Justin Germino Ramblings

I first have to thank @BlazingMinds for the idea of creating a weekly post highlighting some of my Twitter favorites, she also was using the Twitter AnyWhere plugin which turns each persons Twitter ID into a link that shows a popup that allows you to instantly follow them once you authenticate via OATH. This made it very quick and efficient to simply hover over and follow the recommended people.

In the spirit of recognizing people on Twitter and going beyond a simple FollowFriday Tweet, I have chosen to highlight some people this week who deserve your attention. Rather than list names, I will also include why I think they are worthy of a follow.

• @RockAlong

Arizona Music Production company that promotes local bands in AZ, they put on shows, events and run a music blog that does featured artists to bring attention to some of the great musicians in Arizona. Interactive and always willing to help share an opinion and answer questions if you are into music or an AZ resident you should be following this person.

• @ChefsCookbook

A chef who specializes in French Cooking Techniques and has a Culinary Degree who runs  a blog that is more than just recipes.  You can find informational articles about the culinary industry, French cooking tips and more than two hundred original recipes.  If you have any food questions, this is the gal to go to to get them answered.

• @jsinkeywest

Dedicated blogger who not only runs PotPolitics.com but is giving back to the blogging community with BloggerLuv a network for bloggers to socialize and get to know each other.  He has a very clear and in your face writing style, no BS and he is a good person to chat with on Twitter if you are in the blogging community.

• @FamousBloggers

FamousBloggers and more specifically @hishaman is one of the best bloggers I know online today.  He is not only helpful to other bloggers but goes above and beyond by creating a blogging website that allows some of the best bloggers to come together to provide information to readers.  It also happens to have one of the best blog themes I have ever seen.  I featured two favorite blogs on DragonBlogger.com and FamousBloggers.net was one of them.

• @BlazingMinds

BlazingMinds has at least three articles per week that are so compelling I have to read and leave a comment or two on.  Karen will often find and bring up a subject, WordPress Plugin or other online tool that I hadn’t found yet and they always provide value.

• @krenee76

Kiesha runs We Blog Better which is probably one of the top up and coming blogs in my opinion.  The theme is fantastic, the articles interesting, well written and always provide value to readers in the blogging community.  If you are a blogger you must follow this blogger.

Summary

This is my top five people I recommend on Twitter this week and the primary reasons.  This week focused on Bloggers but next week I will specifically showcase my top five Poets on Twitter.

I also have a few Twitter lists where I specifically list some really good bloggers and poets.

• Twitter List of Bloggers
• Twitter List of Poets

And of course, don’t forget to follow me @DragonBlogger on Twitter, I try to be as interactive as possible and you can join my Random Twitter Poetry game several times per week.

-Justin Germino

123Greetings Connect lets you track Holidays, Birthdays, Anniversaries or other special events so you never forget to send a card to for someones special occasion and is the ideal way for you to keep track of all your friends and family members special dates.

So why would you use 123Greetings Connect?

123Greetings Connect is an online contact book that now includes event reminders which allows you to keep your track of peoples names, emails, birthdays, anniversaries or any other special occasion and then setup custom reminders so that you can get updates before a special occasion comes up. Using these notifications you can also use 123Greetings  to send eCards (even post date them so they always arrive on time and are never late) to your friends and family.

Featuring 123Greetings Connect Event Reminders:

All you have to do is sign up at 123Greetings Connect and create an account then start building your contact list. You can then configure Birthday reminders by clicking on “My Birthdays”

From here you can configure your Birthday Reminder settings and select when you want to be notified about birthdays, you can set to be notified up to two weeks before one of your contacts Birthday’s occur and again to be reminded on the same day.

In addition to configuring Birthday reminders you can use 123Greetings Connect to setup email reminders for calendar events. Using the “My Events” link you can drill down through the event categories and personalize your reminders so you only get notified about the events that matter to you.

Simply select the events that you want to be reminded about, click the “Save the selected events to My Events” button and you will get email notifications at the specified interval you set.

Using the My Events feature of 123Greetings Connect allows you to keep track of holidays and other calendar events so that you never forget to recognize someone on an event again.

-Justin Germino

For Father’s Day my wife had bought me a Keurig Coffee Machine because I had told her how much I liked the one at my office.  The ability to brew just a single cup of coffee as you need it without wasting a whole pot was just too clever of an idea.  I wasn’t a heavy coffee drinker previously, but since purchasing the Keurig Coffee Machine I drink about two cups of coffee per day on average.  The machine just makes it far too convienent to quickly brew up a batch and just drink.

What also is amazing is the amount of Keurig K-Cups you can find now that come in all sorts of flavored coffees.  I haven’t been a big fan of black bitter coffee, and find myself drawn to the Hazelnut, Pecan, French Vanilla or other roasts that have flavoring mixed in with the blend.  Walmart and Fry’s Marketplace here don’t have a very good selection of K-Cups but I found a great selection at Bed Bath & Beyond and was able to pick up Caribou Coffee, Cinnamon Roll flavored Coffee from Donut House, and even some Green Tea K-Cups.

If you like drinking the occasional cup of coffee, I highly recommend you look into the Keurig Coffee Machine, there is a reason why they have become so popular and simply pouring in one cup of water to get a perfect brewed cup of coffee is one of the easiest and best things about this device.

There are also dozens of flavors you can find on Amazon.com including my favorite two flavors including Green Mountain Southern Pecan and Rain Forest Nut.

-Justin Germino

I was eating at On The Border in Awhatukee the other day and had an unusual encounter with one of their light and healthy salads called the citrus chipotle chicken salad. I have always enjoyed eating at On the Border Mexican restaurant and typically my favorite dish there is the Dos Equis Fish Taco’s but for some reason I felt like something lighter due to the fact that it was over a hundred and fifteen degrees outside.

My family started dining on the chips and salsa which is not overly spicy but does at a little bit of heat as you eat more of it. When the salad finally arrived I dove right in and noted that other than the mango dressing which was a little tangy, the salad itself was a little more bland than I expected.

After eating about three quarters of my salad I my mouth was still on fire from the salsa of the chips and I commented that the salsa must be really strong today. I normally don’t eat spicy food and my stomach just cannot take spicy cuisine like it could in my youth, I have horrible stomach pains, intestinal pains and whatnot if I eat foods that are just to rich in spicy peppers and the like.

By the time I finished the salad my mouth was on fire, salivating, drinking Diet Coke like crazy I just couldn’t figure out why my mouth wouldn’t cool down. It wasnt until I inspected my salad more closely that I realized there were tiny diced pieces of Jalapeno peppers littered all over the plate and hidden in the lettuce!

There was no mention of Jalapeno’s in the entree description nor a spicy symbol or warning like they have in Chinese restaurants. I was literally burning from the mouth to my wounded stomach. Fortunately, the waitress was so very friendly that she spoke to her manager and they actually took the salad off my bill saying “Nobody should have to pay for a dish that hurt them” and I greatly appreciate it. I wasn’t even asking for my bill to be comped I just thought they should rememeber to update people that it is spicy next time.

So I won’t be eating the spicy citrus chipotle chicken salad at On The Border again, however the service was superb and the fact that they took it off my bill because I didn’t like it (even after I ate it) I don’t hold the salad against such a fine restaurant. As I said the Dos Equis Fish Taco’s are amazing, and they do have good Chips and Salsa and I did have the the big bordurrito with fajita steak which is fantastic.

If you live in Arizona and have not eaten at On The Borders yet, you should.

Ahwatukee-OTB LLC
5005 E. Ray Rd
Phoenix, AZ 85044-6407
Phone: 480-705-5454

-Justin Germino

Last week I purchased Super Mario Galaxy 2 as my three year old is a huge fan of all Mario related games for the Nintendo Wii. The most noticeable new feature of Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the expanded features of the “Helper Hand” by the second player, the player no longer can trigger jumps or trip up Player 1, but instead functions as a full assistance in SMG2. The Helper hand can shoot stars, stun and even destroy enemies in the second Mario Galaxy game as well as collect stars.

While I wish there was a true two player element of Super Mario Galaxy 2 (split screen top bottom where Mario and Luigi can explore the same world at the same time and have to meetup at the same star to shoot to other worlds) the planetoids themselves are a little too small to support two characters running around at the same time. The game has the same level of graphics and gameplay as the original but new creative worlds and costumes are available for Mario to pick up.

The fact that you are just as amazed with the gravity effects, smooth responsive controls and sense of wonder and creativity with the second Mario Galaxy game as you were with the first is a tribute to how brilliant the game designers truly are. Seriously, Metacritic has SMG2 rated at 97 with 82 Critic Reviews, and may of the gaming review giants in the industry like IGN, OneUp and GameSpot all gave Super Mario Galaxy 2 “100” score the highest rating ever!

Clearly Nintendo continues to do the right thing when it comes to releasing games with their flagship characters, and this is one game that my three year old loves to play (and watch me play constantly). You would not go wrong purchasing this game and if you haven’t played the original you are missing out on two of the best Nintendo Wii games that exist right now.

-Justin Germino

So I was watching National Geographic the other day about unusual animal friendships and they showcased this older clip from 1999 about a Kitten and Crow who had become friends for four years together. The cat and crow would play with each other, taunt each other and pal around the yard of this family home. It totally baffled crow experts at the time on how two species so vastly different and opposed (since cats can eat baby crows) would somehow make a connection that causes them to enjoy each others company and interact like they truly had a friendship. If you somehow haven’t seen this YouTube Video which has more than 6 million views, then watch this you won’t believe your eyes how this Kitten and Crow interact with each other:

This had me thinking that under the right conditions even animals in the animal world can befriend and “care” about each other enough to refrain from the instinctual urge to kill each other. I have seen a Lion befriend a Deer (must have never starved) and other animals that would befriend completely different species. I have seen dogs and cats befriend each other where both were raised since puppies and kittens in the same household, but never saw the odd variety of wild animals become friends I have seen in this show.

It makes you wonder why a species like Humans as advanced as we are can’t put aside cultural and ideological differences and be friends without ignorance, bigotry and hatred running rampant in this world.

There just isn’t enough friendship in life, treasure your friends no matter what race or species they are and open your mind to accepting anyone as a friend.

-Justin Germino

Okay, thanks to Blogs With Wings having a post about the author “avatarizing” herself I thought it would be pretty funny to see how one of my profile photo’s would look like after being “avatarized”.

The Avatarize Yourself website is actually from McDonalds and I just actually saw it for the first time a few days ago, which is ironic because I am sure it has been around for quite awhile.

Here is the photo I uploaded to be Avatarized:

Here is what I look like as an angry Na’vi:

Pretty funny, the Happy expression has my eyes too widespread apart, my face looks like my Boston Terriers where I am a Na’vi with Fishbowl eyes.

-Justin Germino

Hybrid cars are known for being silent under twenty miles per hour and virtually undetectable by audio means under five miles per hour.  This is why according to the governments auto safety agency that in 2009 Hybrid cars are twice as likely to be involved in pedestrian collisions at speeds under twenty miles per hour than non-hybrid cars.  Hybrids also are a bane to the blind or visually impaired as they rely on audio cues to help determine if cars are nearby on the road.

Automakers all seem to be taking this seriously and already you can start finding some Hybrid cars like the Nissan Leaf having an artificial whirring sound on the vehicles to help people hear when the car is approaching.  General Motors, Toyota and other companies are following suit before the Government makes it a requirement that all Hybrid or Electric cars produce an audible noise that can make people aware of their presence.  I think this is a good idea and that the companies should be on top of it.

We all want cars to be quieter, but if cars were completely silent they will clearly pose more of a risk, especially to children and others who cross the road and might not always be so aware of looking all the time but the sound of a car is enough to warn them.  My three year old for instance walks down the side of a road and when he hears a car or a truck he immediately speeds up toward his mother or me and lets us know that a car or truck is coming and he doesn’t want to get “crushed” and this is a prime example of a kid hearing the car coming from behind and knowing it is approaching before he sees it.

So remember if driving one of the older model Hybrids that are nearly silent at lower speeds to be double aware of pedestrians and see if they are making eye contact and notice your car visually, they probably will not hear the car coming if you are going under 20 miles per hour.

-Justin Germino

I have been a Firefox user for many years to the point where I don’t ever open an Internet Explorer Browser lately, but with Firefox having more and more problems with Flash, Javascript and other websites causing the browser to render slowly or crash I find myself using Google Chrome more and more often for casual surfing and turning to Firefox only for the Firebug and other addons that offer debug and advanced functionality.  Google Chrome however is nearly caught up in addons and I compared a few addons that were identical between Firefox and Chrome and found the same addons cause worse performance problems with Firefox than they do with Chrome.  In addition I grew tired of my Firefox browser consuming over 700mb of RAM if I leave it open for more than five hours and just do a casual amount of surfing and work on the browser.

So I decided to try and make a full switch to Google Chrome by setting it as the default browser, and I found that my instinct is to Open Firefox.  For some reason I still find the simplistic Chrome interface a little foreign and the browser is outside of my “comfort zone”.  I do notice that everything works faster in WordPress (Editor mode), Uploading images…etc are all faster in Google Chrome than with Firefox 3.6 and I am trying to retrain my instincts to open Firefox to instead focus on using Chrome exclusively.

So far I haven’t run into anything that has caused me trouble in Google Chrome and other than the extra addons I had like Alexa Bar, FireBug, YSlow and such for Firefox, I am exclusively using Google Chrome.  I even installed the StumbleUpon Toolbar for Chrome and the SEOQuake Toolbar which runs much faster on Chrome than on Firefox.

My initial testing of Firefox 4 Beta 1 showed the browser to be highly unstable and not ready for public release, but I am hoping that Mozilla can catch up and improve its speed and performance with Firefox 4 and regain some of its internet glory that it lost to Opera and Chrome over the past few years.  In case you didn’t know, all the major sites are touting that Chrome and Opera are the fastest browsers on the web right now and in my own tests you can surf faster with Chrome and Opera.

I actually have five browsers installed on my machine (Internet Explorer 8, Opera 10.6, FireFox 3.6, Google Chrome, and Gecko).  I use all of these browsers to test how my sites render on various browsers, but I also use them to handle multiple sessions.  I need to be logged into 2 Google Analytics or Google AdSense accounts at the same time, or 2 separate Twitter accounts.  Because all applications set 1 cookie only, you can’t have multiple user sessions in the same browser space to the same application so this forces me to work with multiple browsers at the same time at night when I am doing a variety of administrative work for my own blogs and my wife’s blogs at the same time.

In the end I really think the Google Chrome browser is pretty fantastic.  What is your favorite browser and why?

-Justin Germino

So my wife and I had split up our tasks the other evening and she had to drive from Casa Grande to the valley to do some business for her company Rock Along Productions, while I drove the kids downtown to take them to swim lessons. She called me 1/2 way into swim lessons that the rear passenger tire blew out on the I-10 going 75mph and she barely made it to the side of the road safely. It would have taken me almost an hour and a half to get to her position, so I suggested she call the roadside assistance.

Unfortunately road side assistance was at least an hour out but a nice bystander pulled off the freeway and changed her tire for her. It is always a decent thing when somebody does an act of kindness and there are far too few incidents where people lend a hand anymore. She and I were appreciative and thanks to a full sized spare my wife was able to get back to Casa Grande where we looked at local tire companies and finally decided to take our tires in.

This was the condition of the tire that blew out, scary stuff having this happen on a freeway:

Meanwhile, our car was 8 years old and the tires were at least 4-5 years old so we decided to replace all four tires since the tread was worn down on the other 3. Instead of 2 star rating tires we decided to get much higher quality tires with 100,000 mile warranty and lifespan.

Hopefully we won’t deal with tire blowouts for a while.

Thanks to the unknown dude who pulled over on the I-10 to help my wife and change her tire.

-Justin Germino