Justin Germino Ramblings

Life Ramblings spewed forth a whole set of blog awards for me this morning, I was pleasantly surprised and very appreciative.  I have received some of these on my tech blog before, but some of these awards I have never seen.  I had thought about passing these awards on, but it would seem that everyone I know has already received most if not all of these awards already.  I also found that I annoyed people when passing on awards after they just did an awards post a few posts earlier, so I will just keep these to myself and just say that there are many great bloggers out there.

Damien Riley who helped me create my first blog and continues to help me invent new tactics and techniques with blogging would be the primary person to deserve all these awards in one shot from me.

-Justin Germino

Here is the award list:

Back in last May when I bought my wife a new laptop for Mother’s Day, it barely functioned with Windows Vista preloaded. The laptop only had 1gb of RAM and Vista was so sluggish that my wife agreed to try Ubuntu Hardy Heron as an alternative. She learned the new operating system, adapted to Open Office from MS Office and uses Thunderbird and Firefox as her primary browsers. I had most of her programs working with WINE or found the Open Source equivalents on Ubuntu.

But recent problems with visiting certain web sites and the lack of ability to play certain flash and active X stuff is having us consider re-imaging the laptop back to Windows Vista. If I do this I am going to have to purchase more notebook memory at least another gig of ram should suffice.

In the meantime I can’t figure out why she can’t hit MercedesBenz.com from Ubuntu Firefox, it just locks up loading, it works fine on my Windows Firefox, IE and Chrome. I think it is some sort of servlet or something that just wont render right. I know it is flash based, so maybe I am missing a flash plugin or something. I will troubleshoot and if I can fix it, maybe we won’t have to re-image the laptop after all.

-Justin Germino

• Update 12/30/2008

I fixed the flash problem with Firefox 3.x on Ubuntu Hardy Heron, I had to redownload and update the libflash-mozplugin from the Ubuntu archives which resolved my issue.

These instructions worked for me:

1. sudo apt-get install libflash-mozplugin
2. restart firefox

I work with my wife on her Music Production Company called Rock Along Productions.  The company is just kicking off and has its third show planned on February 7th 2009 in Mesa, Arizona.  She has decided to branch the company out to also put together events and functions for companies, private parties, school events, special interest groups…etc.  Basically her company finds the talent you are looking for and arranges sound, talent, times, and puts together the show that you want for your company or party.  It saves you time and effort from having to coordinate all of that yourself and in the end you wind up saving money because we can negotiate deals and rates with sound companies and bands we have worked with before.

Meanwhile, I am the graphic design, company blog, web site designer and help do some promotion.  I have been busy working on the poster for the new show, index card which give $1 off if you show up with them at the door, as well as advertising medium which will be sent out via mail to companies soon.

I have been drawing and designing several of these in Paint.NET and will be posting some of it soon.  If you want to take a look at my latest poster check out Rock Along Productions website, the poster is on the main page.

-Justin Germino

As I enter 2009 one of my primary goals is to gain better control of my finances, one way I am going to accomplish this is when the lease on my 2006 Chrysler Pacifica comes up I intend to turn it in and go several months without a 2nd car payment for a while. This way I can save the six hundred dollars per month I spend on my Pacifica Lease and use it to pay off some other bills and play catchup for a brand new refrigerator I had to buy the week of Christmas.

When I am ready for a 2nd car again I don’t know if I will lease a new car or purchase an older model outright something less than seven thousand dollars I would be looking for, on the one hand a new car means full warranty, usually no car trouble, peace of mind and better gas mileage. On the other hand, it means I would have a monthly car payment, instead of a fully paid off car. I have always had new cars and leased vehicles for the last ten years, I have never known what it was like to have a fully paid off car with no monthly payment, so I am curious if saving the money would it be lost in car maintenance?

While I ponder that over the first few months of the year I think that if I don’t get a 2nd car, at least I won’t be needing another car insurance quote for a while.

-Justin Germino

My Christmas Day was a great memory this year and started at 5:40 in the morning when my two year old woke up.  We had decided to wait until the grandparents came over at 7am to go downstairs and see the presents, so I kept the baby on my lap and did a little blogging work.  Then my five year old woke up at 6:20am and I knew I could keep the kids upstairs only a short time longer, we woke mom up and laid in bed with the kids drinking milk and watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on TV.  I called our parents up and asked them to come over as soon as possible and they arrived just fifteen minutes later.

I had the Video camera rolling to record the kids excitement when they saw and opened their presents and I could barely hide my own inner child as I got to see and play with all the cool toys and games that my kids received this year.  My favorite memories indeed revolve around the whole family just coming together and enjoying each others company while the kids are in pure bliss.  Was a very good Christmas this year, and only the rain prevented the kids from using their Power Wheels Jeep outside.

They had plenty to keep them busy inside though as the oldest received action figures, clay, a lightsaber, 2 board games and a bunch of Planet Heroes stuff.  The baby got the #1 item this year, the Spike The Ultrasaurus which astounded the entire family.  We all had to take turns playing with it, it is the most amazing remote controlled dinosaur and full of fun and surprises.  Our two year old loves pressing the remote but is scared to get up close to it (it is bigger than him) but he loves laughing as it roars, sniffs, and chuckles.

I hope everyone made some good Christmas Memories this year and I would like to hear about them.

-Justin Germino

As I was looking forward to seeing the smiles on my children’s faces as they unwrap their presents from Santa Clause today I wanted to tell all of my readers and friends that I hope everyone has a special holiday season this year.  I have made so many friends and gotten to know so many fellow bloggers and I hope each of you has something you wanted under your tree for you this very day.  Make sure you take some time out for your family and friends if you can.  I know some of you may have to work on Christmas Day and if thats the case at least you can be happy you are still working right?

Each and everyone celebrates Christmas or the Holiday’s differently and there are so many wonderful traditions out there, one of the ones we do in my family is allow all gifts from the grandparents to be opened by the kids on Christmas Eve, as well as the adults exchanging and opening gifts.  We save Christmas Morning so we can focus solely on the kids opening their gifts from Santa Clause, I usually film the event with my JVC Everio Digital Camera and make a Holiday DVD for future years.

I have no idea what I will get this Christmas and was hoping for a Hellboy 2 or Iron Man DVD, so maybe I just might have some cool entertainment to watch tonight (not like I haven’t seen them before, but I am always willing to watch again.)

Merry Christmas to all.

-Justin Germino

My bad luck from yesterday spilled over to today a little bit as after my fridge was installed this morning the family took a trip to Chandler to pick up our Honey Baked Ham.  I had to stop at my office to get mail and send some mail and when I arrived at my desk I see that the ceiling is nearly collapsed and there is a puddle of water all over my desk equipment, floor, and wall.  The ceiling must have leaked from last nights store, so on my day off of work I had to get in touch with building maintenance and the security guard downstairs and show him the damage over my work area.

It is a good thing I telecommute as I am sure the amount of water damage is going to require the wall and ceiling to be ripped open, I think it will probably take at least two weeks to fix in my opinion.  Ah well, at least I caught it before it had worsened, nobody was in the office and this leak would probably have gone unnoticed for another few days had I not caught it.

Was nice spending the day with the family nobody has to work in my house the rest of the week and we can just enjoy the holidays, I am looking forward to Christmas Eve tomorrow with my in-laws coming over for dinner.  Wife is making Spaghetti Pie (really really good) and we have Shrimp Cocktail bought fresh from AJ’s as appetizer with a fruit covered angel food cake for dessert.

Merry Christmas Eve my friends,

Justin Germino

Today was a case of the Monday’s if you ever had one, and to happen the same week as Christmas is just bitter irony.  It all started when my refrigerator’s A/C Compressor died sometime yesterday unnoticed and all my freezer items were thawed and ruined.  I had to purchase a new fridge this morning from Lowes, which will be delivered tomorrow morning.  As if that wasn’t enough my oldest son got sick and vomited on our carpet which we had to vacuum and shampoo the carpet twice.  In addition to that on the home front, I joined a business meeting where the primary customer we were waiting for never showed up for the call.

On the positive note, we get a new refrigerator and it’s a nice Whirlpool one that has stainless steel door’s, we have had the same Amana fridge for about 8 years and never really had too much trouble with it until last night.  The other positive note is that my son does not appear to have a stomach bug, was a one time puke thing and he was acting fine the rest of the day and even held some noodles and plain pasta down later on.

Tomorrow is going to be busy.

-Justin Germino

This is my time to share some link love with my top droppers over the past 30 days,thank you my 10 top droppers for the past month. Some of you made the same list as my top droppers for dragonblogger.com and others are my top droppers for this site only. Again, anyone in my top droppers for either of my blogs gets added to the Dragon Blogger Entrecard Generator to help reciprocate some drops.

-Justin Germino

Today was a family day no one had to work and so the entire day was spent at home as a family, with lots of rest and time spent just hanging around each other.  The Family Man with Nicholas Cage was also playing on Television and we kind of watched in the background before dinner and after.  Though the movie is not one of my favorite Nicholas Cage movies I really do like the premise of the film and like the feel good story that comes out of it.  That success, wealth and power are nothing without a family to share it with and love and family are the building blocks that make us whole, the rest is nice to have but doesn’t really nourish or sustain our spirit.

I can attest to this in my personal life, much like in the movie I can picture and visualize what my life would have been like if I would have stayed single, or even separated at some point in the past.  Would I have been financially stable, sure.  Would I have been happy?  Most definitely not!

I can honestly say that as we are in the holidays there is no where I would rather be than at home with my wife beside me and my two beautiful and wonderful children around me.  To me what I have is worth more than any amount of money I could make or would have saved being single and living as a “power” person because without someone to spend and share my life with I would in fact be hollow inside.

-Justin Germino