Justin Germino Ramblings

The online Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership offered by The Lewis University is a degree to not only help you with technical IT job skills, but also managerial and leadership skills which help your advancement in an IT based career. We are talking about some fantastic courses including Data Networking, Intrusion Detection, Response and Recover, Encryption and Authentication systems just to name a few technical courses.

Combine those with IT Governance and Compliance, Project Management and Information Security as well as Legal and Ethical Issues in Information security and you will be gaining education that will help you stand out from a purely technical counterpart. If you are interested in starting a career in IT or furthering your career in the IT Industry, it is worth checking out Lewis University Online and learning more about what their Master’s degree programs can do for you.

-Justin Germino

Today I spend in my return from the Disney cruise and in recovery mode to unpack and catch up on work, house work, and the blog emails, comments and such. I will compile a small photo collection of the Disney cruise and put it up as a blog post later in week for those who are curious and want to know what it was like.

In the meantime, one of the worst parts about vacations is the return, and often people get a mild form of depression as they try to adjust back to their daily routine.

-Justin Germino

The latest study by the U.S. Geological Survey which looked at over 300 of the Nations streams between 1998 – 2005 found that nearly 100% of the fish were contaminated with some levels of mercury, and about 35% had levels higher than the recommended limits by the EPA.  The source of the mercury is believed to be a byproduct of coal based refineries as well as mining and other operations which deposit large amounts of mercury into the water supplies which is then converted to methylmercury by the environment which is absorbed into fish and shellfish.

We all know that fish is extremely healthy but with the mercury levels rising in fish we need to make sure that we consume fish that are the safest when it comes to mercury levels, and it is important to arm yourself with the knowledge of the safer fish to eat if you are worried about mercury.

Fish with lowest levels of mercury and safest to eat (2-3 times per week):
Anchovies
Atlantic cod
Chilean Sea Bass
Farmed Catfish
Herring
King Crab
Monkfish
Orange Roughy
Pacific Flounder
Scallops
Shrimp
Striped Bass
Tilapia
Wild Pacific and Alaskan Salmon

Moderate levels of mercury, safe to eat 1x per week:
Alaskan Halibut
Black Cod
Blue Crab
Blue Mussels
Canned Light Tuna
Dungeness Crab
Eastern Oysters
Pollack (Imitation Crab)
The following fish all have moderate levels of mercury:

Fish to avoid and are known to have high POP or Mercury Levels:
Atlantic Halibut
Farmed Salmon (recommended not more than 1x per month if pregnant, eat wild caught instead)
Golden Snapper (tilefish)
King Mackerel
Oysters (Gulf Coast)
Pike
Sea Bass
Shark
Swordfish
Tuna (Albacore and canned Albacore)

With the food industry looking to carve out bigger profits there is a major shift into providing and promoting foods and beverages that are “enhanced” with a few vitamins and minerals to give the illusion they are healthy for you. This illusion leads to consumers continuing to purchase and consume too much junk food because it touts a single healthy ingredient, whether it be fiber, calcium, Omega 3 Fatty acids, or any other vitamin or mineral.

The bottom line is you need to look at the bigger picture when purchasing and consuming food for your household, soda is not going to be good for you no matter what it is enhanced with. Candies, Pastries, many energy bars and drinks are just going to cause your body more harm than any benefit you would receive from the small supplements that are added to them. When deciding what to eat or drink overall consider the top factors (calories, how many calories is it in comparison to a like product), Fat (How much fat does the product have (saturated and Trans fats), Sugars (under Carbohydrates, you need to know the sugar content of the product), Sodium (how much salt is in the product). If any of these are too high, then it doesn’t matter if the product has 30% Vitamin A or 50% Vitamin D, the trade off of the calories, sugars or fats are worse than any benefit.

Always remember natural derived food sources (vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish, lean meats) will always be more beneficial than any artificially enhanced touted snack food. Marketing tricks are only there to get products sold, and will not provide you with proper nutrition.

-Justin Germino

My sons love to roughhouse with me and we play all sorts of role playing games and physical activities including wrestling, running, play sword fighting and more. So I picked up three Nerf N-Force swords from Walmart last week and we opened them up and have spent probably five hours in four day doing mock fencing. We would simulate the fight scenes from The Princess Bride, and my almost six year old would enjoy disarming me and slaying me, with my three year old always going around to try and flank me while I am busy battling my older boy.

It is a physical activity that gets us sweating, moving and teaches hand and eye coordination and builds reflexes, the swords are durable, rugged compared to cheap foam swords, but they are also harder and can cause minor injuries if you swing and get whacked with them too hard in the face, or jabbed too hard with them. That being said they are far safer than plastic swords which can even get sharp or cut when they get scratches on them, and they are much more fun to fence with. They extra weight makes them easier to strike and deflect incoming attacks and the blades do not bend as with cheaper foam swords.

If your kids love pretend sword fighting, I highly recommend the Nerf N-Force swords, now if you are balking about spending $13.00 on a foam sword, remember this. If your kids play with the swords a total of forty hours lets say over the life of the sword, then that means those swords cost you 32 cents per hour of activity. If they last longer then the cost per hour of play goes down even further. So think about when you pay $9 for a 1.5 hour movie at the theater, or $20 for an action figure at the store, the cost really isn’t much compared the the amount of play hours you get with the sword.

-Justin Germino

A friend had sent this to me and it was just too good not to post:

It’s time again for the annual ‘Stella Awards’! For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald’s in New Mexico, where she purchased coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right? That’s right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratcher handy.

Here are the Stella’s for the past year:

* SEVENTH PLACE *

Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

Start scratching!

* SIXTH PLACE *

Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles , California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps.

Scratch some more….

* FIFTH PLACE *

Terrence Dickson, of Bristol , Pennsylvania , who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count ’em, EIGHT days and survive on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner’s insurance company claiming undue mental Anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish.

Keep scratching. There are more…

Double hand scratching after this one..

* FOURTH PLACE *

Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stella’s when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor’s beagle – even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.

Pick a new spot to scratch, you’re getting a bald spot..

* THIRD PLACE *

Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tail bone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions?

Only two more so ease up on the scratching….

*SECOND PLACE*

Kara Walton, of Claymont , Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000….oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.

Ok. Here we go!!

* FIRST PLACE *

This year’s runaway First Place Stella Award winner was: Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City , Oklahoma , who purchased new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down?
$1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

Update:

I was contacted by someone who referenced me to the actual Stella Awards site, which in fact confirms that the above cases were internet fabrications and not actually part of the true Stella awards. Still was pretty funny though.

I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and saw what three days with less than five hours of sleep are doing to me, I have darker circles under my eyes and they are slightly sunken in. Your body has a way of showing symptoms appearance suffers when you sleep deprive your body. Most people would just find the best eye creams to help cover up and heal the aging signs and darkness around the eyes. Sleep can help remove the sunken and darker circles, but not sure what will reverse the wrinkling and weathered look that is starting to show as I am approaching my 32nd Birthday next month.

-Justin Germino

I have worked for many companies that employees can be nominated and received service awards, I often have come across people over my career who have collected awards and it leaves you scratching your head how such an accomplishment should have happened. With this, I bring you the most backhanded Award Nomination, for this nomination we are using Ralph as the subject name (not a real subject).

Summary of award nomination:

I have worked with many customer support representatives over the year and have never worked with an employee more capable of causing more confusion than the customer originally reported in the first place. Ralph goes above and beyond in his commitment to confusing and misconstruing information and is more dedicated to his work that he raises the bar for all of his peers.

Over and over I have been dazzled with Ralph’s ability to not understand the most basic of problem explanations and he has worked hundreds of support calls barely able to provide even the most basic of assistance to all but a handful. Ralph’s commitment to mediocrity is admirable and he shows great enthusiasm for his career path and degree in ignorance.

Ralph has tested and helped other engineers become better technical writers by being able to make mistakes with even the most simple instruction documentations. His innate talent for finding a way to break or incorrectly apply any task he is assigned with has helped hone the support skills of several other staff members.

This is why Ralph is nominated for a customer support award, because without Ralph the rest of the customer support team wouldn’t be challenged as much which could lead to complacency.

-Justin Germino

So I have a high quality and expensive ergonomic mesh office chair and it has served me well for a year, but I have a movement problem. I have hyperactivity where I am always moving my legs or rocking back and forth in my chair, and my chair arm broke, the screw which holds it on became stripped and I am stuck with a chair with a gimpy arm rest now.

I may have to search online and for office furniture to find a new replacement for my office chair if it degrades and falls apart any further. Meanwhile, I love this chair and I can sit in it for five hours straight without any fatigue or back pain.

-Justin Germino

A father’s influence on his children lasts an entire lifetime, and I write this article knowing full well the impacts and influence my own Father had on me and thinking what influence I will have on my own children. A father influences everything from a model of behavior to certain likes and dislikes, and though every single child has a unique personality, what his or her father likes and dislikes has influence on the child’s own tendencies.

Typical examples include people who have bigotry, ignorance or anger toward types of people whether it is race, gender or sexual preference, in many ways their children will either adapt these point of views to coincide with the father, or they will take a stand and polar opposite if their own beliefs are hardly opposed. Father’s influence how their children look for partners in life by girls looking to naturally find men either with similar traits as their father (if they are good men) or not wanting anything like their father (if they had an abusive or overly strict one). Often though children grow up and repeat the patterns and chose people who have similar personalities, even if it was something they would have preferred not to, or said they wouldn’t.

A father’s influence can make the difference between a child having a healthy self esteem and one who is crushed with a low self esteem, having a parent who is optimistic, positive and supportive can help your child thrive in life, and having a father who is critical, pessimistic and negative can cause a child to become introverted, reclusive and depressed. I speak from my own experience about this having had my own issues dealing with my own father.

Bottom line:

A Father has a huge influence in their child’s life and as in the movie Spiderman “With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility” it is up to us as fathers to model the behavior we want our children to emulate when they grow up. As father’s we set the standard on who we want our sons to be, and who we want our daughters to look for in husbands in the future. When we make mistakes as fathers we should always acknowledge them and help keep our kids informed that we are all human beings and part of being human is to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.

Don’t take being a father lightly, it is a huge responsibility.