Justin Germino Ramblings

I happened across an Article on the NY Daily News about the latest 15 foods proven to help keep your body burning fat and running better. It is actually shown that Milk is in fact quite good for you, the natural calcium in milk enhances your metabolism which helps burn more calories. A study done by the University of Tennessee showed that people who consumed 1200+ mg of calcium daily lost almost 2x as much as dieters who had less calcium. Milk also has low carbohydrates which is also a bonus, skim milk has less calories but I personally think a little fat is good for the body so 2% would be ideal.

Jalapeños and other spicy peppers, yep eating jalapeños which I can’t do because my stomach can’t take any spicy food at all anymore is one of the best ways to increase your metabolism. That burn in your mouth that is capsaicin and that causes your entire body to go into overdrive and increase your blood temperature slightly from the heat. You will sweat and you will burn calories much faster, eating one or two spicy snacks a day can really help with balancing your weight. If you have a weak stomach though beware, eating or taking red pepper pills or the like can cause stomach irritation and such only do this if you can stomach it.

Oats and Grains have fiber which cleans the blood stream and intestines, oats contain more soluble fiber which clears your arteries and blood stream and wheat has more insoluble fiber which is for cleaning out your intestinal track and getting food moving along. Make sure you have plenty of fiber but remember carbohydrates can lead to weight gain so eat carbs in moderation, just get some.

Green Tea and Coffee, yep Caffeine stimulates your metabolism which helps burn calories and Green Tea has caffeine plus EGCG which is another metabolic stimulant. Remember though if you are putting sugar or cream into your tea you are increasing the calories and offsetting the benefit, if you must have sweetener use 0 calorie sweetener and drink your calorie black or only put skim or 2% milk instead of creamers which are high in fat and calories typically.

Salmon is among the best meals you can eat, not only does it have a very healthy calorie to carb rating, but protein and extremely healthy fats and oils which are good for your heart, skin, brain function and arteries. Fresh grilled salmon is among one of the most healthy foods you can eat.

Lean Chicken is also shown to help increase calorie burn and healthy, what surprised me was that lean pork because it is harder to digest and takes more time increases calorie burn as a result. But make sure you are eating lean grilled pork or pan fried, don’t bread, dip in BBQ sauce or have bacon or ribs which don’t have the health benefits.

The full article had 15 items, but really they listed 3 different peppers, 2 different caffeine beverages and 4 different meats which should have been in the same category so mine is a compression list.

-Justin Germino

I took my family to Joe’s Crab Shack for dinner on Monday night to try their new Steampot specials. I have to say my expectations were greatly exceeded and that the food was incredible. I ordered the Joe’s Steampot that comes with Dungeness crab, snow crab, 6 shrimp, sausage, corn and potatoes and my two and five year old boys loved the crab so much, I had to order a second pot just so I could try some.

The seasoning on the shellfish is great and the andoiuille sausage tasted so great I could have eaten that as a meal in itself. My wife had ordered the Bean Town Bake  that came with 2 whole main lobsters and clams and was also greatly satisfied with the quality of the food and the quantity was incredible.  The entire family of four left stuffed to the gills off of three pots and the damage to our wallets was around the same price as Red Lobster or other higher end chain restaurants.

For a two person dinner expect your bill to be around $50 for two people without alcohol, for a family of 4 with four entree’s you can be looking at about $100 – $120 for a family meal.  So while the price is expensive it is certainly a worthy treat to have for a special occasion.

A hard drive lost on a laptop caused many hours of re-imaging and rebuilding Vista yesterday, restoring as much as possible and re-installing dozens of applications and software components. Let this be a lesson to everyone, backup your data often, you never know when a drive will fail on you.

On top of losing a primary drive on a laptop, we had to drive to the valley to take my son to Drum lessons, a doctor’s appointment and some other errands for Rock Along Production (dropping show fliers by the venue…etc).  I was up until 12:30am rebuilding Vista and restoring the data from a backup from 2 weeks ago, and I finished the restore and rebuilding everything this morning.

Here is my list of mandatory freeware programs that get installed first thing on any new windows server:

• Avira Antivirus
• FireFox
• Thunderbird
• Google Picasa
• FoxIt Reader (uninstall Adobe Acrobat Reader)
• Comodo Backup (newly added so my data is backed up)

I barely have time now to write my NBC Heroes Season Finale post on my DragonBlogger.com blog before I start my day job today.

-Justin Germino

There is much talk lately about the swine influenza that has spread to people in Mexico City and has now shown up in cases in the United States. Over eighty deaths have already been attributed to the pig flu and people are starting to get worried and frenzied about it.

This reminds me of the bird flu panic that was widespread a few years ago from poultry spreading the virus to humans in close contact, there is the potential for this to be a widespread flu but there is a low chance it will be a widespread fatal one as long as proper medical treatment is sought.

The most deadly flu on record was the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 which killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide, a flu that becomes drug resistant and transmits easily has the potential to be very deadly but this is a very rare occurance. Most flus will leave you just feeling weak, sick and with fever for ten to fourteen days on average.

Still whenever flu’s adapt between species no good can come from it and if you have a flu shot already this year it has no protection against this strain of swine influenza. I will be following the news more closely on this (I am traveling to Cabo on June 1st) so I have some concern about the outbreak.

Meanwhile if you or anyone in your family comes down with flu like symptoms, do not just try to “tough” it out and make sure you take in plenty of fluids, if children get the flu take them to urgent care if they have high fevers and vomiting or diarrhea. You never can be too careful and you want to make sure when these types of things spread the people who suffer the worst are the ones who stay at home and try to “tough out” the illness instead of seeing a doctor.

-Justin Germino

I have been following the musician Sting my whole life and have been listening to his music since I was five years old and he was in The Police.  Below are my favorite top ten Sting songs from his solo career and not including any tracks when he was with The Police.

10.  We Work The Black Seam from the Dream of the Blue Turtles album is about the people building nuclear weapons would contribute to the destruction of the world and environment, it is a worthy Earth Day song many many years after it was written and produced.

9.  Fortress Around Your Heart also from the Dream of the Blue Turtles album written about the turmoil of a relationship and was written by Sting about his failed first marriage.

8. Fragile from the album Nothing Like The Sun is about how we as human beings are simply fragile.  A song that should make us reflect and thing how small we are in this universe.

7. Seven Days from Ten Summoners Tales is a song about someone who wants to pursue the love of his life but is afraid to face a suitor and keeps procrastinating until its too late.

6. Saint Augustine in Hell from Ten Summoners Tales is a song about rivalry when a man falls in love with his best friends girl, is he destined to go to hell?  With imagery and fire, and even jesting against music critics this song has soul.

5. Inside from Sacred Love album is such a great lyrical song with profound meaning about someone seeking love and recovering from hurt and pain on the inside.  It is a song that touches pain, sorrow, love and rebirth and is seeking something.

4. If I Ever Lose My Faith In You from the album Ten Summoner’s Tales is one of the best love songs I have ever listened to about someone who proclaims to not have any faith in science or religion but only faith in his love.

3.  The Soul Cages the title track of the Album Soul Cages is one of the heaviest rock songs Sting has ever done in a solo album, it combines strong electric guitar riffs with song lyrics that talk about a fisherman’s son playing a game with the devil in order to free his father’s soul.

2.   Hounds of Winter from Mercury Falling album is a sad song about someone being lonely after being apart from the one they love.

1.  The Book of My Life from Sacred Love album is my favorite Sting song this year, its blend of Indian instruments and almost surreal sound combined with the smooth tone and storyline about how someones life is laid out like the pages of a book just resonates with me so poetically.

I know my favorite Sting songs may not be the “Chart” favorites, but these are the ones that resonate and make my top ten lists, I wonder what some other Sting fans have to say about their favorite songs?

I find myself spending what was formerly Entrecard Drop time on twitter instead talking and socializing with so many people I don’t know, but just by sharing in conversations and being able to discuss articles, news or opinions on things is just so much fun.  I am rapidly approaching 1300 followers now and my account @dragonblogger is becoming more popular from my random twitter poetry and sharing my blogging and tech information as I come across it.

I have even been earning a little income from twitter by using some CPC programs that I occasionally drop in and collect some change, this is by no means alot, but I am not obvious either.  I don’t believe in spam and I only plug something that I believe in myself so it works for me.  Eventually I think it will be feasable to bring in at least 10 to 20 dollars a month just from doing my normal twitter activity, that may not sound like a lot but that is the equiv of 4 paid blogging posts and is more than my adsense earnings.

Twitter is just fun and it compells you to have conversations with people and be part of a bigger online social network and universe, I just enjoy the communication but I have to ration my time wisely as it is eating into my blogging time and taking away from my ability to create articles for my 4 blogs plus Associated Content.

-Justin Germino

For two months now I have been having a few issues with my Dish Network receivers, two of them in my house have periodic outages where some of the channels will display an error message about problem with your multifunction dish receiver. I notice that sometimes channels 150+ are out, and other times the lower channels 61 and under are out.

It happened ever since DISH Network sent out upgrade smart cards to insert into the devices, though it shouldn’t be related I would think. My main DVR Receiver never exhibits this issue at all, only the non-DVR receivers in my other two rooms have the issue. A technician came out and replaced every jack in the house and worked on the bridge but that same afternoon the problem resurfaced.

Now they are set to come out again this morning, it’s not like I want to look for wholesale electronics on my own and order new parts for my DISH Receiver. I will wait for the DISH Network technician to arrive and hopefully the issue will be fixed finally.

-Justin Germino

With all of the media coverage of million dollar bonuses paid to CEO’s and companies purchasing steel, textiles and other materials from overseas such as China and India instead of at home in the U.S. people are left wondering the big question which is “Are Companies Greedy?”.  The answer unfortunately is not as simple as the question and in fact leads to several more questions.  For people who think that every outsourced job is a lost job in the United States, or for every company that ships factories or warehouses to another country is destroying lives here at home, you have to stop and consider the following.

First and foremost public companies are accountable to stock holders and therefore are compelled and expected to deliver returns that make their investors happy, this capitalistic mentally means that companies are always looking to lower costs and increase revenue and profits.  They make more profit by selling more product, if they can reduce the price of the materials to make the product and lower the price of the product, then they can be cost competitive and sell more product.

People want lower prices for everything unless you are spending specifically for luxury and have the financial means to do so.  We want cheaper cars, gas prices, televisions, computers, camera’s and cell phones, we all know we want the best value for our buck and companies are constantly trying to lower costs to sell more product.  The problem is that companies often have to purchase or ship labor overseas to reduce costs so they can sell a product cheaper and make more revenue to deliver higher returns for stockholders.

Would you rather earn 0% interest on your stock and pay $50 more for a cell phone just because the company is purchasing and hiring people only from the United States, you the reader might say yes that it is worth paying a little more to keep the work here in the U.S., however the stockholders will say no and pull their money from the company and invest in other more profitable companies.  As long as people are looking for profit, companies will be looking to cut costs and purchasing the least expensive materials they can get.

I am not against offshoring, outsourcing or anything else because I believe even in a tough economy jobs can be found, different jobs that require retraining and specialization however.  Much like a blogger has to find a niche market to gain popularity a worker has to find the job area’s that need skilled workers and retrain to perform that job function.  As people we cannot afford to be inflexible in what we do for work, we need to adapt to the changing market and the changing times and develop different skill sets even if they buck the traditional.

This is a global world now people jobs created her means jobs not created elsewhere, jobs created there are not jobs created here.  Americans are working overseas and overseas citizens are working for American companies, we are virtually one global economic community and we see this by one recession affecting the world not just the United States.

I had a plethora of hobbies when I was a child and though many have faded into obscurity as I grew into an adult some still remain and are with me to this very day. I collected GI-JOE action figures, Comic Books (I had Spawn #1 and Xmen #50 at one point), Computers, Nintendo, Role Playing (Dungeons and Dragons) and I even had a period where I did rock tumbling.

Rock tumbling was interesting I used to find rocks in my back yard and put them in one of my rock tumblers for a few days, they would come out all polished and cool looking and I would use the polished stones as treasure that my action figures had to find or protect.

Or I would use the polished stones to represent gems that my D&D players would find when pillaging dragon hoards or dungeons. They added a nice physical element to a cerebral and virtual game and players enjoyed having the tangible item to hold as a reward.

The rock tumblers I used as a kid used to take day’s to polish stones, I think they have gotten faster and more efficient lately, but often when I pass one in a craft store or something I consider purchasing one to see if my son would find it interesting.

Bottom line though is hobbies are very important for kids who need to be kept busy and active, it doesn’t matter what hobby and you shouldn’t judge if a girl likes boy hobbies and a boy likes girl hobbies. So what if your six year old son likes playing with Barbie’s, or your little girl is making dinosaurs eat soldiers. Let them play and role play whatever they want, and as long as their hobbies aren’t dangerous they should be encouraged and supported.

You will be remembered as a parent who encouraged them to try anything new and enjoy hobbies, rather than one that criticized them for what they chose to do and play with.

-Justin Germino

I am all for freedom of speech and how people have a right to be however they want so long as they don’t break laws or force their ways on other people.  However, while dining out at IHOP restaurant here in Casa Grande this morning for breakfast my wife and I and our two year old son sat in a booth next to some of the rudest people we had ever witnessed in a public place.  A mother, husband (or boyfriend) and little daughter probably around three years old were sitting in the next booth to us.

The mom was extremely rude to her little daughter constantly insulting her, spewing curse words including S word, F word and others while talking with her family and on a cell phone call at the breakfast table.  This is all at just before eight in the morning.  I am not typically a judgmental person, I do believe you can’t judge a book by its cover and am full of my own issues and faults so who am I to criticize or critique other people.

However, I just could not help but feel bad for that little girl being talked to so rudely and improperly, in my house that would be considered emotional abuse and I am appalled that people would use such foul behavior and language at a casual restaurant.  It really gave my wife and I a sick feeling in our stomach afterward.

Word of advice, try to reduce your swearing in public places such as dining establishments, businesses…etc.  I grew up in New York where cursing is part of everyday speech, but I don’t spout at certain places and scenario’s, use your judgement where appropriate.  Secondly in raising your kids try to realize that they are people and everything you say and instill with them they will internalize and carry with them for the rest of their lives, you could inadvertantly damage their personalities or instill feelings of worthlessness just by talking and treating them a certain way.  This is true especially when they are little, physical abuse isn’t the only form of child abuse and you should not talk to your children disrespectfully.

-Justin Germino