After going with some friends and coworkers to NY NY Hotel and having some drinks and playing video poker, we arrived back at The Venetian via taxi just before one in the morning. Only to have my alarm abruptly wake me up at six AM to get my suitcases loaded and dragged to the airport. My wife and I arrived at the airport in plenty of time to make our 8:20am flight and had a little debacle at Starbucks. The first issue is they only serve cold bagels, and have no toaster in the Las Vegas airport Starbucks and the other issue is that my wife ordered a coffee and three times and three attempts there were tons of coffee grounds floating in the coffee which made it non potable.

I spoke to the manager and had our bill refunded and we wound up getting the bagel and coffee at another station. My stomach was feeling a bit sick from the food and drink last night, so I tried to take it easy and just relax and rest on the plane. It is a very short flight being barely an hour from Las Vegas to Phoenix, so I barely had time to boot up my laptop and write up this blog post.

Overall the trip was very good this year, the show could have had more attendance but economic times are tough and companies can’t spend the travel money that they could in previous shows. My own presentation went much better than expected and I am proud that I have done it and come off so strong and represented my company and my own expertise well.

Couldn’t have asked for a more successful CA World this year.

-Justin Germino

Today was my presentation and in fact I write this post just three hours after my presentation was completed and over with.  I had felt a boulder growing in my stomach all week and I barely could swallow as people filled the room, there was a total of nearly fifty people in the room.  I was introduced by a Computer Associates speaker and as I walked up to the front of the presentation I peered over the crowd and my mind became steady.

I just started speaking and speaking and speaking, it was as if I pressed play on a DVD player and I just spoke and went through my material with the precision of a well oiled machine.  I spoke at an appropriate pace, I allowed questions and answered almost a dozen during the presentation and I actually filled up my one hour presentation so quickly that I barely got through all of my material.  I did manage to though and all of it was presented as good as I could have presented it.

When the presentation was ended nearly fifteen people came over to ask further questions and swap business cards, I had emails and pages from people over the next hour telling me that my presentation was one of the best ones they have seen all week and in fact the last two years at CA World some have said.  My topic was very technical which was what this event had been lacking previously.

My boss was very pleased and there were only two constructive criticisms from my presentation which I will take with me and learn from.  The first is when people ask questions, I had forgotten to repeat or adlib the question loud enough for the rest of the audience to hear.  The second was I spent too much time looking at one half of the room and did not equalize my attention to both sides of the room enough.  This was due to me having to stand on the left side of the room so the projector wouldn’t be blocked by my body, but was duly noted.

I am now very relieved and feel I have crossed another milestone in my career and that is being a presenter at a major trade show.  My life experience is richer as a result, and even though I stressed, vomited, worried and was miserable for the previous days I am glad that I have done this.  I represented myself well, my knowledge well and I represented my company well.

Thanks for all your encouraging words and support to my blog fans and my twitter friends.

-Justin Germino

This day wasn’t nearly as much to report as my anxiety and stress about my upcoming presentation have driven me to being sick to my stomach the whole day.  I fight back waves of vomiting while attending conference sessions, and I actually had to break to my hotel room to finally throw up several times due to my stress and anxiety finally overwhelming my poor aching stomach.

I now feel very tired and lethargic and can’t keep much down, the odd thing is I don’t feel worried on a conscious level, to me I am trying to treat it like any other conference call except in a room with people.  I know what to say I know what to talk about, I shouldn’t be stressed, yet my body begs to differ and I cannot escape this agony and pit of pain swelling within my stomach.

I will be sure to let everyone know how the presentation goes later today and I will give everyone an update.  I am estimating the turnout to be about 40-50 at the presentation today at 11am.  Wish me luck my friends, I am going to need it.

-Justin Germino

Today was Monday and the official general public kickoff of CA World I spend the majority of the day bouncing back and forth between sessions and listening to Computer Associates speakers present the various products and general pitching of industry trends…etc  I have a user group meeting for the PLC at 5:15 and had we had a good meeting speaking with British Telecom and discussing our leveraging CA products and what features we would like to see embedded in future versions.

On the personal front we did a little roulette, but it was a bad day at the tables so my wife didn’t want to play much anymore, wanted to save some money for a spa day instead.  I don’t blame her, have a spa day is more fun than losing in the casino.  I was scoping out the room where I will be giving my presentation on Wednesday, and see it has seating for 80 and a large projection screen in the middle.  I felt that twisted knot ball up in my stomach as I started to feel a little anxiety and stress that I will actually be giving a speech to what could be dozens of my peers in the industry.

We are probably going to walk over to Harrah’s casino tonight and eat at the buffet, since there is no buffet at The Venetian it will also save some money as we have been spending a lot at the Restaurants here the past few nights.

-Justin Germino

So I had flown into Las Vegas on Friday and attended the pre-conference Education and CARE meetings for CA World on Saturday and Sunday.  Today is when the official CA World kicks off and for those of you who don’t know CA (Computer Associates) puts together this trade show every 18 months to bring together training, education seminars and networking for information technology engineers and managers alike.  It is a fairly large event and usually over 10,000 people attend the event.

I will be speaking on Wednesday at 11am and giving a detailed overview of how we leverage CA SiteMinder Web Access Manager in our company.  We do make very extensive use of the product and push it to the extremes in terms of functionality and what the product can do and support so we make a good case study.

I have to say the Venetian Hotel which I have been staying at has some nice suites, the room we are staying in has 2 queen beds, 3 LCD tv’s, one in the bed area, one in the living room area with couch and office desk.  And one in the bathroom so you can watch TV while you take a bath or get ready…etc.

I usually leave CNN turned on 24×7 when I am in my hotel roomas I like to stay up on current events and hear the latest news with the economy and world.  I am trying to get blogging done in the early morning and at nights before and after my conference sessions.  I will be focused on attending seminars that pertain to Identity and Access Management and Web Security as that is my expertise.

-Justin Germino

My wife actually happened to grab this movie off of the shelf as it looked like a funny road trip movie.  I happen to like romantic comedies and the premise was interesting.  The story involves a young soon to be lawyer working for a major company who accidentally stumbles into the company president in an elevator.  The company president played by Rutger Hauer (BladeRunner, LadyHawke) hires the young lawyer to be Rick (played by Ben Gourley) to transport a crate and his daughter from Florida to California.

Rick must make the trip in five days or he will miss his bar exam, what he didn’t count on was the CEO’s daughter Michelle (played by Mila Kunis) was a wild one.  She is completely ruleless, and does everything possible to delay his trip, not because she is mean or malicious but because she is a wild spirit and wants to experience life along the way.

Jon Heder has a funny cameo as Orlie a Native American Spirit trapped in a White Mans Body.  He tags along for the road trip to reach his destination where his is supposed to meet his spirit in a Native Americans Body.  Naturally there are various hi-jinx, break downs, fights, delays along the way.

The real nice part of the film is seeing the change for Rick as he starts off the film only caring about being the next partner at the firm and big shot lawyer, and gradually start to realize that love and passion are more important than simple career goals.  He starts to fall deep for Michelle over the several days they spend together.

By the end of the film he chooses to pursue love with McCallister’s daughter and in doing so we learn that Mr. McCallister was planning that outcome all along and was hoping for it.  This was kind of a fun twist to the film and you realize the whole trip was kind of a test.  How Mr. McCallister would know his daughter would fall for Rick is unknown and not explained, but the film simply worked.

It was a cute romantic film that also mixed a coming of age / realizing whats important in life film.  For a movie that went straight to DVD it was a pleasant watch in my opinion.

-Justin Germino

I will be attending the Rock Along Productions “The Age of Rock” show on Saturday November 22nd at Crabby Dons in Gilbert, Arizona.  This excellent show features two of my favorite local Arizona rock bands, Razer and Daughters of Fission.  They are joined with Big Mouth Mason as well as special guest Opus Dai who is coming in from California to play the show.

All four bands and almost four hours of live music for only $7 at the door, in addition the first 100 people get fully signed posters by Opus Dai.  I will be hoping to see some of my twitter and blogger friends there, and be sure to say hi and how you came to find out about the show.

Here is full details and poster for the show:

-Justin Germino

This is another addition to my series on Romantic Idea’s that I have either done or thought of over the years.  Lets face it, if you have been with your partner for many years you want to do little touches to keep the passion and romance alive.  These idea’s and tips are designed to have minimal cost and maximum impact in showing the person you love how much you care for them.

Flowers are something that every woman loves and likes to receive, and if you want to save some money instead of paying for a floral arrangement, build one yourself for a fraction of the cost.  Go to your local grocery store whether it be Fry’s, Safeway or even Walmart, and buy 1 dozen roses, 1/2 dozen carnations, and some Baby’s Breath.  Now, dark velvet red roses and baby’s breath are a classic and don’t need carnations but don’t always get red flowers.  Use flowers to express your moods, even get some mixed colors like white, yellow and pink roses.

Create your own Vase, or better yet, create 3 small vases of 4 - 6 flowers each.  Put one by the side of your partners bed, the other in the kitchen and another near her bathroom sink or bathtub.  Honestly I can put these type of floral arrangements together for around $30-$40 dollars, which would normally be over $150 if you bought at a floral shop.

Vary things up a little bit as well, sometimes having a floral arrangement delivered to your spouse at work or home can add flare.  I hear people like when they get a floral arrangement in front of their coworkers, the attention triggers more affection and appreciation.  If you make the floral arrangement yourself, you can ask a neighorhood kid to deliver it for you or have a friend deliver it for you while you are at work.

Hope this helps and remember, keep the romance alive people.

-Justin Germino

Saw this video about The Sproutwells and was thinking that I myself am a techi-holic being the fact that my day job is working web site security software, and my night job is running four blog sites.

In seeing this video I learned something completely new about a product I already buy. I often buy prepackaged Fresh Express Salads and I often buy Chiquita brand products. I noticed now that there are freshfunds points on the back of these packages now, and you can go to the website and enter the codes and start collecting these points. When you accumulate enough points you can bid on prizes that get auctioned with accumulated points. For example at the time of this writing the current auction is an Elliptical Escape and Unwind, and the highest bidder has bid 4200 points so far. The auction ends on Sunday 11/16.

But upcoming auctions include an Apple MacBook, Nintendo Wii Fit and a Weekend Trip to Napa Valley which would be what I am going to bid on.

So if you already buy healthy salads and salad packs, why not get rewarded for eating healthy.  Collect the freshfunds points and register on FreshFunds.com where you could save up those points and bid them toward a prize package in the near future.

This site is finally listed on the BlogNetAwards and is listed in the Best Diarist category.  I am so pleased to be part of this website, now all four of my blogs are listed on BlogNetAwards in various categories.  I have the following blogs listed and their respective categories:

Dragon Blogger - Best Technology Blog

Justin Germino - Best Diarist Blog

Wanderer Thoughts - Best Poetry Blog

Rock Along Productions - Best Music Blog

To all my fans and followers, if you like my blogs take some time to vote for me and let others know what you think of my blogs.  If you are a blogger or even a fan of another blog I encourage you to vote for them, or if they aren’t listed nominate your favorite blog on BlogNetAwards, you get an entry for commenting and voting as well as nominating, you could win up to $250 dollars prize for commenting, voting and/or submitting a blog.  I won $250 in October just for commenting and doing some voting, it turned out to be $195 USD after PayPal took out a Canadian -> US dollar conversion fee and such, but was so great to be paid just for commenting and voting.

Thanks to everyone who continues to encourage and inspire me to be the best blogger, poet, and contributor the blog community that I can be.

-Justin Germino