Justin Germino Ramblings

You know you are in true love when the person you are with inspires you to be a better person than you who are. Like the quote from Jack Nicholson in the movie “As Good As It Gets” when he says to Helen Hunt:
“You make me want to be a better man”

This is how it feels to be in true love, your partner compliments your strengths and you want to work on and improve your weaknesses not only for your partner, but for yourself.

My wife and I are working on our fourteenth year together as a couple and toward our eleventh year of marriage, and we have had peaks and valleys in our relationship that would have sunk the titanic had it not been for the strength and durability of our love.

Often I find myself remembering repeatedly why I fell in love with her in the first place and that if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be half the man I am today. I can only hope that I have instilled as much positive in her life as she has provided me in my own.

-Justin Germino

In an effort to improve my blog performance and stability, my hosting provider Dreamhost has converted this blog to using the mod_php in Apache, instead of using the PHP as a CGI with FastCGI, this should make my blog much more efficient, load faster and have less outages.  The reason why many hosting companies use PHP as a CGI is because then the PHP process can be owned by the “user” instead of the apache process, which means it can be tracked to each individual customer account, instead of one customer possibly overloading the PHP module and breaking apache for everyone sharing the same server.

Since I did purchase VPS (Virtual Private Server), I don’t share my hosting with another user and have dedicated resources, so this means I am able to run my apache with php build in as the module instead of as a CGI extension.  Already my page load times are 40% better, and my free RAM on the server went from 31mb to over 140MB just by converting to mod_php.  Hopefully this means my days of outages when I reach 20 concurrant users are over.

-Justin Germino

There is nothing pleasant about someone who parks their RV Camper in a home community where it takes up about two driveways and creates an eyesore just sitting there for a long period of time. Somebody should just call a company that does rv towing to haul it away.

HOA rules in most communities typically prohibit long term parking of RV’s on the open streets, that is why a home should have an RV gate so you can store it on your property, but not on the street. These create visibility blocks to for cars can’t see past them and when kids play in the streets, they can sometimes run out in front or behind an RV and not be visible to any passing cards.

If you are one of these people who keeps your RV parked on your street or community, do the right think and find a proper parking facility for it.

-Justin Germino

I was at a gas station last week and saw a father of two girls filling up his truck, one of the girls popped open a 16oz can of Rockstar energy drink and starting downing it. She had to be under 10 years old and was already drinking double serving sizes of caffeine and chemical energy!

When I was a kid growing up my parents wouldn’t let me drink soda at all except on special occasions claiming it was for adults only, my wife and I take the same point of view with our children. Root Beer is about the only soda they drink and even then it is once a month at most. They don’t drink pure fruit juice all the time either, usually we always mix 3oz of juice with 5oz water so it is always diluted.

But this isn’t even soda, this is like letting your eight year old drink two cups of coffee, it is absurd and borderline neglect to let children under teenage years to consume these type of beverages. The nervous system is not capable of handling that much dosage and stimulation and this can cause major health problems later in life.

People tend to abuse any substance that gives them energy, good feeling or artificial stimulation and companies will always be there to try innovative ways to provide such products.  It is up to parents to educate their children and at best, not contribute to the problem and hasten their addiction and entry into such products.

-Justin Germino

I normally don’t mind doing dishes, but one side effect is water tends to splash all over the counter tops and floor. The reason is because my kitchen sink isn’t large enough or deep enough, so when washing a big pan or pot, water bounces everywhere. If I had done a little research I would have looked at some deep copper kitchen sinks when I had my home built so I could have avoided this minor annoyance.

I also don’t like my dish washer more often than not, it smells like dead fish (we have to run vinegar and cleaner in it monthly) and the dishes come out with food still on them sometimes. I will be replacing it with a better one if it ever craps out on me.

There, that is my rant on dishes, now time to do laundry.

-Justin Germino

Sodium Nitrite and Nitrates are among one of the most carcinogenic chemicals you can ingest into your body.  At high doses they can cause serious harm in children even more than adults and have been thought to increase the risk of numerous types of cancers from stomach, colon to brain cancers.  Nitrites deprive your body of oxygen when you consume them, and lets face it are often found only in processed food which is bad for you anyway.

Deli meats and hot dogs are the number one sources of Sodium Nitrites, but you will find them in almost any prepackaged food item that you can pick up in the refrigerated section of your grocery store.  In my opinion it is imperative to support the company’s and brands that make products that do not contain Nitrates or Nitrites.  Hormel and Oscar Meyer both make some (though very small) Nitrite free Deli Meats, you can find a much wider selection on online stores like Applegate Farms.  I haven’t tried Applegate Farms deli meats yet, but they are one of the only places I have seen that have Nitrite free pepperoni and genoa salami.  Most other companies only have Nitrite free Turkey or Chicken.

As a general rule of thumb you should try to eat as few processed foods as possible, and remember that as parents you are completely responsible for the health and nutrition of your children.  If you can find Nitrite free alternatives to the foods, then you should buy those products instead.

-Justin Germino

With all of the news advertisements and media commercials for treatments of Mesothelioma, I wonder how much Asbestos legislation has really changed over the last several decades. Do we really know how much still exists in old buildings and is exposure still a risk for children and adults in various scenario’s? I remember when my school back in NY had to be modified to remove the Asbestos, this was a long time ago and the school was very very old. The school had it done over a summer, they had to redo the paint, rip open walls and more.

How many years from now are we going to hear about the poisoning and health conditions for PCB poisoning and Phthalates causing health problems decades from now where you will need legal help to compensation claim. What is true is that chemicals and products over the years have never been fully tested properly for health side effects, companies rush products to market without any thought about long term side effects.

-Justin Germino

Yes, that cute face right there comes with a wicked side effect.

This dog has the worst gas you could possibly imagine, we are talking so bad his stomach and noxious expulsions can be heard from across the room sometimes and smelled from a mile away.  It is like a skunk constantly fumigating our home.  Even taking the dog on a car trip to Pet Smart, we had to drive with the windows open as he kept stinking up the car.
For those who don’t know, Boston Terriers are the most “Flatulent” breed of dog on the planet, proclaimed by Animal Planet.  It is because of their constant intake and swallowing of air in their mouths, the air gets trapped in their gut and ferments.  But he is so cute and such a well mannered and friendly loving dog, we just have to wear gas masks when we are around him sometimes.

-Justin Germino

I had to go down with my wife to my son’s Charter School to be fingerprinted today, all of the parents for the school are required to do 12 hours per year of volunteer work for the school and require fingerprinting and background checks before you begin the volunteer work.  While getting my fingers printed, I noticed the volunteer sign in sheet was still very manual, where volunteers had to sign in on a paper their start time and end time.  It made me wonder why the school doesn’t implement a badge and barcode scanner where you just scan your time in and out and it records in a computer for fool proof accuracy. This way you would just hold your badge under the scanner when entering and leaving, it just seems like a more logical and automated choice.

I do think it is a great idea that this Arizona Charter School enforces fingerprinting, this is a safeguard to make sure nobody with a criminal background is working around the children. Perhaps though to conserve funding they didn’t want to have to print up badges for all volunteers and require a computer for handling the in/out process. Maybe they could implement it in the future.

-Justin Germino

I wrote a guest post about Relationships and how people need to respect each other which can be lost or forgotten if you have spent a great deal of time with someone.  My article is hosted on It Might Be Love, and is titled Relationship Advice: The Respect Factor.  It is a recommended read for anyone in a committed relationship and is solid relationship advice or you can take it as marriage advice.

Thanks to Chelle, for letting be a guest blogger on her popular and successful blog.

-Justin Germino