2012 – Basha Blog

Travelogue – The Real Coffee Experience – Espiritus Santos (Final)

July 7, 2012 by Seth Rowland

Up To Date At Last

At last, my journal has caught up with the date. Most of the time, I have been too busy to make entries in my journal, too tired to write. I had hoped to keep this journal in real time, but found it hard to drive and blog at the same time. Perhaps we should have hired a driver, or paid for escorted transfers between hotels. Rather we preferred the freedom from other people’s schedules, not to be hurried when we wanted to linger (even if foolhardy) and to be able to skip faster at other times.

This morning, we lingered. We had to wait for a replacement car to come from San Jose to replace the rental car which turned out to have a dead battery. I lingered over coffee and sat on the hotel veranda looking out at the clouds and the rain forest. The temperature was cool and refreshing after the hot jungles of Arenal. We lingered for what seemed like ages — until 9:30 AM. At last, the driver arrived and we switched vehicles.

Travelogue – Monkeys At Last

February 29, 2016July 7, 2012 by Seth Rowland

Sweet Nectar For Some – Sugar Water for Others

We awoke in the mist at 5:30 and put on a pot of Cafe Britt coffee. We were leaving on a 6:00 am bird watching tour. Guess what? It was raining again, a cool wet rain and mist that you can feel in your bones, in your clothes, and everywhere. Our perky young guide warned us that the birds didn’t like to fly in the rain, but she was nevertheless hopeful. I knew why. She had stacked the deck.

Travelogue – Into the Cloud Forest

May 28, 2015July 7, 2012 by Seth Rowland

Every road seems to come back to the Pan American Highway eventually. Our trip from Flamingo Beach to Villa Blanca Cloud Reserve and Hotel was no different. We checked out early, as the drive was over 4 hours. We decided to take it straight with no stops.

Not All Costa Rican Food Is Good

We stopped for fresh pipas frio (cold coconut) and were on our way. The road was fairly straight, going through meadows and pastures where the real costa Ricans work. At one turn in the road we saw a line of tables by the side of the highway with baked goods. The patrons appeared to be of darker skin, likely native indians (indigininos). While I filled up with gas for the push into the mountains, Rose purchased a sampling of bread and pastries.

Travelogue – The Equatorial Beach is not for Everyone, particularly the fair of skin

October 22, 2016July 6, 2012 by Seth Rowland

As resorts go, Flaming Beach Resort and Spa was beautiful. It had the large pool, the pool bar, the spacious rooms with balconies and the long sand beach with views of the Catalina Islands. It was the type of resort you would expect in the Carribean, although we were on the Pacific Ocean. There were palm trees and coconut trees (we have fresh pipas from the tree picked by a local man who climbed the tree and knocked it down for us).

Breakfast continued to include fresh fruit, to which was added bread baked on premises and a new twist — an omelette station – Yum

Travelogue – The Wild Pumas En Route to Flamingo Beach

May 28, 2015July 6, 2012 by Seth Rowland

From Roots to Sculpture

It was time to depart Arenal. It was 4 1/2 hours to our next Hotel. We did not know the condition of the roads (turned out to be more Costa Rican highway – well paved 2 lane roads with narrow or non-existent shoulders). The route to Flamingo Beach is amusing, since there is essentially one road with few choices to turn off. And so, you see signs for “tourist traps” many miles before they emerge whetting your appetite and inspiring you to pull off the road and part with your dollars and collones. One such place was aptly named “Toad Hall”. I pictured the “frog” in the Wind in the Willows driving his car down the open road. It was really a small hotel, cafe and gift shop on a steep hill overlooking Lake Arenal. We had the coffee (so so) and some Yucca chips (delicious). No toads in site.

Travelogue – Suspended Mid-Air between Clouds and Treetops (Final)

May 28, 2015July 6, 2012 by Seth Rowland

What Goes Up Must Come Down

Morning began with another cup of perfect coffee and ripe fruit: bananas, papaya, pineapple and watermelon. We woke up earlier than planned and decided to catch the 7:30 am tour through the canopy at Arenal EcoGlide. Rose checked out TripAdvisor to check whether the place was safe. When you are suspended 200 feet above the ground in a harness attached to a thin wire and travelling at 15 km/hr, you want to be safe.

One would think that “canopy tours” we saw everywhere were about nature and exploring wildlife among the tree-tops. That was the furthest thing from the truth. Yes, you were in the tree-tops, and yes it was beautiful up there, but there was NOT a word about nature on the tour. Rather, there were words about safety, how to hold your hands, how to lean back and cross your legs, and mostly, how to brake with your gloved hand.

Travelogue – Thar She Blows

May 28, 2015July 3, 2012 by Seth Rowland

Sleeping at the base of an active volcano would seem to be a hair- raising experience only for the foolhardy and strong of heart. After spending three days at Arenal Volcano i can safely say it is certainly one for the strong of heart. In this place only the fit survive. Every walk, even the short walk involves a steep climb or even a precipitous descent. What leads down (and most interesting paths to visit waterfalls do) must eventually lead back up. After 3 days, we certainly felt it.

And so, we came to appreciate the agua calientes or hot springs at our hotel. Behind the dining hall, previously pictured, there are a series of pools, descending from the mountain in decreasing temperature. As you climbed through a lush garden path there were semi-private pools of hit mineral water. The temperature decreases as the water exits from the hottest point on the top and descends to the next pool. The final pool is the coolest, followed by a clear water pool for swimming.

Travelogue – En Route to Arena – The Search for perfect cup of Java (Final)

May 27, 2015July 3, 2012 by Seth Rowland

We touched down in El Salvador at 7:30 AM on Saturday morning. The flight, despite the auspicious beginning (lines at 2 AM in JFK), was pleasant and uneventful, except for one thing … the early morning cup of coffee. I never dreamed that coffee could be SO BAD! The airline coffee, which is usually mediocre at best, was actually toxic. One would expect a little jolt, but the TACA Airlines (note the Central American origin) coffee, after an initial sip was left un-drunk. Rose nearly spit the coffee out on her lap, gasping for air. The omelets were tasty, but that coffee. …

ActionStep – First Looks

May 28, 2015June 22, 2012 by Seth Rowland

In the past few years there have been a number of entrants into the area of Cloud-based practice management. These companies offer the promise of practice management Nirvana — run your practice on any device, from anywhere with no software installation, no server, and even no network. ActionStep, which has an installed base in New Zealand and Australia, has adapted its practice management system for the U.S. law market. I am going through their training curriculum this summer and will be releasing a formal review on TechnoLawyer’s SmallLaw newsletter in September. For now, here are a few highlights.

HotDocs-Amicus Master Component Eases Integration

November 13, 2016June 19, 2012 by Seth Rowland

At the last Amicus Consultant’s Conference I demonstrated some innovative ways of improving the way HotDocs and Amicus interact. A recent post on the LinkedIn user’s group, Amicus Wizards, has prompted me to post some pictures from that demo. The question was asked why is the HotDocs interview generated automatically by Amicus so long with so many dialogs. The answer is that the automatically generated interview DOES NOT HAVE any dialogs, it is merely a list of variables that are used in the template in the order that they appear in the document.