Justin Germino Ramblings

I am going to do a 2 part New Years Resolutions series on my personal blog this time.  Today’s post is all about my personal resolutions for 2012 and what I hope to aspire, achieve and conquer in the upcoming year. My second post tomorrow will be about my blogging goals for 2012 and center around expanding my hobby turned obsession.

Losing a Little Weight

It is not without irony that I like may other people want to aspire to lose a little more weight and tone up more in 2012.  I have gained about 10 pounds over the past 15 months or so and though I am not nearly as heavy as I was back in 2006/2007 I can’t afford to become complacent either.  In the latter part of 2011, I was only going to the Gym 1x per week and doing my home exercise about 1x per week in addition.  In 2012, I am hoping to work out no less than 3-4x per week with 2-3x being at the gym where I have more equipment at my disposal.

Now that I have a new iPod Touch with Spotify, I have more incentive to work out and have great tunes on to assist with the mood.  I really enjoy working out to heavy music and it seems to help relieve stress while working out.

I would like to finally hit my bench mark of being able to do 10 reps of benching 200 pounds.  I was never able to bench more than 180 pounds and even that only a few times.  It shouldn’t be impossible but this is a personal strength goal I am trying to achieve. 

Being a Better Father

I strive to balance a work / home balance and want to make sure I continue to take as much time as possible to enjoy life with the kid while the are the ages they are.  We engage in play activity no less than 1 hour on weekdays and several hours each weekend and I am looking forward to helping my oldest dive into LEGO Mindstorms and play more with my youngest.  I always need to strive for more patience and I hate that I yell more than I should as a parent.

Patience and calm are something I strive for more as a parent, I find that the older my kids get the more frustrated I get with mistakes or behaviors that wouldn’t have bothered me if they did them when they were 3 or 4 years old.  The good thing we don’t believe in physical punishment, never have but I don’t want to be the type of father that is too harsh and leaves psychological scars from scolding them either.

Being a Better Husband

I have made many mistakes over my 15 year relationship with my wife which will make 16 years this may and 13 years marriage this July 4th 2012.  I also need to apply my patience and understanding a little more here in this relationship.   I strive to be a better listener and communicator, I find bad habits I have developed (some say because I am a Libra) where I am always rationalizing, arguing a point or trying to prove one side or another.  It has lead to some of the moments I am not proud of in myself and I will continue to improve as a person.  It is funny how one can lose rationality in the heat of an argument, yet be perfectly logical and choose the right course of actions when not in such a “fight or flight” situation.

Last but not least I continue to strive to be better at my job which is the foundation on which my life is built.  It is my great job and role that provides many of the benefits that allows my family to live our lifestyle which is fairly modest.

These are my personal goals for 2012 and I will continue to work on them.

-Justin Germino

My wife and I managed to escape to Encinitas together for a post holiday recovery and to ring in the new year together while Grandma watches the kids.  This is a tradition we have done for many years were we celebrate the New Year together and the previous several years we have rung in the New Year in Las Vegas usually at The M hotel drinking Champagne while we watch the ball drop.

This year instead we are doing a Dinner Cruise to ring in the New Year, and the 4 hour cruise will actually be on the water when the ball drops.  2011 was a fairly good year to our family and any complaints I have are more than outweighed by the blessings for sure.

Today is just a relaxation day and maybe dining out on some great restaurants around the area.  You know we will be visiting East Asian Village Diner which is one of our favorite places and we order a Monk Stone Pot every time we come visit California.

This will be the first trip where I have my iPad 2, Bloggie Camera and iPod Touch in tow, so I should be able to take more pictures of the beach if I should go down there.

-Justin Germino

It would seem lately I have started to become plagued by my stomach issues again.  It started out with nearly daily upper intense stomach pain that leads me to vomit usually 1 or more times per day.  I have vomited about 4 times in the past 7 days, and this isn’t a bug but something wrong with either my digestion or overall health.

The last time I had such a string of issues like this was 3 years ago, and not sure whether stress or simply needing a chiropractic adjustment resolved it.  I have pretty much cut out coffee these past few days but it hasn’t helped and I can’t seem to find a trigger.

It may be the sour cream or milk based products I had in a few side dishes around the holidays, I am very sensitive to butter, cream, sour cream, milk in any dishes lately and get severe problems with stomach pains when having it.  But cheese doesn’t seem to affect me as negatively for some reason.

I will have to find time to go back to the chiropractor and see if simply I have a nerve pinched which is affecting my digestive health maybe that will resolve it.

-Justin Germino

What I don’t like is when in this digital age companies are unable to allow a customer to have multiple accounts and yet still require them to have separate emails and passwords to log into those accounts to manage and pay bills. What’s worse is when a company will not send you a bill from one of your service accounts to your address if it is in another state.

It is a minor annoyance that I have to get an email with my statement or use another service to monitor my due dates, but the fact that I had to create a fake account I never use just to login to pay a 2nd bill is really annoying.  I have enough online accounts and the fact that I have to keep one more orphaned account out there is just something that shouldn’t be needed.

-Justin Germino

It was a hectic but fun last couple of days where I spent many hours putting together Lego sets for my 5 year old and playing with my kids during the Christmas weekend.  We enjoyed some playground battles with their new Nerf guns and hand axes as well.

My son’s loved their Kindle Fire’s even more than I thought they would and one of the best scenes was seeing them tucked into bed and getting 1/2 hour Kindle Fire time before sleep.  My youngest was watching a movie I preloaded on his while my 8 year old was playing a strategy game on his Kindle Fire.

We almost have a daily tradition now where my kids and I go to the Amazon App Store to see which app Amazon is offering for free that day and my kids were delighted to pick up Where’s My Water? for free yesterday which was a game they loved playing on my iPad in which you have to help a Crocodile (or Alligator) take a bath.

I took some home video with my new Bloggie Touch 4GB and already loaded Spotify and a few apps on my iPod Touch 32GB which also has a camera and does Facetime.

My mother in law also loved her Kindle Fire we got her and came over to preload new applications for it.  All 3 Kindle Fire’s were great gifts and nobody was disappointed with them.

The kids adapted to them much better than I thought they would considering they were so used to using my iPad 2 for the past 6 months.  Not 1 complaint, not 1 this doesn’t do what the iPad does or anything about the size of the screen.  It was like the perfect tablet for their ages.

The only gift remaining to be open is the LEGO Mindstorms NXT set that my son got from Santa and I will help him build some robots and program them in the near future.  I intend to video record some of our creations too!

-Justin Germino

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Christmas Eve is just the beginning in our house where we have the family over for dinner and the kids get to open their grandparents presents after dinner.  It is a taste of the Xmas unwrapping come early and my kids have been eagerly awaiting the day.

One of the traditions my kids look forward to is that I compile a DVD of all Christmas home video’s of previous years so they can watch their reactions as they open presents, and see what they got from Christmas yonder.  I have home videos of every Christmas since my oldest was 2 which is 6 years worth of video clips.

Another tradition is the morning of Christmas when my kids get up WAAAAY too early and we don’t let the present unwrapping begin until around 7am (we wait for grandparents to come over for breakfast and unwrapping).  My kids and I always stay up in my office and watch Holiday YouTube video’s, typically the Muppets, Cats or Dogs ones and pass the time until they can go down and get to the present revealing ceremonies.

For Christmas every year since I have been with my wife we have done a Honey Baked Ham for Xmas, which is quite delicious.  I grew up in my family having homemade Lasagna for Christmas which my wife often makes the week before and she did a few days ago. 

What Christmas traditions do you do in your family?

So I have started seeing some life in Digg lately, enough that it justified me adding a Digg button to my sharebar on DragonBlogger.com to compliment my other social media buttons.  Out of the blue I have been getting like 20-30 new followers per week on Digg over the past few weeks and it seems like the system is still active.

We shall see if it adds any traffic and if it shows in my top 10 referral list which is still dominated by StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, BlogEngage and occasionally Tumblr.

In the meantime, I wonder how many other bloggers continue to keep Digg as one of their primary sharing sites?  Who still gets a bunch of traffic from Digg?

Have you seen any other new sites crop up that are worth adding?  I see the extra buttons for a few niche article sites, but my site is too broad and doesn’t really fit to add things like DesignFloat or some of the directories that have specific content only articles. 

One reason why I like BlogEngage is that any category of any blog can be eligible, and even personal blogs, food blogs, and blogs that run any number of random topics in their posts can find a home there.

-Justin Germino

So you get back from a job or something and make a smoothie only to turn around and see this freaky monster staring right at you.  What do you do?

[youtube width=”550″ height=”343″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsLXQEeLiI0[/youtube]

The Secret World is one of the games I have been dying to join since I started reading about it last year.  Funcom is nearing to release an MMO unlike any other in that it is set in modern times where every conspiracy has truth and monsters lurk in the fabric of our world.

Three factions including Dragon, Illumanti and Templars all have different approaches to how they deal with the conspiracies and interface with society.  Of course I signed up as a Dragon when I joined the games over 500k wait list.

The game reminds me of a Role Playing Game I used to love playing as a kid called Dark Conspiracy.  This is a game I used to play with my brother mostly and is very much what The Secret World reminds me of.

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An RPG/MMO set in modern times, but in The Secret World there are over 500 skill selections and any character can master any number of skills.  You don’t get stuck in one class or another and can dynamically equip your character quest by quest if you need to.

The game also boasts some of the strongest storylines, and you can kill hours just investigating conspiracies and tracking down information, putting clues together.  Of course there are zombie fests and monster hunts and you can join in the political atmosphere as well.

Will The Secret World live up to all the hype?  This game has been in development for a few years now and is supposed to hit beta very soon with full release in April 2012.

Maybe you will be a Templar?

[youtube width=”550″ height=”343”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H82MhvKo8bo[/youtube]

-Justin Germino

Our Gronkle like Boston Terrier named Porky is really in the dog house this week after chewing on some Christmas presents left under the tree and almost destroying a Nintendo DS game that my son left out.  Even with teeth marks scoring the cartridge it fortunately still worked.

Porky was always a chewer and pulverized my outdoor drip systems repeatedly by ripping out and chewing up the rubber tubes or plastic drip heads.  I lost many plants due to not being able to water them, and few solutions worked effectively for long.

He also has been known to carry off a kids action figure and chew a limb off here or there, but lately his grab and chew fixations have reached an all time high and we are at the point where he will need to be crated or chained up in the yard when we all leave the house.

I can’t seem to get through to him, and considered just leaving dog toys all over but he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a dog toy and a kids toy and it probably would just encourage him.

The fact that this dog managed to carry a glass covered candle (not in a box) out the doggie door and chew off all the wrapping paper was nuts.  He also has been known to carry folders with papers out back and chew them up, literally he would be the dog that ate your homework if he had a chance.

He primarily does the bad chewing things when we leave the house and he is home alone, he doesn’t do it at night or while we are home for the most part.  Even with his companion Donut with him, he can’t stop himself from being a BAD DOG this week.  Santa going to bring him COAL!

-Justin Germino

For myself I am thrilled that my Amazon Affiliate earnings have broken all previous records over the past three years this past 45 days.  Ever since I started using the EasyAZON plugin for WordPress.  I have been seeing an increase in earnings, but the holiday shopping of 2011 really turned my Amazon Associates into an income generator for my personal blog and technology blog this year.

Between November 1st and December 18th, I was able to bring in $406.84 in earnings on a total of 142 products sold through my affiliate links.  I sold 13 Kindle Fire devices through my Amazon Affiliate link which made up almost 1/5 of all sales.

Ironically I have seen a drop off of sponsored links, reviews on my blog but between AdSense and the increased Amazon Affiliate sales my blog earnings continue to hold up well in the winter months.

All in all, I made more from Amazon affiliate in the last two months of the year than I did for the entire previous 10 months combined.  I eagerly await the payments to come deposited into my account after Christmas and end of January where I will use the earnings to help pay down some bills.

I did find the image feature of EasyAzon a little too subtle, I assigned separate tracking cookies to the images but few would know that the image leads to an Amazon poster or item, so the info boxes work best as do the text links as far as bringing in a better CPC and CPA rate for using the plugin.

If you want to learn more about EasyAzon, head on over to Dragon Blogger where I review EasyAzon and compare it against other Amazon Affiliate WordPress plugins.  Note others work very well as well, but EasyAzon has some more features than most.

http://www.dragonblogger.com/comparing-easyazon-wordpress-plugin/

-Justin Germino

By the way, the Kindle Fire Rocks and if you don’t have one yet and can’t afford an iPad, this is a great device to have for those who don’t have the $500 for an iPad.