Justin Germino Ramblings

I have been so busy with my day job these last few weeks and I don’t see it letting up that my blogging (which is a hobby) is going to have to take a distant back seat. I just am running out of energy to be able to stay up each night just to queue posts on 4 or 5 blogs for the following morning. Even my random twitter poetry game is getting very hard to accomplish as my lunch breaks are virtually non-existent lately.

For sanity sake it is important to remember the beauty about blogging, it is not how often you update that matters most, it is the quality of your content. So you can still be a successful blog if you post every day, every three days or once a week. Granted the more posts you have indexed on Google the wider your blog reach is, but don’t feel ashamed or guilty if you have to slow down and pace yourself a little.

Don’t let family time suffer because you fell compelled to update your blogs each and every day. I know I did start feeling a little guilty and have a desire to leave no day devoid of a post, but in the end I am starting to be slightly more apathetic. For me blogging is a hobby and something I enjoy doing, I shouldn’t have to feel pressured to write on my blogs, that is for people who make a full time income out of blogging and it IS their primary job.

-Justin Germino

Someone on twitter sent out a link to a posting on Acid Cow called Animals that never existed this has some amazing digital photo manipulations showing combinations of animal heads with different parts, some of them so realistic you wouldn’t be able to tell it was a digital alteration if you didn’t know better.

Really funny stuff, I like the Alligator Fly, and if you liked these you should check out all 48 of them at the site.

-Justin Germino

In South Carolina, there is a chimpanzee named Anjana who lives at The Institute of Greatly Endangered Species (TIGERS) which is a great acronym. Anjana helps as an acting foster mother for the facility and loves to take care of baby animals of a wide variety of species. She has helped nurture leopards, tigers, and orangutans and helps play and feed them with bottles.

I stumbled across Vet Locator website with these pictures, and these are just two of the many pictures on the site, if you enjoyed looking at these two pictures, you should check out where they came from.

-Justin Germino

Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a disease that is more prevalent in women than men, yet many men still suffer from the disease and I am one of those people.    All you can do is try to figure out what “triggers” cause the intestinal discomfort, pain and try to minimize your exposure to the conditions that cause the symptoms.

I have severe intestinal pain almost every time I eat highly acidic foods, alcohol of any kind, chocolate, sugar, milk/dairy products and sugary foods.  This makes it difficult for me to eat out at restaurants as I tend to have pain and suffering after eating almost anything I eat at a restaurant with the exception of very bland foods.

I have had embarrassing situations in some cases, and in others I just simply ignored the causes and ate what I felt like knowing I would pay for it later.  When my family goes out to Cold Stone for ice cream several times a week for a treat, I can only partake in the sorbet (which they have very limited choices) and can only enjoy the smells and sights of the flavored ice creams.

I also have intestinal pain and stomach problems when I get stressed or suffer from anxiety, severe anxiety and stress can cause me to have high stomach pains which lead to vomiting, or intestinal cramping which can leave me in misery and trapped in the bathroom for hours.

It is easier to control food triggers as those are things I can choose to eat or not to eat, but it is much harder to keep my stress and anxiety under control.  Meditation helps, music therapy, and I find that working out very heavily helps though not at first.  I find that sometimes because a mental state can trigger irritable bowel syndrome, a heavy workout can distract me from the state and therefore ease my stomach pains.

In the past six months I have had fewer problems than in previous years, but I did suffer some problems with traveling for work.  I actually almost always have stomach and intestinal problems when traveling anywhere at all, and this has sometimes made vacations with my wife or children a little less enjoyable that I had wished.

There is no real treatment for irritable bowel syndrome, there were several medications prescribed for it over the past years and most of them have been recalled and pulled from the market for side effects, which is why you don’t see commercials for Zelnorme and other medications anymore.  Some dietitians and medical experts say Fiber can help alleviate irritable bowel, others say increasing probiotics and other supplements can, but I have tried them all to no avail.

All you can do is try and isolate your triggers and do your best to avoid them, the same can be said about Migraine sufferers and people with certain other headaches.

In my personal and professional life I pride myself in being someone who has a wide range of knowledge. I have found that I have a natural curiosity and desire to learn about as much as I can about anything related to technology, science and a few other categories. As a child I used to read the entire encyclopedia volumes from A – Z and even spent some time reading the entire Webster’s Dictionary including every single word and meaning.

Unfortunately, I am also cursed with having a odd sense of memory. I have a fantastic memory for some things, but a terrible memory for others. I don’t seem to have the ability to pick and choose what information “burns” into my mind and what information does not, as a result I may read an obscure fact about a fish species six months ago and be able to recall that information instantly, but last week I could had an entire conversation with someone and barely be able to recall what we talked about.

Science and Technology of all sorts and categories are one of the items that tend to stay lodged in my brain, music lyrics however are very difficult, I could listen to most rock music songs twenty times and still never be able to remember the lyrics. I also have a very poor memory for things I listen to, but a much better memory for things that I read or watch.

One of the funniest things about my poor memory, is I can tell you that Celery is the only negative calorie food item on the planet, that lightning travels at 186,000 miles per second, and almost every line from the movie “Tombstone”, but if you asked me to recite any one of the 300 poems I wrote in the past year I could not recite a single one, all I would remember is the topics of a few of them, maybe a few words.

So I find it funny that I sometimes browse my own poetry blog and see poems I have written that I didn’t remember I had wrote until after reading it again months later. Perhaps this is a side effect from churning out so many poems, I heard that some song writers and musicians actually have a hard time remembering their own lyrics until they rehearse them dozens of times over and over, so maybe it isn’t that uncommon.

I am a firm believer in knowledge is power and the more you information you know the better off you are, life is too short to squander it in ignorance. I try to read and learn as many new things every single day in my life and I visit Wikipedia and news sites often to try and learn something. I read popular science magazines and such every time I use the restroom and actually do almost all of my “non computer” reading in the restroom on bio breaks.

My coworkers sometimes refer to me as Google Justin, or Wiki Justin in my ability to recall some facts and obscure information in so many topics ranges. I just enjoy learning and spreading my information and I think more people should spend time expanding their knowledge; you never know when you may be in a social situation where that information could come in handy.

-Justin Germino

In an ideal world most parents would never have to spend time contemplating how to punish their children, this is really a sickening thought and one that I dread talking with my wife about.  I grew up in a family where spanking, hitting and yelling were common place and remember the fear, and terror I had as I awaited the next belt whipping from things I did wrong.  That kind of fear and pain only got worse through the years as what was just a belt whip on the bottom as a kid turned into being hit with an open hand in the face as I became an older child, to once being actually close fist punched in the face as a teenager.

As a result of my own upbringing I am strongly opposed to physical punishment in almost every way, invoking fear as a means to enforce good behavior is ultimately detrimental to the mental health of the child.  However I think that it can be very difficult to discipline some children who are just not fazed by time outs, corner time, or simply “chore” punishments which we have leveraged over the years in my own house.

Removing privileges still remains a punishment reserved for some behaviors, as well as sending a child to spend some alone time in their room.  Though punishing a two year old is vastly different and requires a different set of punishments than a five or six year old who has much more comprehension and is able to understand more.

One thing I still do in my own household and is common in most I imagine is get too upset and frustrated when dealing with a child who doesn’t listen and does something bad.  I yell more than I should and it is one of my own personal goals to weed that own tendency out of my repertoire as it doesn’t do anything but vent my own frustration and sometimes my kids end up with hurt feelings.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a perfect parent or a perfect disciplinary system as each child has their own unique personality and what works on one doesn’t work as well on another.  I think it takes some experimentation to find a punishment that is fair and disliked enough that it will encourage your child to make better choices, but trying to teach them not to do things because they are wrong is more important than them just following rules because they are afraid or dislike the punishment.

One of my biggest challenges is my two year old who happens to be very stubborn and gets wild and almost uncontrollable in public places sometimes, these involve constantly moving, jumping at restaurants and other public places as well as being very loud and putting feet up on the table…etc.  I have not found an effective punishment that can deter this as I have tried talking, removing privileges, timeouts, and punishments that are instilled after we have already went home like going to bed early.  Nothing really works though when my two year old is in one of these moods and I wonder if there is just some ways that a two year old needs a little more flexibility, or what would be the best method to try and discourage and prevent this behavior.  Ignoring was often a recommended tactic but doesn’t really work at all.

I like many parents am just trying to raise my kids to be good hearted, intelligent and responsible adults when they are older, I want them to make the right choices and help reinforce good behaviors while they are young while help them make better choices and have the best behavior they can have at home.  On some days the kids are great, others they fight like animals with each other.  All one can do and hope is that they have raised happy, healthy kids who were provided with the tools to learn and grow and felt encouraged and nurtured while being reasonably punished when they tested the waters or acted poorly.

One of the things I enjoy least about parenting is definitely punishing my children when they have done something wrong, as they grow up so quickly I would prefer to spend more time engaged in some activity with them.  I just hope that I can find the right balance of punishment so my kids will grow up without feeling some of the psychic scars that I have suffered.

-Justin Germino

In the article Twitter Followers:  More is not always better, I was one of a few bloggers interviewed by the author about my own experience with Twitter trains and follower schemes that promise to grow your twitter following at the expense of gaining sheer volume instead of value of followers.

This article slants toward the same point of view that I mentioned in my Dragon Blogger article about Twitter Pyramid Schemes, which talked about the negative experience I had while experimenting with such sites for research for my blog posts.

It is a good article and points out how even though these sites promise many followers, you will start losing your “quality” followers which are people you built a rappore with and communicate with, for sheer numbers which is probably not a good idea for someone who actively socializes on Twitter, but may be a worthy tradeoff for a company looking for merely spamming their brand name.

-Justin Germino

I would have to say that airlines are starting to make desperate decisions lately, like charging for choosing a different seat on a plane or even for your first check on baggage.  In flight meals can only be bought, and beverage service soon will not be complimentary I bet.   The sheep herding that is boarding a plane went fairly smoothly as I squeezed my way onto US Airways flight 304 from Phoenix to Charlotte, I knew my entire day would be wasted on the flight as due to the time difference plus the flight time, I left in the morning and would be arriving in the late afternoon.

As I am trying to control my dieting, I spent over an hour watching people eat airline food around me chewing and swallowing while I sat hungry in my seat.  I did succumb and eat one of my cereal bars packed for the occasion however.  I also spent the time listening to my iPOD and typing up blog posts, at last count I had typed 2 poems and four posts for a total of nearly three thousand words typed while on the flight.

I sat next to someone who watched pirated movies that were still in Theaters and this made me consider just how much piracy is going on in the movie industry.  He was watching Angels and Demons which wasn’t even released on DVD yet, torrents and such networks make it all to easy to distribute pirated movies.  My wife had a great idea that she told me previously, all movie studios should release DVD copies of the movies at the same time the movies are published in theaters.  Though to get a DVD copy early, there should be an increased cost say $30 for the early release fee of the DVD.  That way people who didn’t want to see a movie in theaters could purchase it right away and watch in their own home, most would pay extra for the convenience.  Or at least my family would, as we prefer to watch movies at home than see them in the theater.

Anyway, back to my flight story.

Airlines should have internet access on board the flight using Wi-Fi or some other antenna, you can just be so much more productive, heck I could have had these posts published instead of just queuing them in Word until I get to my Hotel later today.  Instead of charging customers for existing services, they should find a way to provide new services and charge a premium for them.

-Justin Germino

Sometimes I make my kids lunch or dinner depending on how busy it is around the house and if my wife needs me to cover the kids meals, I am not a good cook and am also very lazy in the kitchen (though I have been known to make some mean salad’s and the occasional grilled meal). I developed the ultimate system for making grilled cheese sandwiches that is actually much healthier than pan frying the bread in butter or oil.

Simple Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

• 2 slices of bread
• 2 slices of American or cheddar cheese (preferably a really soft cheese like Kraft Singles or Velveeta Singles)

1. Put two slices of bread in the toast and set it to about medium
2. As soon as the toast pops out of the toaster place both slices of cheese in between the two toasted slices on a plate.
3. Put the whole sandwich in the microwave for 9 – 15 seconds (depending on how high powered your microwave is)
4. Watch the sandwich cooking and when the cheese melts and curls around the bread its done.
5. Take out, slice sandwich and serve.

Total time is about 5 minutes, no butter or oil in the bread and the bread is nice and toasted while the cheese is gooey. My kids love it, and its healthier and quicker than pan frying Grilled Cheese.

-Justin Germino