Asilomar

Asilomar

Asilomar Conference Center, for me is a bit strange and many of its strange components are very much appreciated by me.   First, this is a government facility, owned by the State of California.  It is a state park run by a private company contracted to manage the facility.   It is a conference center that is quite large and located in a terrific plot of land between Carmel and Monterey right on the beach.  In years past you typically can not plan to stay here if you are not part of a pre planned conference so booking a room can only take place within a few weeks of your arrival.  It was really difficult to plan to stay here months in advance.  They only open rooms when large groups do not fill up the place, like for conferences.  This place validates those, like me, who can not or do not like to plan ahead.  I call the center or use my computer to see if I can get a booking just days before arriving.  It is a dice roll whether you will be able to book a room.  I feel like I win the lottery when I can get a room.  However, since Aramark took over running this facility, it appears to me that booking into this resort can be done at any time.  I really recommend that you go to their web site as it shows days that are available.  http://www.visitasilomar.com/accommodations.aspx

 

P.A. Hearst Social Hall is where you check in.
P.A. Hearst Social Hall is where you check in.

Positives

Location, location, location.   You simply can not conceive any better spot in California for this conference center.  You are so darn close to the ocean, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Point Pinos Lighthouse, Pacific Grove shops and down town Monterey.  There are many wonderful restaurants in the area.
The Asilomar grounds is a real positive and they are large.  This is a terrific spot to just hang out and vegetate.   The Asilomar property is right on the beach.  Only a road separates the Asilomar grounds and the Asilomar State Beach.  There are numerous hiking opportunities along the beach and on the Asilomar grounds.  They also have special information posts just outside some Asilomar buildings where you can use your cell phone to scan and launch a web site to learn about items close to where you are standing.
You may possibly save money by lodging at Asilomar when you compare total pricing with other facilities.  The rooms are about $130 for 2 people (this price can change) but this includes a terrific breakfast valued around $20 for each person.  So doing the math, you are getting the room for about $90 when not including meals.
No TV except in the bar (no audio).  I list this as a positive if family members wish to discover one another again and not be distracted by the idiot box.
Free wifi and the signal is really strong.  I was able to play the computer game, World of Warcraft, a most impressive indicator.
Many rooms come with a decent size balcony with two chairs.
Many rooms come with a fireplace stocked with paper and wood ready to light.  They give you a combination to a storage locker typically located quite close to your room so you can pull out extra fire place fuel.  We build a fire every night that we stay at Asilomar  and really enjoy the smell, added warmth and crackling sounds.
I really value being able to open a window to get fresh air.  Most rooms come with sliding glass doors and windows that can be cracked open for fresh air.
The air is clean and free of noise.  For those who remember the fog horn located rather close to Asilomar, it has been removed.
The heater in our last room was terrific and quiet.  I have stayed in many hotels and motor inns where the air conditioner and heater was way too loud.
Social Hall is where you check in and it contains a gift shop, pool tables, coffee shop with coffee drinks and full bar.
Asilomar also offers a swimming pool.

Crocker Dining Hall
Crocker Dining Hall

Negatives:

The rooms are a bit Spartan.   The room furnishings are really basic.  The rugs on the floor are not thick.
With each visit to Asilomar, you will not have any idea of what building and room you will be staying in.  Some buildings and rooms are better than others.
You may have to lug your luggage a distance from vehicle to room.
No TV,
No radio,
No refrigerator.
No coffee maker.
Pocket door to bathroom is a negative for me.  I really do not like pocket doors as they have issues for not completely functioning properly.  They will make noise, not slide, not lock.
The grounds, roads, buildings seem to be laid out by someone who had no sense of proper organization.  At Asilomar, the most direct and closest path is not in a straight line.
Finding a parking place is sometimes a challenge.

Path to coastal dunes.
Path to coastal dunes.

Other Issues:

If you rely on WiFi to get cell phone e-mail due to lousy cell tower signal, you must use your cell phone web browser to log into the Asilomar authorization web site and enter the user name and password given to you when you got your packet of information.  If you notice that the e-mail messages have not been updating, you might have lost this link and need to start it up again.  I found their Wifi coverage to be excellent.

Asilomar beach and shoreline.
Asilomar beach and shoreline.

Summary:
For the rich, famous, and pampered this place will disappoint.  For the budget conscious, progressive hippie, ecologically and environmentally sensitive and appreciative of weird, this place may appeal.   From my budget conscious, affinity for the unique, this place gets my approval.  I really love having breakfast in the Checker Dining Hall where muffins, toast, cereal, drinks are laid out on a huge lazy Susan on top of a larger round table.  As you enter the dining hall you meet a person who takes your meal ticket given to you when you registered for your room   Seating is designated by this person.  They may ask you if you are participating in a group or conference.  If you are, you will be sent to tables reserved for the appropriate group.  If you are independent from any group as we always are, you will be told to go to a table for open seating.  Remember the table number this person tells you.  You then walk into a cafeteria type line where you can select from a limited menu of items and are handed your food on a plate.  You get to sit at a large table with off the road people you do not know if you are not part of a group.  These people are sometimes quite a surprise and enjoyable or dreadfully boring.  The feeling is like being at a summer camp, instead of being waited upon like a typical restaurant.

Point Pinos Lighthouse, Pacific Grove, California.

Point Pinos Lighthouse, Pacific Grove, California.

This particular sight seeing location is very close to Asilomar State Beach and Conference Center, one of our favorite vacation spots located in Pacific Grove, California.  This light house is open from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM weekdays and weekends.  It costs $2 to enter and look around.  The rooms are quite small.  In the basement is a very small room showing the Fresnel lens technology.  When we visited, they were restoring some portions.

20130622-DSC_8766

 

Phone Number: 831-648-3176Web site: http://www.pointpinoslighthouse.org/

 

Ideas About Starting And Writing A Book

Ideas About Starting And Writing A Book

I want to write a book.
I have not yet written a book.
I need all the help I can get writing a book because I simply do not know what I am doing.  I have, over a number of years, researched how I should proceed.  I am sharing with you my current proclivities toward this project that has risen out of my research.  You are encouraged to examine this approach but be skeptical of it because I am not an authority in any way, just a casual participant who dips into this hobby when he can.

You should first understand some economic basics of book publishing, that being the publishing industry does have some behind the scenes factors and methods that you should be aware.  No sane publisher will put in print a large page number book.  The publisher will be going to a lot of expense so try to keep your page count reasonable for both your sake and theirs.  Typically you need to be tested in the market and achieve name recognition before you can write larger books.  There are exceptions.  This advice is for you to better achieve your first success.

The following is guidelines and not rules.  Bend them at your will anytime but realize there may be a down side for doing so.

Your first book should not be that long.  It should have a target value of about 100,000 words give or take around 20,000.  This depends upon the subject matter.  Different types of books typically achieve different word counts.

Trick: go to any library or book store and select titles of books that fall within your book category.  Go to the last page and find the page number.  Go to a page in the book full of text and count the words.  That number is the average words per page.  Multiply the number for one page by the total number of pages in the book to get a rough estimate of how many words are in THAT book.   You can do the same with any number of more books to improve your view of how many words you just might consider writing for the book category you are thinking of writing.

Next, and this is very important, you will need to pace yourself to complete the book.   Only you know your schedule, your free time, and your writing ability so the following numbers are only rough guidelines that you are encouraged to slide and shift to your life circumstances.

I will next show you how to pace your writing.  Remember the total words that your book might have to reach before it is completed?  You are going to try to write one page of your book in one day, two days, three days, or in a week.  I recommend that you write a page each day!  This really does depend upon how much free time you have.  Let us assume that you calculated 300 words will fill one page of your book.  Just divide that number into your book total word count.

Example: 300 words per page / 100,000 total book words =  just over 333 days.  A year has 365 days so within a year you should have the book completely written.  Add time for the book jacket to be created.

When I discovered that writing a book might take roughly one year, I was amazed and ecstatic.  Up to that point in time I had no idea how long it would take.

I have another tip to help motivate you.  My favorite writing software is Scrivener.  It is especially designed for creative writing and large long projects.  It is excellent for people, like me that have a lot of ideas but have some difficulty linking them together.   My main point is none of that.  My main point is this software offers a writing odometer.  Scrivener calls this feature “Project Targets”.  You set where you want the writing trip to end, lets say 100,000 words.  You then enter how many words you think you want to write each session, lets day 300.  A window pops up if you activate it and you can see your progress in real time as colored bar graphs.  For me this was simply fantastic.  That window was my motivation.  I realized the first time using this odometer that writing one page really did not take me that long.

If you buy Scrivener, I recommend that you consider buying a book to help you figure out how to use it.  Scrivener is very mechanical looking.  It has a lot of cut up screens and different views and features that will take you some time to master.  I am currently using Scrivener For Dummies by Gwen Hernandez.

I can not here cover your next step, how to get the book published?  You typically have two routes, print publishing and e-books.  Each has its positive and negative points and those points are very, very important so choose wisely.

Good luck!

Problem Getting News That Matters To Me

Problem Getting News That Matters To Me

My wife and I were in San Luis Obispo June 23 on vacation.  That evening our room lights dimmed, a brown out.  A while later we lost power.  My wife looked out the window and reported not seeing any lights.  After finding two LED  flashlights I pulled out my hand held ham radio and turned to one of the local repeaters.  (146.670 MHz).  It took a while but within, I would guess fifteen minutes, we got a pretty clear picture that this was a very large outage.  Ham radio operators were reporting whether they had power or not.  One mobile operator reported at which freeway off ramp he determined the outage began going south on HWY 101.  We made a list of dark cities on a pad of paper and realized how extensive the outage was.

It seemed to take a while before there seemed to have an operator take charge.  My main criticism is this: I never heard any summary of what was reported by the control operator.  I think we need to be aware that media and some of the general public may listen to our communications.

Next morning at breakfast at Apple Farm Restaurant, I gave the complementary newspaper found outside our hotel room to my wife while I used my smart cell phone to read newspapers in California.  The San Luis Obispo newspaper, The Tribune, had by a mile, the best information.  All other papers were deficient or failed to carry the story.  I then realized that no major California paper had a California section.  You either have local or national news, both ends and no middle.

Wierd “Plane”

Wierd “Plane”

While walking with my wife May 19, 2013 in the morning, we heard a prop plane overhead.  My wife turned around and I did too to look upward to try to spot the plane.  I was amazed at viewing an extremely high speed delta wing type of plane with no prop, no windows, no wing or tail flaps, no exhaust, no markings, exceedingly smooth like a dolphin, very pointed nose, white plastic or transparent looking body going west to east over north Orange County California and maneuvering  exceedingly fast with slight corrections which were very rapidly made.  Because this object cut into small puffy clouds I would have to guess it was not a model plane but much large in size.  This object disappeared quickly out of view but the prop sound remained unchanged so I think we failed to spot the plane making the prop noise.  I suspect the flying device my wife and I saw was not the prop plane which means the mysterious “plane” made no noise that we could detect.  At the time, I thought it might be an experimental military craft. I went to the Internet to see if I could find any plane that looked like what we saw but could not find anything.

How Not To Win A War

How Not To Win A War

You should seriously consider looking at and consider buying the March/April 2013 issue of Foreign Policy magazine (How Not To Win A War).  It does an excellent job of looking back to how the United States has done such a poor job at waging war.  I used the word “poor” while others may substitute the word “incompetent”.  The issue mainly cites Afghanistan in its analysis.  As part of this issue, they reveal how President Obama allowed for  similar failed administration process as George W. Bush for sanitizing people working on the war effort (revealed in Imperial Life In The Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran) by stuffing under qualified individuals into positions of war and “nation building” buy having each individual pass the political litmus test of allegiance to their “leader” (in the case of George W. Bush that would be Chaney and his neocon ideology).    A whole lot of ideas come out of this issue that are not explicit stated but one can most easily pull out of the issue:

  • Evidently no one in high office even thinks of conducting deep choice analysis prior to invasions of foreign countries.
  • The US Military method of waging war is land grab.
  • The US always takes on the method of looking down upon the country being invaded and imposing our views and methods.
  • The US Military can really run it off the rails when it gets involved in deciding policy.
  • The CIA can really ruin the war effort when it gets involved in deciding policy.
  • The U.S. State Department expertise is not appreciated, under utilized as a result, because their business is seen as making sausage.  Presidents seem unable to comprehend political complexity, want it simple.