Justin Germino Ramblings

I was reading on another blogger’s site this morning I do apologize for not linking back, but I forgot the blog who posted this.  If you do read this and know I am referring to you, please contact me and I will link back to you.

She was blogging about being very pregnant and having to take her van into the shop, where she had to carry car seats, diaper bags and tons of stuff out of her van.  Nobody in the shop offered to help her, some twenty guys just stood there and watched.

This reminds me of what has degraded in human society over the years, studies have shown that babies and toddlers have altruism built in as instinct.  If you drop something in front of a 2 year old, he will automatically come over and pick it up and hand it back to you.  They are hard wired to help and primates like Chimpanzee’s have this same altruistic ability.

It is only through culture, society and being taught that this instinct seems to be pounded into non-existence.  Humans are supposed to be hardwired to help people, only culture undoes that fundamental instinct.  I take my two boys ages 5 and 2 for walks all the time in my community and I lead by example when it comes to helping people.  My five year old now whenever we go to restaurants asks if he can open an hold the door for us, in fact he rushes ahead just to open and hold doors for us and people.  This is because he always see’s me hold doors open for people.

When I was walking past a pregnant woman in my street unloading a computer monitor from her trunk, I offered my assistance.  She turned it down, but I still offered because it was the right thing to do.  The same goes for in the morning when I saw a guy with his truck stuck in the common area, I offered to come over and help push his truck out.  He informed me he already called towing and thanked me for offering, my sons see me do this and I hope they grow up to be those kind of people.

Remember how previously I said before bed I think back on 2 or 3 good events that happened in my life that day.  I always think back fondly on whenever I offered my assistance to help others, whether it was accepted or not, I stood up and didn’t just ignore and walk on by.  The next time you see somebody with a flat tire on the side of the road, and nobody is helping them.  Or you see someone who looks like they could use a hand, don’t turn the other cheek and ignore it.  Give in to your inner altruism, help people for the sake of helping people.  What is 5 minutes out of your day just to give a hand?

-Justin Germino

I went out to eat at Eva’s Mexican Restaurant tonight as this week is their official Grand Opening, even though they have been open for a couple of months.  Eva’s is located on the cross-streets of Pinal Avenue and Kortsen Blvd coming off of Exit 185 on the I-10 in Casa Grande, Arizona.

I had been to Eva’s one time previously and thought the food was very good, in fact Eva’s is my favorite Mexican Restaurant in Casa Grande beating out Macayo’s, Cafe De Manuel, Christina’s among others.  The building itself is completely brand new and modeled very well, it is a spanish tile plaza where they were hosting a Halloween event with a 20 minute scare maze and everything.  We didn’t pay the extra cover and participate in the Halloween activities, but tonight kids eat free if they went to dinner dressed up in their costumes.  So my oldest went in his Spiderman costume and my youngest went in his spider pajama’s.

Tonight the food was exceptional I had a Taco, Cheese Enchilada and Green Corn Tamale combo, and the Cheese Enchilada’s are some of the best I have ever tasted.  The green corn tamale was very good but I do like Manuel’s Green Corn Tamale’s better in Tempe.  The Taco was great as their shells are very thin and crispy and you don’t taste too much corn flavor with the meat.

The kids liked their Rice, Beans and Chicken Tenders which were very good and not too greasy.  The salsa that comes with the chips is excellent being very mild (I don’t handle spicy well anymore) and the bean dip was good, but was a bit thin and watery and very salty.

The side items such as rice and beans were also very good, the Charro beans were outstanding.  These are whole pinto beans covered in cheese and seasonings and were just delicious.

The food was great, but alas the service was horrible tonight.  It took 11 minutes after we sat before a waiter came up to our table and take our drink and food order.  The original waiter never showed up at our table at all, we waited for a long time for the entree’s and nobody ever came to re-fill my iced tea.  We also waited 8 minutes after we were all finished with our entree’s and nobody came to ask us if we wanted Desert.  I asked one of the passing hostesses to speak with the Manager.

The manager came by and apologized and threw in an order of Sopapilla’s and said she would have our drinks refilled immediately.  I thought the service would be remedied but 16 more minute elapsed, and still no re-fill on any drinks and no Sopapilla’s came out.  I grabbed a hostess and told her to just get our bill that this was rediculous.

The same manager returned again, apologized again and said the entire meal was on the house for our poor service.  The send us away with a togo order of Sopapilla’s and apologized all the way as we were out the door.   Now the food was exceptional, the best in Casa Grande, but the service was lacking.  The manager did a very good job of compensating us for bad service and entice me to come back.

So I did endure service that made a 45 minute meal take almost 2 hours, but I got a $50 free meal out of it, so as my wife told me this evening.  I can be bought, great food and a manager who wants to put things right do sometimes make up for one night of poor service.  As mentioned I had eaten here before and the service was fine, so I chock it up to a bad night.

I still highly recommend eating at Eva’s Mexican Food if you are driving through Casa Grande or you live here.  The food is great, and if your service isn’t up to snuff, go ahead and let the manager know right away so they can put things right.

-Justin Germino

As my wife is a trained chef and I love cuisine of all types one of the things we had in common very early on was how much we enjoyed dining out together. Dining out and sampling cuisine in Arizona and all over the country was one of our favorite past times and still is. Arizona has some of the greatest restaurants in the nation and has hundreds of original cutting edge fusion places cropping up every year in Scottsdale, Chandler, Phoenix or Mesa.

Before we had children we had a formal date night at least every other week or month and it involved us dressing up, though I never was so formal I had to think about wearing tuxedos. I usually wear long sleeve button shirt, slacks and sometimes a tie and coat. My wife would always wear the most beautiful dresses that would sparkle, glimmer or just radiate her beauty.

Italian Dining is some of our favorite, but we just as often love Asian Fusion, French, or a great Steak and Seafood place. My point to this little post is to try and make time for your relationship that is outside of your normal day to day lives. If you work five or six days a week, and your wife is home taking care of the kids, ask a family member or babysitter or friend once a month at least (try for once every paycheck) to carve out some time for yourselves.

A romantic dinner with some wine and maybe a movie or even just going out and seeing one of her favorite bands play or even just a local musician, whether it be jazz, rock, country there is always live music playing in the valley. Take some time out to enjoy each others presence and just connect again.

That is one of my philosophies, and I try to live by it when I can.

-Justin Germino

I have always liked carving pumpkins, and I am not a master artist. I don’t use templates I try to freehand and use raw creativity. My wife and son do their pumpkins and last year I created my “gory” pumpkin which was one of my most creative ever. I used almost a whole box of staples for this bad boy.

Taking a picture of him at night you can’t see his stapled eye or head, so I included the above photo showing how he looks close up in full daylight. I stuffed a whole string of red xmas lights inside his body, and then the night time photo gave a great effect of it looking gory.

I don’t know if I am going to do a pumpkin this year, though my son and wife are doing one tomorrow. I didn’t buy one for myself this year, though I wanted to do a “Pin Head” pumpkin with lines on his face and big flat head nails covering his entire face, I was worried the neighborhood kids would pull out the nails and I would have nothing but flat tires for Halloween this year.

So, let me see your best and most fun carved pumpkins. Share your pumpkin carvings with me, and post some pics everyone.

-Justin Germino

Tomorrow India launches a moon exploration satellite which will take some of the most detailed and advanced pictures of the surface of our lunar neighbor.  NASA has two instruments aboard the indian craft but this brings to question why other nations have grander plans and more funding for lunar and further space exploration while the United States has taken a back seat.  A space shuttle that has been retired with a replacement no where near completion, and with the hope of sending another manned mission around the year 2020 does not constitute ever regaining our forefront of being a major player in the Final Frontier.

I applaud India, Japan and China for investing so much money, time and technology into the Space Age.  undoubtedly our future lies with the colonization of the Moon and Mars, and a sustainable set of bases that can harvest and create their own oxygen and food supplies.  Technology advances when science and research is properly funded and rewarded and the United States is going to lose ground to the rest of the world very rapidly if we don’t re-prioritize our efforts into Science and Technology.

If Barack Obama is the new president I would hope he puts as much priority into helping keep the United States at the forefront of Technology and Space Exploration, restore NASA’s funding as it should be and set new goals for our great nation.  Our nation needs goals that everyone can believe in and work toward as a nation, we need to stop being such a self centered society and look to the greater good of mankind and the future of our species, not just ourselves.

As I have often said in a perfect world the entire human population will join to a single common goal of exploration, learning and discovery.  People would only work doing what they want to do, and money, poverty and hunger will be things of the past.

-Justin Germino

So my wife who runs Rock Along Productions received two free tickets to see a show last night at Club Red where 9 bands were playing across two stages.  Bomber was the band we knew and had done a show with them in the past.  I saw Dagger, Impulse Aggression, Jack Ripper and several I can’t remember the name of.

By far the most impressive of all of the bands was Jack Ripper, I am going to write a post about it on Rock Along Productions website shortly.  This band is centered around a kid prodigal guitarist who is so amazing, the band plays some covers and some original material but this young kid can shred a guitar as any master electric guitarist I have ever seen.

We left before LA Guns came on to pay a visit to Hollywood Alley to check out the band Daughters of Fission who will be playing in our November 22nd show.  This band is also very good and mixes keyboard instrumentals with a metal sound.  The most unusual thing is the drummer is the lead singer and it is amazing how he can keep his voice steady while being so active and physical on the drums at the same time.  It takes real talent in my opinion to be able to do that.

-Justin Germino

I have written one of the most detailed posts about how bloggers can use and leverage Twitter, but this post is also about how anyone can use twitter as a social networking tool. I really have become a Twitter advocate and addict over the past week and keep it up almost constantly.

I use it to find more readers for my blog as well as building a network of people who talk about the same topics I usually discuss, like searching for Poetry and following people who write poetry blogging, or talk about NBC Heroes…etc

Go ahead and read Dragon Bloggers Twitter Guide and start getting the most out of Twitter today.

-Justin Germino

We all know that everyone is talking green and conserving energy as of late, you have heard people talk about carpool, setting your heat up a few degrees or thermostat down…etc. Saving energy is reducing damage to the environment and conserving the nations resources.

But one of the simplest and most effective ways to to save energy and reduce emissions, waste and even lower your own electricity bill is to look at your home lighting. Replace every incandescent bulb in your house with a miniature compact florescent bulb. You can get them very cheap at Walmart and the Big Lots here in Arizona has them for 88 cents a bulb. They last for 4-7 years on average for a single bulb and they cut your wattage use by 50-75% in many cases.

I have replaced every dead incandescent with a compact florescent as they die, my outdoor lights which I leave on all night are compact florescent. This one little tactic if you replace every bulb in your house might actually lower your utility bill by $5-$10 dollars per month, depending on how often you leave the lights on and how many lights you have. So really the bulbs pay for themselves very quickly.

You are also helping the environment tremendously by reducing the power requirements. Now one person makes a small dent, but if 1,000 people all changed 30 bulbs from 100 watt bulbs to 40 watt compact florescent bulbs, you are looking at a net savings of 1.8 million watts of electricity.

I know some people complain about the lighting not looking real, or the flicker effect bothering them. They do have “natural” lighting compact florescent with slightly yellow or orange tinges to help offset that. In my opinion congress should implement a program to swap out incandescent for compact florescent for free. The industry should not be able to make incandescent bulbs anymore, the country could save almost enough power to power a state if everyone just switched to compact florescent bulbs.

-Justin Germino

You know its funny, almost every single store has to have some sort of retail pos systems. These systems are necessary for the restaurant industry. There is a whole field out there of people who sell, service, install and configure POS systems, which happens to be one area where I don’t have very much experience in at all.

A POS system (POS standing for Point of Sale) is a specialized computer/payment processing system which is geared toward the specific industry you are targeting. This system can keep track of all of your merchandise, scan it, price it, print bills…etc, or it can be used as in the restaurant industry to take orders, print up tickets for the kitchen, print your bill and process your payment. They can be very complicated and high end, or very simplistic and single purposed.

My wife has worked with POS systems much more than I have and she probably could talk about them better and describe the ones she has worked with in the restaurant industry. I just know that they are necessary and they make running a business more efficient.

-Justin Germino

I work from my house since I telecommute and spend 12 hours a day on average in my home office, most of it sitting on my keister. One of the most dreaded things I used to get was fatigue and soreness in my neck, eyes, back and thighs. This was because nothing I had setup was ergonomic and designed to keep my body at the most efficient and relaxing position.

Ergonomics can help reduce your fatigue, body stress and keep you more focused, it is especially important for people who have back and neck problems and have to see a Chiropractor often.

Make sure your computer desks are at a proper height, not too low, and not too high. You arms when resting on the desks should be just below shoulder level, about level with your upper chest.

Make sure your monitor is positioned so you are slightly looking straight ahead and up. Never have your head tilted down to look into your monitor, this is not proper position for your neck. You have to have the slight arch in your neck head slightly tilted up but not very much. Use a monitor stand, or if you have an LCD monitor most of them will adjust.

Make sure your chair is comfortable and sturdy, the chair is the most important. Don’t get a cheap foam chair, mine is completely mesh back and bottom to allow air flow and prevent discomfort from your body heat building up in your lower back and rump for too long.

Take breaks often, 5-10 minutes every hour or two, walk around to get a drink, or just walk to pump some blood. If you work from home as I do, I often will take a break and just do pushups or crunches just to burn some energy from sitting the last few hours.

-Justin Germino