Justin Germino Ramblings

Really it was poor timing for my wife and I to come down sick at the start of a 3 day weekend, though I came down with a bad cold on Friday night my wife had caught it by Saturday evening.

Sore throats, chills, headaches and nasal problems didn’t stop us from getting a few chores done like organizing the garage and attic and getting stuff ready for a yard sale as well as taking the boys to see Kung-Fu Panda 2 on Sunday.

I installed a Clothesline in the yard finally after getting some decent stucco anchors from Home Depot, but didn’t have the oomph to cut the dead branches off of my Jacaranda tree which looks like it has skeletal fingers poking into the sky don’t you think?

Will have to catch up on the yard work next weekend when feeling a bit better, meanwhile I always feel it is a waste to get sick on your days off of work because that is your only real time to enjoy yourself and have fun.  Spending them sick is like being cheated out of some relaxation and fun time and I can’t

On Friday I migrated this site and my poetry blog over to my new custom VPS hosting provided by MyHosting.com and they have been very pleasant to work with in making the transition by helping me move my files/databases and even helping me optimize my PHP and SQL engines for best performance possible.

I feel the support I have received is among the best out of any hosting provider and the technical proficiency of the engineer I worked with was outstanding.  This wasn’t any first level help desk support, but an actual WordPress export who had experience with migrating and optimizing hundreds of WordPress installs.

I wasn’t disappointed with HostMonster it’s just that I noticed my site traffic started causing the shared hosting to throttle my cpu utilization which was impacting performance and pageload times on my site.

It was time to migrate to VPS hosting that can grow with RAM, CPU and Bandwidth usage as my sites grow and MyHosting with custom flexible packages and their exceptional support convinced me they were worth taking a chance on.

-Justin Germino

My youngest is asking for his own computer recently and has just started testing the waters of playing games like Runes of Magic and other games online.  I am going to have to configure a third computer station in my office at some point so both kids can come up and just plugin and the three of us can all game side by side together online.

Right now my oldest is having fun with Nickelodeon’s MonkeyQuest when we aren’t playing Warcraft III or Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II.  Maybe Santa will give my youngest a new laptop this Christmas or he will get lucky on his birthday but I am just not sure if he would use it as much as his older brother who has always preferred the PC to console games.

My youngest is just as happy playing Xbox360 or Wii as long as he is playing with somebody whereas my oldest prefers gaming to involve a keyboard and mouse combination and does not like any other method of gaming.

Pretty interesting how early on their gaming preferences come out and start to display.  I would tend to agree with my oldest that I prefer the Keyboard/Mouse for gaming vs the gamepad.  I am finding that even with an Xbox360 I prefer my PC for gaming a bit more and should be upgrading it shortly.

I am considering upgrading my PC then putting together some of the older components in a new case for my Son and having him use that PC as his new one while giving the laptop to my youngest.  Figure I could get 3 workable PC’s for about $800 which would be like 2 new ones plus the existing laptop.  Definitely something to save up for, and my PC needs are quite expensive as I want the latest MoBo and an Intel i7 with no less than a GeForce 570 video card.

-Justin Germino

Po the Kung-Fu Panda which is probably one of my favorite Jack Black characters came out in theaters and I will be taking my family to see it this weekend.  I wonder if he will once again perform the Wushi Finger Hold or other martial arts feat against his foes.

[youtube width=”550″ height=”343″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdaMGcOyfjM[/youtube]

I am avoiding the reviews like the plague so I go into the movie open minded and untainted by other’s details and opinions.  Meanwhile, we are ready for the pure awesomeness of Jack Black in Kung-Fu Panda 2 as he faces his old enemy (Stairs) yet again.

-Justin Germino

You firmly believe that no man is an island, so whenever you find yourself alone in the confines of your apartment, you feel restless and get the feeling that insanity is slowly creeping up on you.  A solution to this dilemma is, no, not to get your ex-husband’s mother to live with you, but to get yourself a pet cockatiel.  Among the gamut of small pets, cockatiels are birds which are pretty easy to care for and train to talk.  It can be the perfect companion for you, once you are able to get it to talk.  So, how do you do that?

Before you can get any bird to talk, you have to tame it first.  It is a common misconception that you can both train and tame a bird at the same time.  If you need a hand in taming your pet cockatiel, you can ask your vet or a pet store owner to help you out, as they are more experienced in this aspect.

Just like other animals (and yes, even your ex-husband), your cockatiel learns through repetition.  Set aside maybe four 10-minute sessions a day to teaching your cockatiel to talk.  Begin by saying a monosyllabic word to your bird over and over again.  If the word is a noun, for instance, show your cockatiel the object it refers to.  If it’s an action word, act it out as you say it.  This helps increase the bird’s comprehension of the word.   Don’t be slumped over your lounge chair as you teach your bird the word “jump”.

Give your pet a treat every time he says the word correctly. This motivates your cockatiel to listen to you and look at your lip-movements more intently.

Don’t talk while your bird talks. Be sure it is silent before you say anything, because it may not be learning what you’re trying to teach it if it is busy talking at the same time you are.

While teaching your pet bird to talk, take it out of its cage and hold it. This reduces distractions around him.  It also helps to talk in a high-pitched or sing-song tone of voice.  This makes it more interesting for them, enough to hold their attention.

Don’t expect your pet cockatiel to outtalk David Letterman at his first attempts.  Initially, your pet’s speech may be garbled, but that’s alright.  Just keep practicing and encouraging your cockatiel.  Don’t scold it if it doesn’t seem to get things right.  Patience is the key here.

Jessy lives a frugal life, loves her children and lovely pets. She blogs on cat weight loss as well as the variety of health topics including sudden weight loss.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by jinterwas

Why is the world in such a hurry that someone must become completely rude and disrespectful if they don’t get immediate actions.  I was livid when my wife was telling me how the other week she was driving into a drive through bank to deposit some money and she just pulled up and started putting together information for the deposit when somebody behind her pulled up and started honking then cursing loudly for her to hurry up.

Seriously, I mean at a bank drive through line which is a fairly professional establishment does it seem okay to display this kind of tact or lack thereof?

Just a few weeks before that my wife and I were leaving WalMart with our kids and a lady driving a car wasn’t going to stop and yield to pedestrians.  We saw the car and stopped our family and the car finally stopped, but some woman passerby yelled at the driving woman to stop that there were kids present.  Sure enough the male passenger got out and started threatening the woman and a whole scene of people came over and got involved. 

Luckily I just walked my kids and family to the car and the fighting never escalated beyond some foul language and yelling before the people drove off but it could have been a violent situation and this is a prime example about courtesy and respect lacking in the vast majority of people nowadays.

Simply put everyone should pretend that they are on a job interview all the time whenever interfacing with other customers.  Your job is to make sure you are remembered for having outstanding character and professionalism at all times.  This should be especially true now that security camera’s are everywhere and at any time in any public location you are on camera.  The next time you think about public hostility, assault or being a punk remember your appearance might end up on YouTube or as evidence to policy should you actually commit a crime.

It is a wonder why so many people fear "Big Brother" and having no privacy, people seem to have no ability to control the way they act in public and have lost all sense of decency.  This seems to be worse in larger cities, I still see evidence of more respect and community from smaller towns and suburbs.  But alas, I still believe there is more good in this world than evil and more people are inherently polite and respectful but subscribe to the theory that the "bad events" stand out in your head more which makes it seem there is more by contrast.

-Justin Germino

So yesterday my lovely wife gives me an iPad 2 as a present and I am overjoyed, happy and excited.  She knew when I got her an iPad 2 several weeks ago how much I wanted one and I am sure when she saw me drooling over hers or walking past it while it lie sleeping on her desk gazing at it like a child wanting forbidden cake she knew how much I wanted one.

Turns out that right after I got her one, she turned around and did the same for me.  It arrived and I have been scouring the best free applications for it as soon as I had it on the network.

The Netflix movie quality is just amazing and Toy Story 3 looked beautiful on the iPad 2 screen.

One of my favorite news apps was BBC news which was free and works very well on the iPad.

Hootsuite is the winner for my favorite Twitter client for the iPad and allows you to scroll through all your columns and accounts with ease.  It is a little bit tricky to select which account you want to tweet from when you have sausage fingers like me though and that would be my only caveat.

An the other day I tested the WordPress iPad app and wrote a post on the fly publishing it when done.  Typing on the iPad while it is in landscape mode is fairly easy and I can get 3 fingers from each hand working the Qwerty keyboard, I can type fairly fast though there is a bit higher rate of error due to not being able to feel the keys and my fingers will still need time to memorize the layout and positions which will improve my accuracy and speed.

The WordPress app is great for moderating and responding to comments and typing up quick blog posts but lacks fine options for formatting.  You can insert pictures/video but lack many of the formatting buttons or access to many of the custom WordPress plugins.  The WordPress iPad app does let you write posts in Draft mode and save them locally on the iPad allowing you to publish or schedule them when you finally get back to a Wi-Fi network.

Angry Birds Rio was the first free game app I downloaded, I have tons more to download and I am really excited to finally be able to start reviewing iPad apps on my technology blog.

-Justin Germino

Sunday night my wife and I finally got together and worked on our Last Will and Testaments.  We decided to stop procrastinating and get it done because we both are flying to Italy this summer and in the event something goes horribly wrong we would likely both be wiped out at the same time.  We need to ensure our kids are taken care of and more than 1 guardian is listed in case other things happen.

We had decided to use LegalZoom and it was the first time I had used the service, we both found it easy to use and had both of our computers side by side while we drafted our wills together helping each other through the planning and question process.

Really while we were sitting there drafting up our special instructions, how our assets get divided the whole thought of imagining my kids losing their parents at their young age and me not being there for them came to mind and it is an oddly hollow feeling you get when you are working on your own will.  At least this is the way it was for me, when I was finished I couldn’t help but think I should savor the time I have with my kids now even more than I already do.

Everyone should have a will drafted and this is especially true if you have children, you need to have guardians legally appointed and disclose how whatever is left over gets handled.  I regret putting it off until 7 years after my first son was born, I should have had a last will and testament seven years ago and shouldn’t have waited so long.

The good thing about the LegalZoom package we bought is we can make unlimited updates and amendments, so as you collect more assets or items you can specifically chose who and where you want those assets to be distributed.  An example is if you want to leave a family heirloom to one person, or a computer to another.  You can specifically spell out each individual asset and what you want done with it. 

At around $70 for the will it will arrive in the mail in full documentation and be kept in a safety deposit box.  I know many people who have paid 5x that price to have a last will and testament drawn up by lawyers.  I am however glad that it is over with and it was a necessity that had to be ripped off like a Band-Aid.

-Justin Germino

This is a test post written from the WordPress iPad application and I am fairly impressed how easy it is to just connect your iPad to WordPress and start typing away on new posts. The hardest thing for me is to reduce my touch typing to using only two or three fingers on the iPad instead of my full hands. I can type much faster on the iPad than i could with my blackberry however and I am impressed with how quickly the iPad picks up keystrokes.

So far you can set tags, title and summary from the iPad WordPress application but I have not tried to upload media yet. Though there are buttons on the bottom of my WordPress app where I can easily insert media.

For our little Anniversary celebration on Friday night my wife had gotten me a new Canon Camera Bag (actually one made by Canon) this is the Deluxe Gadget Bag 10EG which claimed it can hold up to 2 camera’s or 1 camera and up to 4 lenses.  I had received a zoom lens for Christmas so was glad to finally have a bag that let me carry all of my camera lenses and components in one bag.

The bag fits all my needs and has an unused pouch which I am reserving for when I eventually get a Macro lens which I want so I can take more detailed up close shots of insects and lizards in the future.

I am a pretty happy camper right now as a result.

For my wife’s gift, I got her the Apple iPad 2 and she spent hours setting it all up and perusing through thousands of apps to load on it.

-Justin Germino

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