Justin Germino Ramblings

With all the talk about Madoff in the news and the Ponzi scheme, I could play ignorant no longer, I had to wiki what a “Ponzi” scheme actually is, I know it is about defrauding investors, but what are the methods that make it the “Ponzi” scheme and how did it get its name?

Well, it turns out a famous person who became famous for this type of fraudulent investment is “Charles Ponzi” who came the United States from Italy in 1903. Charles Dickens actually may have “thought of” the scheme as it is published in the 1857 novel “Little Dorrit” but Charles Ponzi is the person who used the tactics to collect a substantial amount of money in that era.

Note: A Ponzi Scheme is not a MLM (Multi Level Marketing) pyramid, or a bubble scheme.

Here is the basics on how it works:

The seller uses impressive statistics and metrics to entice investors with claimed return rates higher than average on their investment, the initial investors of a Ponzi scheme often make some money initially as the scheme is sold, and then their returns are paid on future investors, in the end all of the money goes bust however.

Since the “schemer” is paying returns only on future investments, there is no actual revenue generated to sustain the rate of promised return, there has to constantly be new investors into the “Ponzi Scheme” to pay the promised returns of the first investors. As more investors participate there needs to be a constant influx of a higher number of new investors just to keep paying the previous ones.

This eventually causes a collapse as new investors aren’t picked up fast enough to pay out the returns of the previous ones, but these schemes often fail far sooner as the government or regulatory agency picks up on them and shuts it all down prior to it running the full course.

If you wiki Ponzi Schemes, at current writing there were over 50 notable Ponzi Schemes performed between 1899 and 2009 currently listed.

There, now you all know what a Ponzi scheme is.

-Justin Germino

As I struggle to make sure I have at least one new blog post each day on my three primary blogs, I find that this is taking about an hour per day to maintain this level of content production. To help keep pace I spent several hours staying awake on Saturday night doing nothing but writing blog posts, I was able to create seven quality blog posts within an hour and queued most of them for my Dragon Blogger blog. Three of them were movie reviews which I staggered out a week apart, since I don’t want too many movie reviews day after day on my technology heavy blog.

The main difficulty of a blogger is

A) You have to find time to write quality content and enough of it so your blog has many indexed pages

but, you also have to try to find time to

B) promote and spread your blog across the web

This is done by commenting on other blogs, submitting your posts to various submission services, building links, keyword advertising, posting in forums, spreading information on your social networks…etc.

The problem is if you write quality content alone, but you don’t spend anytime marketing it is akin to creating a great product that people would want to buy, but never purchasing a TV commercial to advertise your product or putting in large stores like Walmart to sell and display it.

Bloggers must remember to put some time into promoting and networking in order to eventually build web presence and increase their indexes in the various search engines. Creating content alone is not enough to expand your blog anymore when you are competing with millions of other blogs.

-Justin Germino

I was surprised when I heard that the TV Pitchman Billy Mays was found dead this weekend on CNN, I had been watching commercials for the Discovery Channel Show Pitchman and he was very recognizable in the As Seen On TV product industry. In reading more of the details about what may be the cause it turns out that Billy Mays was on a US Airways flight the day before that blew a tire during a landing which caused Billy Mays to hit his head as a result of the bumpy landing.

People don’t know if this incident could be something similar to what happened with Natasha Richardson, where a head injury from a skiing accident turned out to be fatal. An autopsy was ordered to determine the cause of death, it is just coincidence that Billy Mays was the same age as Michael Jackson and the both passed away within the same week.

As one of my twitter followers replied me on twitter “Oxi Clean will never be the same”, and its true, there are a handful of products that I don’t think would have ever been as successful had his strong and charismatic sales presentation vouch for it. The industry loses a talented salesmen and I wish his family the best in these troubled times.

-Justin Germino

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give for couples is to be there for your partner when they have a bad day, and I don’t mean just be there physically, but be there emotionally and mentally. Let your partner vent and share their frustration and be a good listener.

Sometimes the best thing you can do to help your partner when they are going through a stressful situation or had a bad day is to let them just unload all of their thoughts, feelings and emotions. Don’t try to interject and interrupt unless they ask for your opinion or advice.

Being a listener is key, and make sure you are listening instead of just ignoring or half paying attention. Turn the TV off, get away from the computer and sit together staring at each others eyes. Your partner depends on you for support and comfort just as you would for them when you experience a stressful and bad day.

People need to remember that with all the distractions of technology, true relationship communication is done completely unplugged where the two of you can just sit and talk alone and privately without the distraction of technology all around you.

-Justin Germino

With the banking and finance industry finally making some recovery there is a slow but steady resurgence of Wall St jobs that can be found for those who are looking to get back into the industry or enter it for the first time.  It is still a very tight and competitive market and more struggles are just around the corner for some sectors, but you can at least put your resume out there and compete with all the skills and talent you have to offer.

Good luck job hunting.

-Justin Germino

In tribute to Michael Jackson I wanted to share my favorite Michael Jackson song, and then hear from my readers and fellow bloggers on what their favorite song is and why. This post could be like a viral chain of people sharing their favorite song story, and I am curious to see if it catches on.

As I as only a kid when Michael Jackson was really popular, I never got into the Jackson 5 stuff as I was not born yet, my favorite song of all time is Thriller (not original I know), but it was the stage in my life where I was about 7 years old and I was into B horror movies anyway (watched movies that no kid that age should watch) and I loved Zombie Movies, Horrors such as “The Thing”, Howling series…etc

When I first heard and saw thriller I was mesmerized by how cool the story of the video was, like many others it remains one of the best and most pronounced music video’s in my mind that I can recall clearly as one of my childhood memories of seeing it for the first time. The catchy beat on top of it all was excellent.

I would say my second favorite song is “Remember The Time” which also had a very good music video with state of the art special effects for its time, but the story behind the song was what I really liked. Even at an early age I had a poets heart.

So I want to hear from my readers and fellow bloggers, what is your favorite Michael Jackson song and why? Blog about it and I will link back to you here, or leave a comment if you like.

Update:

Bumble Blog shares her favorite Michael Jackson song with readers, find out which one it is and why.

Looks like Supernova Splash also posted Thriller as their favorite Michael Jackson song as well, find out why.

Pehpot over at the Make or Break blog talks about their Michael Jackson song experience, although not a fan per se.

Over on Deborah Katy’s Diary you can read about one of her favorite songs “The way you make me feel” and why it is one of her favorites.  Thanks for taking the opp.

-Justin Germino

Despite the economy being what it is, there are still quality jobs to be found out there if you have the skill set and are qualified. Information Technology continues to increase in demand as web sites and internet technologies continue to grow, there are still plenty of programming jobs to find for people who have the appropriate skill sets. You can find specific jobs for Java, C, Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP and other programmers out there.

This is a good time to start teaching yourself programming, this is one career field that is almost completely hands on and can be self taught. You can read books, take tutorials and practice writing programs within a few days and weeks you will be ready to start writing some basic programs. If you work at it, you probably can work toward entry level programming within 6 months depending on how fast you learn and how much time you can devote.

When applying for programming jobs remember one thing, make sure that you have samples of your own work, and that you are experienced enough to be shown lines of code and functions and know exactly what they do as well as be able to explain various ways to accomplish something if asked “how would you do this?”.

There are lots of people vying for the same positions out there so you have to be diverse, competent and really know your stuff to stand out from other people trying for the same positions.

-Justin Germino

As a parent of two boys I really enjoy spending time with them doing various activities which include, lizard and bug hunting, wrestling and play fighting, role playing, and drawing. My kids both love to draw with colored pencils and often the three of us will just sit at a table and draw things for each other. We draw each other monsters, robots, aliens, creatures or whatever else our imagination can come up with.

One thing I do to conserve paper is take standard paper and cut it into quarters, this way I call them paper cards. I do this primarily so my kids don’t waste so much paper, they often draw several small shapes on a large paper, call it done and the paper is wasted. By making smaller sheets, they can draw the same amount and use up 1/4 of the amount of paper.

So today after doing my housework I spent a good 1/2 hour with the boys drawing, I drew a squid in the ocean, and a robot head and torso, while my oldest son draw a few dozen monster parts (he draws arms, legs, heads) and then asks you to pick which ones and he draws a final monster combining the parts.

My two year old will just scribble anything and enjoys just holding the cards I draw him and keeping them like prizes.

-Justin Germino

There are some diet pills that do help you lose weight and fairly quickly, but if you rely solely on diet pills to lose weight, you will not treat the source of the problem and when you stop taking the diet pills, you will inevitably end up back with the same problem in the future.

Diet pills are only really meant to be an augmented supplement to a bigger solution, and that involves cutting down on calorie intake and exercising regularly. Ultimately you need to trim your calories back to only what your body uses which will keep you at consistent weight levels, to lose weight you need to cut back slightly under what your body needs to break even, so that your body will start using the fat reserves in your body for the extra energy.

This means simply put that you will feel hunger as your body adjusts to eating less, this means as uncomfortable as it is, you will have to learn and acquire the mental ability to not eat everything on your plate when eating at a restaurant, or if you do happen to go to a buffet, not load your plate until it looks like a heaping volcano.

You will also have to start out with exercise, this can involve brisk walking, if you have a two story home, you have the advantage of just being able to walk up and down stairs several times over and over, which will provide better exercise than if you walk three times that long around a block since you are actually building your thigh muscles and torso as well.

Akin your weight to an addiction, like someone trying to quit smoking, or pain pills, you will undergo many of the same emotional, physical and mental discomforts and difficulties as someone trying to quit those afflictions. It isn’t going to be easy, but if you have someone who is on-board with you and can work along with you, you increase your odds of success when you are not doing it alone.

-Justin Germino

For some reason for the past two years I get plagued with periodic stomach problems, sometimes this is caused by stress, and sometimes food is a factor. I get these upper stomach pains which almost always lead to vomiting and weakness for the rest of the day. It seems related to my highly acidic stomach and my stomach cannot handle spicy foods anymore. Stress definitely makes me much worse, well as a result of these symptoms I was sick on Friday.

I had to miss one of my work meetings to spend fifteen minutes puking in my bathroom, afterward I was still able to finish out my day working but had to rest most of the night. I drank nothing but fresh bottled water the rest of the day and had a little bit of scrambled eggs that night since I felt some hunger.

I did however wake up with the worst migraine this morning at 3am, and had to take some ibuprofen. I realized that I had not drank any tea in about 16 hours and my body had zero caffeine in my system for almost 3/4 of a day. I don’t drink coffee, but I do drink about 3/4 of a gallon of fresh brewed tea per day, and that has enough caffeine that my body is dependent on caffeine. The migraines I get when I don’t have caffeine are extremely severe and don’t go away until I intake some sort of caffeine.

Ibuprofen does nothing, Excedrin Migraine does but that is because it has caffeine in each pill. Whats worse is that I don’t like that my body has such severe side effects just from not drinking some caffeine. There are other reasons you can get migraines too, I can get them from lack of calories as well which is why mine was a double whammy. Sometimes as a result of not eating (due to stomach bugs mostly) I can get migraines from lack of calories in my system, but usually if I am not eating, it means I am not drinking tea so more likely to be the caffeine omission.

Just another day of physical ailments like many people out there, but I don’t like being a slave to caffeine, and who would have thought that a non-coffee drinker is still addicted to caffeine?

-Justin Germino