Justin Germino Ramblings

I wrote Dragon Bloggers Review of Pixar’s UP on my other site showcasing just how amazing this movie was, and this is a follow up post to tell you how this movie has touched me in more ways that many films ever could.  This movie shows you the end of the road particularly for couples who have been together for many years, and how it is inevitable that one will lose the other as you grow old together.  It is a movie that inspires you to make the most of your life that you have together now, so that you have such wonderful memories in the end.

It is a movie that also shows you that no matter how your lives end, it is the time spent together that matters most, even if you didn’t make alot of money, or take many vacations, the fact that you two have memories and experienced a life together are what matter most.  This movie ranks right up there in my heart with some other great films that explore love, loss and mortality including “What Dreams May Come” with Robin Williams, “Bi-Centennial Man” ironically also starring Robin Williams are two more amazing films that explore life and love, and how it reaches its conclusions.

I recommend Pixar’s up to any romantic out there and any couple looking to see a film, I left this film wanting to hold my wife’s hand tighter and for the movie to be “Us” in the end on how our life plays out together, I could only hope my own adventures and journeys in life end up with us being together in the end no matter what we have faced and conquered in our past.

-Justin Germino

So I have written 8 poems in the past two days in order to get make sure I have one unique poem written on my blog for every day I am on vacation next week, including 2 new poems for this weekend starting today.  This includes the random twitter poem I did yesterday and the poem I wrote for an assignment.

This has left me with limited time to get blog posts done for all of my other blogs, as I strive to have 1 unique blog post on all 3 of my blogs for each day I am on vacationing.  This means I had to write 28 posts in a span of seven days, which was incredibly difficult, especially to write quality posts instead of just filler posts.

Alas, my fingers are getting sore from typing too much.  Meanwhile, I have a few more posts to write for my technology blog this weekend, then I can vacation in peace knowing my readers have some unique material to read while I soak up the sun in Cabo starting Monday.

-Justin Germino

There is something happening that is becoming quite contagious, as I continue to do my random twitter poem daily, I am getting new people I have never heard from or met before contacting me on Twitter or my blog telling me how inventive and creative my poetry is, and people actually enjoy participating in my daily twitter poetry games as much as I enjoy writing them.  I have a list of ten to twelve people who are my consistant players, in that they play 3 or more days per week on average.  But each day I have one or two players who have never played before and many of them are coming back and playing again as they find the game interesting.

The game works like this, send me 1 random word on twitter @dragonblogger, and I will put it into the queue for a poem, on my lunch break I write a poem including all words submitted over the morning or some from the previous day that were submitted too late.  I often create some very unique poems with some very crafty words, some people give me hard words on purposes, other easy words.  You never know what I will come up with, some of it is liked, other poems not so much, but you can’t say I am not creative.

Part of the fun is hearing from and meeting new people who claim to be my latest fans, I enjoy and look forward to more twitter poems and having created over 120+ unique poems in the last six months, I intend to keep this game going.

-Justin Germino

There is a rampant amount of skin cancer in this country from people who over sun themselves and use tanning beds to extreme measures, this has caused a general panic and “Avoid the sun at all costs” attitude across the nation. The problem is that if you wear sunblock all the time and avoid the sun you will be preventing the absorption of the necessary UVB radiation which also helps the body create and metabolize vitamin D.

Vitamin D is found in very few organic foods and the chemical version is not nearly as potent and effective, vitamin D is crucial to protecting the heart, blood stream and helps prevent organ cancers. The only main source of vitamin D is through natural sunlight or drinking milk, which is hard to do for people who are lactose intolerant. It is also proven the sun helps against fatigue, malaise, depression and other symptoms.

In moderation it is imperative you allow some sunlight to penetrate and be absorbed by the body, the best time to get some sun would be prior to 10am and after 4pm in the afternoon where you run a much lower risk of skin cancer. It is still appropriate to do short five to ten minutes of getting some sunlight mid day without any sunblock just to make sure your body gets a healthy absorption of vitamin D.

The biggest risks for skin cancer are children and sunburns, sunburns in children greatly increase their likelihood to get skin cancer as adults, though adults who burn can still get skin cancer, it is the DNA damage to young and growing skin cells and DNA that pose the greater risk for mutation in the cells.

Children should wear sunblock for the majority of the day, but should also get a small amount of time each day without sunblock to absorb the Vitamin D, again these should be limited to early morning or late evening hours, or very short amounts of time mid day. All other times they should wear sunblock of SPF 50+ or more.

• In Summary:

Remember to be wary of direct sunlight and use sunblock, especially on children during peak UV Index hours. Don’t however prevent the body from absorbing natural sunlight completely and make sure that at least some exposure to sunlight without “sunblock” or with very low SPF (15) is attained in order for the body to absorb essential nutrients and gain the benefits.

And remember, everything in life should be done in moderation. If you go to extreme on anything you will end up potentially causing more harm than you are trying to prevent.

-Justin Germino

I am scrambling to complete and tidy up some projects at work and prepare to hand them over to other engineers so that I can comfortably enjoy my one week vacation to Cabo, Mexico which is coming up next week.  My wife and I booked a one week stay at the Cabo Azul Resort & Spa which is right on the beach.  We are hoping to get lots of R&R and some deep sea fishing in, we both love fishing and the last time we were in Mexico we caught 6 mahi mahi (Dolphin Tuna) between us.

The time before that I reeled in a 300lb Blue Marlin off of the coast of Kauai which made me so sea sick, I literally turned green and ached from the strain of spending almost 45 minutes trying to reel in such a strong and heavy fish.  It took the captain, deckhand and myself (sea sick and all) to pull the blasted thing on board the boat.

I have no idea if we will catch anything this time, but it sure will be fun to try and see what we come up with.

-Justin Germino

Seriously, I am like your stereotypical guy that you see portrayed on shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy. I don’t buy clothing unless my existing clothing is literally torn to shreds. My wife poked fun at me that I only have like 3 pairs of white socks left, not even enough for a full week. I am also down to only two pairs of shorts that fit me.

So with a quick trip up to the department store I protested but was forced to buy two pairs of shorts and a ten pack of socks. Part of the reason why I lost a whole wardrobe of clothes is I used to be a size 40 about two years ago, and then dropped enough weight that at one point I was down to a size 32. Now I am up to a size 34 again, which I may need to take some weight loss pills to get that under control.

So I kept donating every set of clothes as I grew or shrunk out of them, this left me with very few articles of clothing that was in my size. Since I telecommute and am very lazy, I don’t need a vast array of clothing, I wear just casual wear around the house and do laundry every three days or so.

Meanwhile, my wife almost moved my limited amount of supplies out of the closet so she can have more room, she has so many clothes that the hanging rod is buckling in the center and will probably snap or bow so badly it will fall out of place by the end of the year.

-Justin Germino

I learned something new this weekend after reading an article in the Casa Grande Dispatch newspaper. A high school student proposed an idea in Arizona that is both green and will save space and provide a great commodity for the community. This idea is called vertical farming and is not new, but hasn’t been put into as wide practice as it should be in the U.S.

Vertical Farming is basically skyscraper structures where farms are planted on each floor of the facility, so that the farms are layered vertically toward the sky instead of horizontally along the ground. This saves on an enormous amount of land space, and because the farms are indoor this saves on pest control costs, fertilizer, water costs, and eliminates carbon emissions due to old style farm and tractor equipment.

The best thing about vertical farming from this high school students plan was that with Solar Panels on the roof, and something called Dynamic Structure where each floor rotates so that the maximum amount of sunlight is achieved for growth the building is almost completely self sufficient. Recycled rainwater and drain water throughout the building could also increase efficiency.

This allows farming and yields 6x as often as planting crops in the ground and traditional farming and in the long haul is the best way to accommodate the rapid growth of human beings on the planet. I have rationalized all of this and agree that this is the wave of the future, we need to be more efficient with our land space on this planted and building vertical is the best way to make efficient use of the land space.

You can read more about Vertical Farming here on the wiki, I encourage you do some research yourself as I believe this is the future of farming and crop production.

-Justin Germino

Most of the time when I have traveled to Las Vegas, California, Hawaii, Florida, and even my trip coming up to Cabo, I always stay in hotels. However, one time I did stay on Pacific Beach in California in a rental property for a week.

I found from experience that some of the value with renting a property vs. a hotel is you can often get weekly rates at half the cost if you were to stay in a hotel. You can also save money buy purchasing groceries and cooking in, rather than dining out which is much more expensive.

I also found that renting properties is better than hotels when traveling with large families, that way you call can rent a multi-bedroom establishment instead of having to pay for two or more hotel rooms.

So it doesn’t matter if you are looking for Outer Banks rentals, or other types of rental properties, know that you can save some money when renting for an extended vacation instead of spending more at a hotel. Some rental arrangements even have cleaners that come in every few days so it is even closer to being like a hotel.

-Justin Germino

It doesn’t matter whether you are a support of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or the work being done in Afghanistan. Simply put people who lay their lives on the line in order to serve this country and put the nation above their personal lives are to be respected for their commitment unconditionally.

Families who go through the hardship of raising children alone or partially alone while a spouse or partner is overseas are to be respected for believing, supporting and getting through the tough times. Everyone is affected in a family when one person in that family serves.

My thoughts and best wishes go out to the over 5600 service members and their families who have lost their lives over the past years in Iraq and Afghanistan and also I take a moment to remember every soldier who has lost their life in support of promoting freedom, including World War 1 and World War 2.

My Great Grandmother who I only knew for the first five years of my life had told me a story once when I was in Kindergarten about how she lived in Poland during the WWI invasion and what it was like for German soldiers to storm the streets and buildings where she and her family lived. I barely remember the story but I remember the emotion she had on her face, when she recanted the story. My grandfather had served in the Korean war, and often told me stories about his service as well, he passed away last year from heart problems.

Hopefully children of solders lost can take comfort in knowing that their father or mother fought for a cause and for the nation, and I applaud organizations and families who provide mentoring, support and assistance for other families going through the same situations. Empathy and compassion are a powerful and effective method for coping with the difficulties of being military family.

-Justin Germino

Last week Washington State had its first death under the new suicide law which was enacted last November.   This puts currently only two states in the nation which allow for assisted suicide for terminally ill patients having the right to end their life instead of suffering through worsening health conditions.

There are people who both support and defiantly act opposed to the allowing of physician assisted suicide, but the truth of the matter is simply this.  If someone is terminally ill and in constant physical pain, assisted suicide gives the patient the ability to peacefully resign their life at a time of their choosing without continuing to suffer and cause suffering to family members around them.

We euthanize pets when they are old, fragile and feeble in order to put an end to their suffering and people should be treated with no less dignity.  There are clear guidelines that are in place before it becomes a viable alternative, people don’t want to take so many pain medications that they spend the last few weeks of their life in a foggy state of mind, they don’t want to suffer the indignity of infirmity that comes with rapid disease progression.

Simply put if the laws are written properly and enforced then there should be a legal way for people to end this world with dignity and spare their families and themselves.  It should always be a choice and it is a very personal choice, but people should have the freedom to make that choice.

-Justin Germino