Justin Germino Ramblings

I have only 20 or so followers on Associated Content, but they are quite devoted. Nearly every article that I get published on Associated Content lately, I at least get five or six comments from my regular readers. I can’t figure out why I get hundreds of page views on my blogs per day, but I am lucky to get one or two comments on my other blogs, yet my Associated Content constantly garners comments 50% of the time per pageview.

I attribute this effect similar to the Entrecard Drop Response, people drop on you and expect you to drop back on them. Associated Content publishers comment on your articles, expecting and hoping you will do the same back on their articles, but Associated Content pays only an average of $1.50 per thousand pageviews, so the ten to twenty reciprocal comments/views you can get are virtually negligible to your earnings.

In the meantime I have now reached a Clout Level 5 five with over 5,000 pageviews for my seventy or so articles published, I earn about $2.00 per month in pageview performance at this time, which is peanuts, but it can grow in the future, plus I do make an average of $2 – $3 for each upfront payment article I write.

When my blog earnings start dipping from lack of advertisers and opportunities being available, I find myself falling back to associated content to keep up my earning supply a little bit. There are some people who have made more than a thousand dollars on Associated Content, some possibly earn a hundred or more per month between writing articles and pageview performance.

Overall though, at least four months into Associated Content I have earned more on my 3rd month blogging than I have in my 4th month of Associated Content, and I think blogging still has higher earning potential, but Associated Content may be a good way to augment your earnings.

-Justin Germino

In an effort to save money and cut spending and budgets, some cities including Maricopa are cutting back on Truancy programs, in the case of Maricopa they are completely pulling the program entirely. Truancy programs are designed to help catch kids who skip school or hang and lurk about in public places instead of attending school.

By pulling officers away from this vital assignment we are encouraging and making it easier for kids who get dropped of at school to simply leave the premises and make their way around town or back to their houses. Even if not caught, these programs were a deterrent for most kids for trying to pull it off.

With many parents working and having nobody at home to look after the kids, kids can easily skip school and spend time at home with parents completely unaware in most cases. But truancy officers who monitor the schools and surrounding streets and local businesses (especially eateries) they had a high success rate of returning kids to school and catching them.

It is a sad day as more and more funding is pulled from making sure our kids are attending schools and getting education, it is bad enough that the schools themselves are losing funding for books, simple supplies but now Cities are cutting back on the ability to even enforce that kids attend school.

-Justin Germino

When it comes to alternative medicine we are talking about a multi billion dollar industry where companies can rush herbal products and remedies to market without having to go through any of the trials and testing done by traditional prescription medications. I was reading several articles in the Associated Press about this subject and was not surprised to found that the results of over 2.5 billion dollars worth of research studies show absolutely no evidence that herbal treatments in any way help cancer patients.

In fact there are many types of herbal and alternative therapies that interfere with modern medicinal treatments of cancer and may in fact make patients worse instead of better. For example it was shown in the studies that people taking Beta Carotene supplements had higher rates of Lung Cancer, and people taking Vitamin E supplements had higher rates of prostate cancer. Some herbal therapies interfere with the bodies hormones and actually feed and fuel the cancer cells making them grow more quickly and rapidly.

Some treatments and alternative therapies that have shown to be effective in helping alleviate symptoms (but not treat the disease itself) are:

• Ginger pills, are known and effective for reducing nausea for chemotherapy patients and this has been proven to be effective at aiding the side effects of chemotherapy.

• Acupuncture and massage therapies are shown to reduce stress levels and reduce pain by releasing natural body chemicals that assist.

Other than the above though there hasn’t been any single proof that herbal or alternative therapies in any way help treat cancer, most would have a placebo type effect if not be worse off than not taking anything at all.  In addition during recent testing it was shown that 6 out of 9 herbal supplement pills contained either the wrong dosage of herb that was listed on the bottle, or contained some toxic metals or other substance that was harmful to the body.

I believe that some alternative therapies and herbs are helpful, I have personally used Colloidal silver to treat throat infections, Oil of Oregano for chest colds, and ginseng tea for energy.  But I would highly recommend you only rely and use alternative therapies for relatively mild illness or ailments, when it comes to life threatening diseases it is best to stick with what is known and works.  Don’t gamble with your life and trust in something that has no medical or scientific proof.

That being said there are alternative therapies that will start curing these ailments, and these include Stem Cell therapies, Immunotherapies, Gene Therapies, but these are all based in science and medicine, and none of them are derived from herbal supplements.

-Justin Germino

I was interviewed yesterday by Ben Spark from I am Not A Famous Blogger in which I was asked about everything from when I started blogging, to my opinions on disclosure and making money with blogs online.  Ben Spark had met on SocialSpark as he is an IZEA Insider and I am part of his crew, I was happy to do the interview and look forward to reading more interviews he plans on doing with other members of his SocialSpark crew.

You can read my interview on I Am Not A Famous Blogger and see what Dragon Blogger says about the blogging industry and advice he gives to other bloggers.

FDA announced that people should stay away from using Zicam or other products that have “Zinc” as a primary ingredient for intranasal allergy or cold relief, the zinc has been shown to cause anosmia which is the loss of your sense of smell.  This tends to be a long lasting and can be permanent, and highlights the many ways that alternative treatments and remedies are starting to show side effects after they have already had widespread usage in the market.

Now, I am not against alternative therapies and let’s face it, how many prescription drugs have been on the market for years only to have a class action lawsuit and be pulled from having harmful side effects that only show up after thousands of people have taken the product and had ill effects from it.  Just remember that herbs, homeopathic treatments, all of these natural therapis have risks associated with them, just because they are touted as natural doesn’ t mean they are risk free.

So stay away from using any product containing Zinc inside your nasal passages just to be on the safe side.

-Justin Germino

Casa Grande will soon have a new and more user friendly Animal Care and Adoption center, this new facility which will at least be temporarily opened at First Avenue, will have room for 36 dogs and 36 cats which is double the number of both species from the former center.

With spacious corridors and more room for the pets the facility is also friendlier and more pleasing to visitors and prospective adopters of pets in need of a good and loving home. This facility will likely euthanize less pets as a result of being able to hold more pets for adoption, the previous center had to euthanize pets as a result of running out of space.

All pets are spayed and/or neutered upon arriving at the adoption center to help keep animal breeding under control, adopting a pet from your local shelter is far less expensive than buying from a breeder and often you can get some quality pure breed pets that were given up because the owner could not afford to keep them, or had to move. The new center will be open in July 2009 and is located at:

Casa Grande Animal Care and Adoption Center
202 E First Ave
Casa Grande, AZ 85122

-Justin Germino

I found this news on dailymail.co.uk site about the Twin Panther cubs Larisa and Sipura who were born on April 26th and were introduced to the public last week.  I have to admit great cat kittens are among the cutest creatures on the planet, yet they grow up to be such majestic and powerfully frightening beasts.

My wife was looking around at Boston Terrier ads on Craigslist the other day, this is how we found someone who was selling a Boston Terrier and purchased Porky our Black and White puppy, when she noticed several people posting ads claiming their Boston Terrier’s were dognapped.

Not only that but we did some research and learned that Arizona has a shortage of Boston Terriers which are in high demand, this combined with the fact that two dognappings in Mesa in the last several weeks mean that people need to be careful whenever they own a purebreed dog, especially one that is small in size.

People will steal anything to try and make a profit, even a family pet. Let’s face it, Boston Terrier dogs are family friendly and loving dogs, but they will go up to anyone and go with them. A thief could simply open the gate and call them and they would happily come and jump in their car, they just aren’t built to be protectors but family friends.

Be careful with your dogs people, make sure that you keep them indoors if possible, you don’t want your beloved family member to be dognapped next. This is doubly true if you own a Boston Terrier in Arizona it would seem.

-Justin Germino

Amazingly my son can draw and I mean constantly, he produces so many drawings that we can’t simply save them all without cluttering the entire house, yet he gets so hurt if we disregard or toss his drawings in the trash.  So I try to scan the best of his works into the computer to show him his work is stored digitally for safe keeping, and this makes him happy.  At five years old he just loves to draw and robots and monsters are his specialty, here are some of his drawings he provided with me this week.

Today was the final full day traveling in Cabo and we spent the entire day pretty much relaxing, with a final travel to Cabo San Lucas in the evening to do some shopping and eat on the beach. In the morning we had a couple’s massage on the beach provided by Cabo Azul hotel, the massage was fantastic, the lady who massaged me had large strong hands, much stronger than I would have expected and she ironed out my muscles really well. The only problem is I am very ticklish, and I could not stop giggling the whole time while she was jabbing her knuckles in my back, thighs and calves. She had asked me a few times if the pressure was okay, probably thinking she was hurting me.

We hung around pool side for several hours after just sunning and lounging, the resort has tons of very comfortable cushioned lounges by the pool, they have several hammocks and many shaded beds that you can just lie in all day. Some people just throw some clothing and claim these lounge spots early in the morning.

I have seen people lay pool side from 9am until sun down just lounging and eating, some people were so tanned you would think they were being cooked rotisserie style. Unfortunately even with the 70 SPF sunblock my wife and I were using, we both were sunburned on Friday after making it the whole week without being burned.

We flew back on Saturday July 6th early in the morning, which was a very simple and painless ordeal. Turned the rental car in, waited at airport for flight. The only thing to note is that you go through separate customs and baggage area in Phoenix airport because you are coming from out of the country.

Here are the final pictures from Cabo on June 5th, which was our last day.