Robert Barron

After months of adding up walking and hiking mileage, I surpassed the 500 mile mark to complete the Klondike Challenge. The challenge is sponsored by Jack London State Historic Park to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of author Jack London. The 500 miles of walking or hiking reflect, roughly, the distance he traveled in the Klondike during the gold rush years, an experience which greatly shaped his writing career.

I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark burn out
in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor every atom of me
in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.

The hike Penny and I took in Vallejo a few days ago pushed me over the 500 mile mark for the year. Penny surpassed the 500 mile mark months ago since she logs a number of miles before and/or after work each day. We’ll be be eligible for the “graduation ceremony” for participants to be held in January.

We’ll probably get another walk or hike in before New Years, but I doubt that I’ll be able to add substantially to my mileage.

Since November 2015 I’ve been working from home.  Though working from home has been a theoretical option for years, this is the first time I’ve taken the plunge and done it exclusively.

So far, things have turned out well, despite some initial fears.  Would I mix up personal and work spaces?  Would I too easily gravitate toward the TV or a frivolous website?

It’s generally accepted that a bit more than average self control may be called for when people work from home.  But I don’t consider myself above average in this regard.  To compensate for this I try to surround myself in practices and habits that facilitate focused activity around work.

One of standard tools I’ve come to use the Pomodoro Technique.  By breaking up the work day into small bits of focused activity I’m able to both concentrate when I need to and also break things up to avoid boredom and feelings of endless toil.

The original Pomodoro Method called for a kitchen timer to keep track of 25 minute sprints of activity.  Any mechanical kitchen timer would drive me crazy with its ticking, so instead I opted for the Pomodoro One app on my company’s MacBook Pro laptop.

When starting the app, some indicators are added to the Status Menu that show how many minutes and seconds remain in the next pomodoro.

Right click on the status and select “Show” to display the simple main dialog that shows dots for each pomodoro completed today and VCR-like controls to start, pause and stop the pomodoro.

Press the cog wheel button to configure things such as the number of minutes in a pomodoro and in the break times between them.

The name of the game with Pomodoro is to focus when working and acquire as many pomodoros in a given day as you can.  A summary shows the number of pomodoros completed for this week and last:

There’s a lot more involved with the Pomodoro Technique than merely using a tool like Pomodoro One, but it’s a very useful, easy to use and free tool to get you started on being more productive at home, or wherever you happen to work.

I’m a bit of a sucker when it comes to checklists and challenges.  One of my favorite things about hiking (other than the hike itself) is logging my hikes on one of my websites and seeing yet another trail marked as hiked.  Another checkmark.

Challenges, like other goals, are pretty motivating too.  The Bay Area has a couple of challenges that are sponsored by park districts each year that attempt to get citizens to visit and walk through the large number of natural areas they provide.

Late last year I stumbled upon the Klondike Challenge.  The year 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of Jack London’s life.  Jack lived in Sonoma Valley and he’s left a large impression on the area.  In commemoration of this milestone the Jack London State Historic Park folks have organized a hiking and walking challenge to get people outdoors and channel the spirit of London’s adventurousness.

This time I was ready to really act upon a challenge.  My intention is to meet, or exceed, the challenge’s 500 mile goal.  As of Jan. 4 Penny and I have already covered a bit over 10 miles.  On Jan. 2 that included an 8.5 mile trek through Sugarloaf Ridge State Park.

The 500 mile goal of the challenge is based on the rough distance travelled by London during his trip from the Yukon to the Klondike during the Alaskan gold rush around the dawn of the 20th century.

Overall, I’ve logged close to 1,000 miles on my websites.  But that was spread out over several years.  Five hundred miles in one year will definitely be a record.  Walks around town don’t really have a place on my sites so I’ll keep track of them on something like MapMyHike.  I already have about 1.5 miles there.

Through the challenge Jack London State Historic Park also hopes to raise some money for much needed trail restoration.  California’s parks are unbelievably gorgeous.  But they have suffered severe budgetary cutbacks during the last few years.  Some parks now operate under the control of entirely volunteer organizations which stepped in to avoid having the parks close altogether.  Combined with my hiking goal, I’m also hoping to help raise some money for the cause through a new crowd funding campaign.

I’d appreciate it if you could contribute a couple of dollars to the campaign to help give this wonderful park a needed boost.  I intend to cover all of the credit card costs of any donations and provide a check for the total amount of contributions.

See you on the trails!

My new TP-Link wifi extender works great at extending the range of our home wifi setup. The home office downstairs unfortunately resides in a wifi dead spot given where our AT&T wifi access point had to be located. It’s inexpensive and easy to set up.

An unexpected feature of the device was its blindingly bright “night light”.  The blue LED status indicators on the face of the unit filled a darkened room with an spooky blue glow.   My wife kept unplugging the unit from the wall at bedtime because it was bright enough to disturb her sleep.

The location chosen was ideal from a networking perspective. Moving it to another location where its light would not be troublesome was not an option.  I could find no source of information on how to dim or turn off the lights.  So what to do?

When all technical solutions fail it’s time to turn to the simple, mechanical responses. I cut out part of a business card and covered the LED’s. Success? Not really. The light was still too bright! An application of two additional business card layers taped over the light now lets us sleep in peace.  And now I can also use the computer downstairs to get nearly the same throughput as I would upstairs.