Justin Germino Ramblings

I was stumbling on StumbleUpon the other night and came across a site called My Cat is Retarded.  It is a photo site similar to LOLCats, but without any captions and just has pictures of cats in very bizarre poses and situations.  Maybe its the sick twisted humor in me, but I found the image funny and many of the images so hilarious that I just browsed through three dozen posts just laughing at occasional cat photo’s.  I am a cat lover and one thing I love about cats is the crazy situations they get themselves into, it just is plain funny to see.

-Justin Germino

Twilight is especially popular in Arizona because the author Stephanie Meyer lives here in Arizona and even though my literary icon Stephen King has denounced Stephanie Meyer I think the Twilight series has its place in modern times.  Any book series that gets kids and teenagers to read is to be celebrated.  Literature itself has fallen so dramatically with younger adults and children that it is a welcome relief that books can still grab interest and become obsessions like wildfire.  With most vampire series being R rated and worse (Anne Rice anyone) it is good to see a series that fits with audiences in the younger preteen and teen years that can still touch the subject.

I myself enjoyed the first movie, I haven’t read the books only because I haven’t had the time not because I didn’t want to.  My wife must be one of the very few women on the planet who has no interest in seeing the Twilight: New Moon film, even when I asked her if she wanted to go see it together she made it clear she had no interest.

-Justin Germino

Today we had to make the tough decision to put down our almost nine year old Boston Terrier named Gouda Emmenthaler Germino. He started having severe seizures for nearly four hours straight starting at three in the morning and had lost all sight and hearing and lost all coherence. We took him to the vet as soon as they opened and it was just best to put him out of his misery as he was clearly in pain and hurting. This has been a devastating day, especially for my wife since this was her dog. I bought this dog for her back in May 2001 as a gift and this was her first child and he has been such a loving member of our family, welcoming both of our children into this world without any jealousy at all.

Here is a small photo gallery in memory of Gouda our beloved Boston Terrier.

Fortunately, since we knew Gouda had been sick for a while on and off with pneumonia and a spinal stroke, we knew this day would come eventually. We had gotten another Boston Terrier named Porky in the beginning of the year who is only a 1 year old. So having a 2nd Boston Terrier helps ease the pain of losing our older one. One of the many reasons why two dogs are better than one in the family.

-Justin Germino

This site is kicking off a free Advertising Contest and 4 lucky winners will receive free 125×125 AD slots for 2 months on this site, the contest will run from November 3rd 2009 until November 17th 2009. I will pick 4 winners who will be given a 125×125 AD prominently displayed in my sidebar for a full month.

To enter the contest you can do the following, an entrant can gain a maximum of 5 entries:

• Leave a comment (1 entry)

• Subscribe to this blog via RSS Email (1 entry)

• Subscribe to DragonBlogger.com RSS Email (1 entry)

• Retweet the following on Twitter “JustinGermino.com is giving away free 125×125 AD slots to 4 lucky winners, enter contest now for free: http://ow.ly/z367 #jgfreead” (1 entry)

• Write a blog post linking back to this post, advertising the free ad (1 entry)

Good luck to the entrants of the contest and I wish everyone good luck.

Update:  Contest is over, the 4 winners are announced:

Blaine Bullman

Reyjr

Lucifer

and

Akira07

-Justin Germino

Now that Walmart sells laptops you may be tempted to assume that Walmart has the best prices in Laptops, but you would be wrong. I was shopping in Walmart the other day and though they have laptops with AMD Sempron processors for just under $400 dollars, you can find laptops $299 or less on Dell.com and other computer manufacturer sites directly. The deal is even better if you can find a coupon for a discount which is found in almost every single Sunday paper (especially for Dell).

If you are looking to buy a laptop or desktop for the family, there is no better time than getting a really cheap computer or laptop as a second or third home computer. If all you need it for is surfing the web, Office, and variety of basic applications than you will find a sub $400 laptop should do just fine, especially if it is a learning computer for younger kids. You can always upgrade later when your child gets older.

Walmart has good prices on laptops, but they they are by no means the cheapest and you can find better quality laptops for cheaper prices by shopping at the manufacturers directly or by doing some digging online.

-Justin Germino

Tonight my wife and I are attending AZ Culture’s Havana Night event at Babaloos Cuban Cafe in Phoenix, this fantastic event features a Four Course Meal, expertly paired with perfectly matching wines. As you dine you will be soothed by the Silky Voice of Luis Salgado, singing classic Cuban “Sons.” The food will be a blend of Classic & Contemporary Pan-Caribbean fair, with a focus on Cuban cuisine.  The event costs $50/person; that includes dinner w/ wine and one of Willy’s Cigars!  We know several friends from AZ Culture are attending and if you are looking for a great mixer and social event this is the place to be tonight in Arizona.

Hope to see some of you there.

-Justin Germino

Playdough or any form of modeling clay is simply one of the most brilliant inventions and creations of all time.  My three year old lately has been very interested in playing with modeling clay and pretends to create dinosaurs, robots, monsters and all sorts of creations.  Of course they all look like multi-colored blobs to me, but his imagination is fired away and when he mixes colors of clay together he is becoming immersed in his world of creativity and play.  Though I used modeling clay like Sculptey III when I was a child (older kid) for playing with clay, Playdough is much better for younger kids for the following reasons:

The first being that it is non toxic, and they will consume some of it.

The second is that it dries out and becomes easy to vacuum and cleanup in comparison to oily modeling clay which can stain and be harder to scrape off table surfaces when you are ready to clean up.

The third is that Playdough tends to not stain surfaces, modeling clay has oils that can leave stain marks on surfaces.  Cheap dough from dollar stores tends to have the same staining oils, but the name brand Playdough is higher quality and for a few bucks more you get dough that is often higher quality and easier to mold.

So make sure you have some playdough in your house if you have a kid that is over two years old, it is worth letting them mold, mash and create a world of play.

-Justin Germino

Last year when my old Amana fridge compressor broke, I had purchased a new fridge that dispenses purified water and ice. The fridge had its own MWF filter that you screw into the bottom of it and it is easily replaceable. Though my filter expired (shows that it needs replacing) last month I haven’t had a chance to purchase a replacement filter yet I still drink water and use ice. I need to replace it soon so the filter doesn’t start corroding and potentially contaminating the ice and drinking water. I am not sure how long you could go on the same filter before it can actually cause some particles to float in your water.

I still think filters and purifiers are a little too expensive for everyone’s budget, the ones for the sink faucets are cheaper than the ones for a refrigerator but they are still cheaper than if you buy gallons of fresh or purified water every day or week, and you aren’t polluting the environment with all the plastic bottles you are wasting by purchasing bottled water.

-Justin Germino

We were shopping in Walmart on the weekend and my wife and I were talking about potentially getting a new China set for the kitchen.  My son loudly exclaims “They can’t fit China in Walmart” and thought that Walmart sold China.  We explained to him that China were fancy plates, bowls and matching porcelain ware.  The simple assumption was funny and I realized that my kids have been eating on plastic plates and using plastic silverware since they were first able to eat, its no wonder why they don’t know about China.

Meanwhile, I didn’t go on to confuse him and say that almost everything Walmart sells is made in China.

-Justin Germino

My current hosting provider Dreamhost had so many network and server related outages last week that my wife purchased a hosting account with Host Monster and requested I migrate her three blogs over to the new hosting provider.  This was a multi day effort and I spent Veterans Day last week converting two of the blogs over.  This made me consider migrating my own blogs off to a new hosting provider which I probably will do in the near future if I don’t have better stability and performance with Dreamhost.

It is an enormous amount of work and I wrote my first post about my efforts titled Migrating WordPress Blog to a New Hosting Provider Part 1 to help explain to people how to backup their existing wordpress blog to prepare it for the transfer.

-Justin Germino