am disappointed to say the least.

Josie

*I then tweeted the President of Ignite Social Media, J, and got this response:

Thu, 8 Oct 2009 12:09:23 -0400, J – Ignite Social Media wrote:

Hi Josie, Hi Jacqueline:

I totally understand your frustration. When you do a contest like this with voting, there has to be some way to keep someone from voting over and over and over. Most contests block by IP. I see this all the time when someone in my company asks me to vote for something and I can’t, because they already have. We’ve gone further than that simple, sort of blunt way of doing it, so that multiple computers within IPs can vote, but only once a day.

I just voted for both of you with no problem. Then went back to vote again, and it blocked me from doing so. So on my machine at least, it’s working exactly as intended.

None of that solves your issue, though. Here’s where we stand right now. For most people, everything is working fine. Clearly it’s not for either of you, and I’ve been talking to one other who’s had some sporadic issues. So we’ve got people digging further into log files and the like to look for a pattern.

We can do one of two things, just let me know which you’d like:

1. Delete your profile now. We’ll keep looking into things, but you won’t have to worry about it anymore either way; or
2. Give us to the end of the day to dig a little deeper. If by the end of the day we can’t find anything, we can delete your profile then knowing we did all we could.

Make sense? Just let me know which way you want to go. Either way, we’re going to see if we can replicate the issue your friends seem to be having.

~J

On 10/8/09 12:22 PM, Jacqueline wrote:

Hi J,

Thank you for the prompt response, I really appreciate you getting back to us. However, I would like my profile deleted. The people I have voting for me span the globe, and most of them do not share IP addresses, and some haven’t even been able to vote for a first time. I understand this is something out of your control at the moment, but it is not adequate for me to take part of a contest where the voting is working fine for “most”, as you stated below, but not all. Aside from Josie I know two other contestants in the contest that are also having the same issue, so it could be that it appears fine for most, but the others just haven’t contacted you yet.

Thank you again for your time.

Regards,
Jacqueline

Thu, 8 Oct 2009 12:32:18 -0400, J – Ignite Social Media wrote:

No problem Jacqueline. We’ll delete your profile immediately.

I appreciate your open communication.

~J

On 10/8/09 12:33 PM, Josie wrote:

J:

Please remove my profile as well. Thank you.

Josie

Thu, October 08, 2009 12:37 pm, josie wrote:

Josie,

Will do. Sorry for any confusion.

~J

THE END.

So the one I’ve chosen is:

Anybody with me???

Its launch day over at Blog Nosh Magazine so get your
little tushies over there NOW!

Ques es Blog Nosh? Dios Mio! Haven’t you heard?! Its just the coolest new online mag that features YOUR posts! Yes, that’s right, it is dedicated to promoting the BEST archived posts from your personal blogs.  Ya know, all that juicy stuff you wrote about before you actually had readers!  Site channels include Tech, Art, Business, Homemaking, Entertainment, Health & Fitness, Sex, Politics, Philosophy, and so much more!

Please show your support and go check out the fab featured posts!

FYI – I am now accepting bribes submissions for the
Health & Fitness Channel, so if you gots da goods, lemme have it baby.
Email: Jacqueline@Fitarella.com

]]> http://fitarella.com/2008/06/3-2-1-blast-off/feed/ 16 http://fitarella.com/2008/06/spinning-out-of-control/ http://fitarella.com/2008/06/spinning-out-of-control/#comments Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:00:56 +0000 Fitarella http://fitarella.com/?p=100

Due to this unfortunate tragedy Fitarella will not be available today.
Please keep her in your thoughts.

]]> http://fitarella.com/2008/06/spinning-out-of-control/feed/ 13