Justin Germino Ramblings

While on my trip last week my wife found two scorpions in a single day and we have been averaging 4 scorpions per month in my house for over a year.  This has caused us to look into other pest control providers as the one we are using does a good job at keeping crickets and other insects at bay, but we appear to be infested with more dangerous bark scorpions.

With over 200 scorpions found crawling on our floor or walls in our house over the past four years I am amazed that nobody in the family has been stung yet.  I will be calling various pest control provides, and have researched that supposedly there are 3 poisons that specifically work on Scorpions and they are powders instead of liquid poisons. 

Scorpions are are highly resistant to regular insect poison as they are not insects but arachnids.  I am hoping by arming myself with the poison knowledge I can ask the right questions and get a pest control company that can actually kill them before someone gets stung.  We noted that out of all of our neighbors we appear to be the only ones on our block that report scorpions routinely in our house so we must have something about our house or property that draws them in.

-Justin Germino

I had my previous gas grill for over six years but after some problems with it over the last two weeks it was time to let go.  The grill did its job, but my wife and I decided to peruse Lowes and see what they had available.

We ended up with this magnificent grill you see in the pics above that has 3 burners, a separate "searer", and a burner for side items in a pot or pan.  Self igniter and with a temperature gauge on top, we were able to grill those NY Strip steaks in the picture in less than eight minutes on this puppy.

One thing about living in the desert of Arizona is that you can pretty much grill all year round, we grill chicken, fish, steak, pork, hot dogs, Portobello mushrooms and just about anything else.

This Master Forge grill is by far the best gas grill I have used in over 11 years of grilling food.

Anyone hungry yet?

-Justin Germino

It had been a while since I entered a blogging contest and I thought of no better contest to support than the one Kiesha was hosting on We Blog Better to celebrate the blogs first birthday coming up on October 19th.

Though I wasn’t a sponsor of the contest (mostly because I never saw any calls and was out of town for two weeks and must not have seen requests), I certainly became a participant.

WeBlogBetter.com Cash Contest is giving away a collection of cash prizes to winners in the following categories:

• $75 to someone who blogs about the contest
• $50 To someone who becomes a fan on Facebook and shares the article
• $50 to one random top commenter
• $40 to one lucky twitter follower who retweets the article
• $40 to one person who subscribers to the We Blog Better newsletter.
• $30 to one person who stumbles the article.
• and $25 to someone who Diggs this post on Twitter

6 people will win cash prizes and you can participate in one or all of the various contest methods.

The We Blog Better Cash Contest ends on October 31st 2010 and the winners will be announced on Friday November 5th 2010.

-Justin Germino

In various medical studies and articles recently released there is a possible link between the xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrom (CFS).  This virus is a retrovirus similar to HIV and quite pervasive.  Some studies show that 67% of people with CFS had XMRV and other studies showed different results or a variation or similar virus to XMRV in CFS patients.

In an article on the Wall Street Journal about the link between Retoviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome potential treatments would be the same type of HIV cocktails.  The article even mentions that AABB, a Bethesda, Md. which is a blood donation collection company is advising that people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome stop donating blood until a link can be clearly determined.  If CFS is caused by XMRV, then it is transmittable via blood transfusion just as HIV is and would pose the same risks of infecting others with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

There are so many virus that live and exist in the human body and scientists still don’t have clear understanding of which ones are benign and which ones actually cause diseases and illnesses.  This same MLV related viruses were also potentially linked to Prostate Cancer patients as patients had similar viruses. 

Interesting things happen at the cellular and viral level in biology and because it takes decades of controlled studies it can be quite difficult to determine the side effects and symptoms caused by such viruses.

-Justin Germino

Due to the fact that I was travelling for vacation and then work at the end of August and early September, I realized I hadn’t logged into Starcraft 2 since August 18th.  I was dismayed that I had this great game waiting for me to finish it and yet I had forgotten about it.

Like making a date with an old friend, I curled up on the ergonomic computer chair last night and decided to load the game and dive right back into the world of James Raynor and his struggle vs. the Queen of Blades.  The level I was on was extremely difficult for me, even in normal mode and pitted me against the Protoss where I had to retrieve an artifact while the planet was being burned away by a sun about to go supernova.

You race against the clock with this wall of fire following your armies while you try to stay ahead and destroy well defended protoss.  I tried twice and spent two hours only to end both times in failures.

So after playing the game for two hours in these epic battles, I made no progress in the game at all and went to bed wondering if I should have spent that time blogging instead?

-Justin Germino

I am one of those Stephen King fans that became completely immersed in the Dark Tower series which is one of my favorite book series of all time.  The fact that Stephen King managed to tie in nearly every book he had ever written into the Dark Tower as his kind of “universe” all his other novels center around or touch in some way was even more impressive to me.

When I borrowed the Stephen King UR Audio Book from the library I was pleased for its relatively short form (2 discs / 37 tracks).  My time for books and audio books has waned as of late due to my lack of being on the road, so I was glad I was able to get through a whole audio book on my recent trip out of town.

The book was written for and is about the Amazon Kindle, one that is shipped to Wesley Smith a man who recently broke up with his girlfriend over the fact that he spends too many times reading paper books and not listening to his girlfriend enough.

He realizes there is something amiss about his Amazon Kindle when the color is not the plain white and he sees a new UR beta function that he learns shows books, news articles and glimpses into other alternate realities and later the future.

Stephen King is a master of description and sets up the first third of the book describing all the characters, story, mentality.  His overt attention to every detail in a room, scene or character is one of the styles that draws me to his books every time.

It had similarities to so many other stories of course just subbing out the devices used to predict or see glimpses of the future, but still when the main characters of the story see a tragedy about to happen and seek to prevent it you get some unusual twists with some serious Dark Tower references in toward the end.

I found UR to be an engaging fictional Audio Book and it is a must read or listen to if you are a Stephen King fan.  It is not a horror book if you are concerned, and there are no horror elements at all.

-Justin Germino

Our last stop on our Royal Caribbean cruise out of Miami was the Mexican port of Cozumel.  Here we did our most fun excursion out of the entire trip as we embarked to explore the “Amazing Secret River”.  This tour involves a 30 minute boat ride, a 35 minute bus ride and a short walk to where you will be fitted with a wetsuit, life vest, and helmet with light.

You spend the next almost two hours traveling underground in a portion of the 9 mile long half submerged caverns.  Half the time is spent walking on land and the other half is spent swimming underground in water deeper than you could stand in.  It is quite scary swimming with nothing but thousand of stalactites above you and the head lamps of a small party of other tourists with you being the only light sources.

It felt like the setup to a horror movie like “Descent” but was incredibly fun, exhausting and kept you on your toes.  The stalactites and stalagmites were quite solid and sharp.  I suffered a knee bash to one while trying to kick off in the water and my wife hit her arm on a stalagmite sticking down to the water and received a wicked bruise as a result.

Here are the pictures from the Amazing Secret River tour and my wife and I spelunking in the underground caverns:

After the tour which took a total of seven hours we were deposited in a shopping port near Cozumel where we ate at Karen’s Mexican restaurant and had some really authentic flank steak taco’s and enchilada’s.  The flavor of the food is quite different than Arizona Mexican food and was tasty (though I didn’t like the thin guacamole and found the salsa to be very liquidy).

Here are the other Cozumel pictures:

-Justin Germino

I wasn’t directly affected by the September 11th tragedy of 2001, however at the time of the incident my mother worked on Wall Street and I was very concerned.  It just happened that she had been traveling for work and wasn’t in NY at all at the time, but having lived in New York for the first eighteen years of my life.  I was glued to CNN and watched all day from my job at the time for more information on the attacks as information streamed in across the country.

Now 9 years later, I have spent every year thinking about it on that day, you can’t help but be conscious that this was such an atrocity committed against our people and our nation.  That being said imagine the horror and terror for nations that undergo frequent terrorist bombings, attacks and assaults.  Our country was quite united and we saw the strength of our people and nation come together, not in fear but in defiance.  Unfortunately, I do believe this lead to an unnecessary war in Iraq and our failure to capture Osama Bin Laden only further weakens our ability to hit “individual” targets rather than directly assault entire nations.

The fact that a Mosque wants to be erected near Ground Zero does not however strike me the way it does many others.  We live in a land of freedoms and to claim that Mosque would be a victory shrine for terrorists or that somehow it would be a slap in the face of the American people isn’t true.  Muslims outnumber Catholics worldwide at more than a billion members and I read recently that Muslim is now the dominant religion worldwide having more members than any other religion.  To assume that 1% of the religious people are extremists would be over exaggerating, it is more like .001% and even that number includes tens of thousands of people.

We live in a country of freedoms and if anyone would deny a Mosque from being built but allow a Jewish Temple, or Catholic Cathedral would be ignoring the freedoms that make our country what it is.  That being said, I do think it could be perceived as “insensitive” to the citizens of NY though and that some education, patience and understanding be considered.

We live in a nation of freedom and fear and hatred have no place in a country where we claim to be open and accepting of all races, creeds, colors and religions.  That being said, I have a hard line on terrorism and think there is no mercy and understanding for those who harbor, assist or support terrorism and terrorist activities.

Let us hope as Americans that 9/11 will be the worst terrorism attack in American history, for should a more coordinated or dangerous attack occur with nuclear, biological or chemical agents it would destabilize our nation in ways we can’t even fathom right now.

-Justin Germino

Probably my favorite port and town on the whole Royal Caribbean cruise out of Miami was the stop in Georgetown Grand Caymans.  The weather was perfect, the island just simply beautiful and the turtle farm we visited was great.  They breed and release so many green sea turtles which are huge and have almost 5’ diameter long bodies. 

We both decided that out of the various ports we visited, Grand Caymans or Haiti would be the two we probably may consider visiting directly in the future.  Heck, Grand Caymans is not looking at a likely place to retire and spend the rest of our days together.

Here are the photos from Georgetown, Grand Caymans:

The only ironic thing about the turtle farm is you get to see and hold the really cute turtles, only to find they serve turtle eggs and turtle fin steak and soup on the restaurant on the premises.   My wife found this barbaric but I thought it no different than the Ostrich farms in Arizona that sell Ostrich meat and jerky on the farm.  She would never eat a turtle and neither would I though, not because I am opposed to the meat or flavor, but because they are very cute and are endangered, even if they raise them in a controlled environment and only have a select amount used for food purposes.

-Justin Germino

The Royal Caribbean cruise ship had a 2nd stop after Labadee, Haiti to the Jamaica port of Ocho Rios or “eight rivers”.  This was an amazing excursion where we took a tour of the city and climbed up a flowing river (only about knee deep but with fast moving currents).

We also had a tour about the local plant life and lifestyle of Jamaica, my wife and I enjoyed the lush tropical nature of the island and the friendly people.  The only negative front that I find on excursions is the local people who peddle wares can be quite abrasive, direct and literally nearly assault and pester you to look and purchase from them.  If you don’t like haggling, then talking to street merchants is not the thing for you.

Here are some pictures of our Ocho Rios excursion in Jamaica:

Tomorrow will be the photos from Georgetown, Grand Caymans where we visited the turtle farm and there are some great pics.

-Justin Germino