Justin Germino Ramblings

Staying at the vacation last week in Showlow which is a town in Northern Arizona gave the family a chance to escape the 105 – 110 degree heat and take refuge in the 85 degree forest climate where the altitude is about 6000+ feet.

On the first day at arriving at the cabin which was a super spacious 2200+ square feet and bigger than most houses I stayed at we were awed at just how much room this cabin had.  This really isn’t roughing it, as the cabin had laundry machines, microwave, TV, 4 bedrooms and everything you could possibly need except Wi-Fi or Internet Access of any kind.

On the first day of arrival we unpacked our gear and got our bearings, it was about a 5 hour drive up from Casa Grande to Showlow but we did stop for lunch at Denny’s before finally arriving at our destination.

Ironically I forgot to take pics of the inside of the cabin with my camera, but it was quite spacious and amazing.

Meanwhile, the cabin sits on horse property and the owner has several horses and Llama’s.  One Llama is always free to roam around on the property and his name is Otis the Llama, though you really can’t pet him or walk up to him.  In fact Otis always looks like he wants to either kick you or spit on you when you get too close and he even stands up and starts to walk toward in what appears to be an aggressive manner.  The kids loved throwing him carrots though and as long as you stayed about 10 away from him he didn’t mind.  Now, he may have been friendlier, I just didn’t trust him getting closer so would pull my family away when I saw him start to walk briskly toward us.  I have seen those YouTube video’s of deers and stuff kicking people so I didn’t want a Llama YouTube incident.

There is my wife getting as close as she can get to Otis

During a walk in the afternoon we were greeted by a snake that measured nearly 4′ in length.  It wasn’t a venomous snake by the look of it, no rattle and head was shaped like a non-venomous snake.  I took some pictures of it and ran comparisons on Snakes of Arizona and it appears to be a Glossy snake from what I can tell. 

So it was a fun day to say the least and we didn’t even get to start fishing yet!

-Justin Germino

Hard to believe that this is my 8th Father’s day as a father and I am a father to two boys ages 7 and 4 right now.  Time goes so fast and already my oldest is approaching 3rd grade in August.  I can remember moments when they were both infants and various activities but the memories are not as strong as they once were and I don’t think of them as babies anymore but as little men or mini me’s.

On Father’s day today we will be taking the family out to Chili’s with my Father in Law and all go see Green Lantern which me and the boys really want to see.  Movies are big time in our family and we always go to the theater to enjoy movies on the big screen together.

Part of my favorite thing about Father’s day is that my boys will put their heart into creating a hand made picture or card and the way they light up when I read it and smile.  The genuine love and affection that is nearly unconditional that kids have for their parents is truly one of the most remarkable things in this world.

My boys mean everything to me and I can only hope I do them right and raise them to be the best people they are capable of being.  I want them to enjoy life, be good, modest, humble and above all appreciate the small things when they can.

I can’t help but feel like an old man sometimes when I see how different my kids have it from when I was a child.  I mean my seven year old now only wants an iPad for Christmas and so does my Four year old.  They are busy cultivating their Zoo’s in Tap Zoo and Tiny Zoo on my iPad but want their own so they don’t have to keep asking me to use mine all day long.  Personally I have more of their games installed on my iPad than my own now.

I find it humorous when my oldest looks at games I used to play and say that was back when they had "cheapy graphics" or when my youngest says the greatest things like "I am going to marry momma". 

My kids are both big into throwing out movie quotes, so my youngest is always spewing lines from Tangled lately (watched it 6 times on our camping trip) and things like "Go, Live your Dreams" or "Knee’s, apart… Knee’s Apart" are always echoing from him saying "Dad, what’s this from".

Being a father is probably the best gifts in this life and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

-Justin Germino

I don’t know if it is something to do with my PC, Internet or Twitter but my Tweetdeck Desktop application which generally only froze like 1-2 times per day not gets stuck and hung every 5-10 minutes.  Nearly every time I click on the app it just freezes and when I try to type a tweet in the compose box, it types about 3 words then freezes and plays catchup a few moments later.  I don’t know if the problems started after I added my 5th account and another column.  I wonder if some searches I left on server but don’t have as columns maybe causing delays but the app is almost unusable lately and I may have to switch to Hootsuite once and for all if I can re-train myself to use the Hootsuite window.

I just still wish Hootsuite had 2 basic functions that prevent me from using it as easily as Tweetdeck and I have echoed these before.

#1 -  Hootsuite needs to have the ability to "reply all" or be able to click reply on more than 1 person and concatonate the replies so you can have more than 1 user in the reply.  Something like "@dragonblogger @poemwatch @technotree Thanks for all your support guys!" would be good, and Tweetdeck has both a Reply All option and the ability to click on reply on more than 1 person and have them add to the same tweet.

#2 – Column clearing is important to me, I often lose track of conversations and information presented to me and like to have my columns "clear" when I am done reading them.  I do this for my custom lists and replies/direct messages obviously not for my All Friends feed which would update too often.  So that way if I see a new message I know it is something I haven’t responded to yet.  Hootsuite could simply add a "clear column" feature to it’s website, I don’t know how easy it is, but it would be preferable to the update that acts like a divider bar and just shows new tweets above the existing ones if you scroll up.

I do however like that Hootsuite lets you setup separate tabs for accounts, so you can have all your Twitter profiles on separate tabs instead of all on the same tab.  Or you could combine them and maybe have all replies on one tab, lists on another, direct messages on another…etc.  The flexibility is fantastic.

Even though I have Hootsuite converted to a desktop application I still try to use Tweetdeck more just because it is what I started with and the two features I listed above are very beneficial to me.  I am however frustrated with all the application lockups and may give it up for good soon.

-Justin Germino

Sometimes in the stressful day to day operations of running a normal life you just have to unplug and take some vacation.  There are numerous studies that show the physical and mental benefits of taking vacations and resting or doing something relaxing can help keep you sane as well as recharge your emotional and mental batteries so you can come back more focused and able to take on work again.

I am one of those people who finds it very hard to initially break away for a vacation, I spend all my time stressing about all the things I need to do before I leave and then dreading the amount of work that I will have when I return.

I kid you not when I say I will have an average of 150-200 plus work emails in my Inbox daily from my day job, and another 70-100 per day I have to at least glance over from my blogging activities.   This is average about 300 emails per day that I have to at least glance and speed read, I probably respond to about 20% of them which is about 60 out of 300.

So for me, a 5 day long vacation equals 1500 emails to sort through and 300 that I will have to respond to when I return.  This takes me an average of 5-8 hours just playing catch up on emails alone when I return from a vacation.  This on top of the social media communications, blog comments, and all my advertising information and such means I have a good 12 hours to be fully caught up.

So you see this makes it hard for me to enjoy getting away at first because I just stress about what I have to do when I return from vacation.  The ironic thing is once I am about 1-2 days into a vacation is when I really settle in and start to unplug and just live in the moment.  I take in whatever rest there is to take in, or enjoy the surroundings.  For this current vacation I am staying at a cabin in Northern Arizona and taking our Tracker boat up to the lake to fish and go bug hunting and lizard hunting with the kids.  Board games and good old fashioned Smores will make for a good family vacation.  Ironically I did bring my iPad as a means to entertain the kids on a long car ride and have some degree of tech to read and/or listen to while I am in the cabin but I don’t think there will be Wi-Fi.

I do ultimately enjoy and come back feeling better, but it is hard to just find time to get away sometimes.

-Justin Germino

Whether it’s for mating or to find a new habitat, animal explorers can cross continents. Here are some of the best-travelled explorers from the animal kingdom.

1) Arctic terns:

Arctic terns are the champions of long distance travelling. Each year flocks of terns leave their breeding grounds in the Arctic to fly 11,000 miles to a winter home in Antarctica. Some terns live in northern Canada and cross the Atlantic to Europe and then south to Antarctica, again a distance of about 11,000 miles.

2) Humpback whales:

While other species of whale are travellers, such as the grey whale which migrates between the waters of Mexico and the Arctic seas, the humpback whale travels further than any other mammal on the planet, often over 5000 miles at a time. Humpbacks only breed in warm water, so leave their feeding grounds in the Antarctic to go south to Central America.

3) Fruit bats:

Africa’s biggest mammal movement sees around eight million fruit bats take to the skies every year. The bats travel all over Africa in search of food, often covering as much as 800 miles in a month.

4) Wildebeest:

Wildebeest, water buffaloes or gnus are known across Africa for their long travels to find new pastures. Drought normally makes them go on the move in around May or June, looking for better quality grass and vegetation, and they can travel for over 1000 miles.

5) Swallows:

Swallows are a familiar sight in Britain in the summer, migrating north from the Pacific and Indian oceans. The barn swallow probably travels the most of all the different swallow species, regularly breeding in the Northern Hemisphere and wintering in the Southern.

6) Caribou:

Some herds of North American caribou travel over 3000 miles over a year, with cows heading north to the Arctic shore in the spring to give birth. They move back to their forest habitat in autumn.

7) Monarch butterfly:

The monarch is called ‘the wanderer’ in Australia and New Zealand, and is the most travelled insect in the world. Monarchs move south from North to Central America in winter and back again in summer, which covers three or four butterfly lifespans.

8) Christmas Island red crabs:

It may be only a distance of a few miles, but for red crabs on the Australian Christmas Island, getting from their home in the rainforest to their breeding ground by the seashore takes them five or six days, travelling 12 hours a day. They march on down streets, through shopping centers and past anything in their way, and are now a well known part of Christmas Island life.

9)Locusts:

A swarm of travelling locusts can darken the sky for miles. Locusts travel when their swarm becomes too big, going for hundreds or thousands of miles to find new pastures. One swarm of the Rocky Mountain locust had an estimated 124 billion locusts, causing devastation to plants and crops in its path.

10) Salmon:

Salmon can travel hundreds of miles for some species, and thousands for others, travelling to breed from their homes in seawater to the freshwater spot they were hatched. Pacific salmon can travel all along the coast of the USA, Canada and Alaska, while Atlantic salmon can travel from the eastern American coast past Greenland and Iceland to Britain and Scandinavia.

Animals travel miles in hope of trying to find food or a new habitat, people also travel miles in hope that they are going to have the holiday of their life. Pitchup.com reviews will help you to find the best campsites for you to have that perfect holiday.

Had a good time gaming Warcraft III on the weekend with my 7 year old son and we decided to team up as Night Elves and vs some random easy computer opponents.  It turns out Warcraft III has incredibly difficult computer opponents and even my own RTS game experience is no match for a normal or expert computer.  Two easy opponents however made for some good 1 hour gaming time.

And we had a minor army with level 10 heroes by the time we crushed our opponents.  Warcraft III is still very much playable even though it is a little dated it allows you to play on the LAN, so 1 copy of the game installed on multiple computers is still an option for multiplayer gaming without having to purchase the game more than once.

This is a problem with PC games that connect with STEAM or Games for Windows lately, I like to game with my son and both of us in the house together.  We like multiplayer co-op games and not playing with other people online so much, LAN mode is pretty much gone from games and everything requires a connection to a gaming server.  This requires multiple purchases of the same game, yet if you buy the same game for the Xbox 360, it allows two people to play on the same console split screen, yet you can’t play the same game on 2 PC’s in the same house together without purchasing it twice.

I already have paid for some games 2x just so my son and I can play together, I wasn’t too happy about buying Dawn of War 2 on two machines so we can do campaign coop, but I did it so we can have a good time.  These games are worth the $40 – $50 to play, but $100 just to play with your kid?  It is no wonder why we spend more time looking for free MMO’s like Runes of Magic or Age of Empires Online Beta, when gaming is starting to cost so much.

-Justin Germino

Over the course of human history, societies have had to make collective decisions about what sorts of buildings and infrastructures are necessary for an ideal community. The Romans called for theatres, temples and public forums. Twentieth century New Yorkers wanted massive apartment complexes and skyscrapers. And in towns and cities across America, families demand good schools, safe streets and spaces for outdoor recreation.

Although the modern playground, as we know it today, is a relatively recent innovation (especially when it comes to safety), societies have always recognized the importance of providing playground equipment for children to play freely. The following are a few of the top reasons why a playground must be included in any thriving community:

1.Good for the Body

The childhood obesity epidemic in America is a direct result of the stationary, inactive lifestyles led by many children. Television, video games and the Internet have made it possible for children to lead a social life with a stimulated mind, but they do so without even getting up from the couch. The most exercise many kids get is the tortuous routine of P.E. class. Kids, especially the youngest ones, need a place they can go to get their heart rate up in a way that is fun and that they actually enjoy. Playgrounds provide a safe venue for kids to get up, move around and breathe the free, un-air conditioned air.

2. Good for the Mind

Playgrounds are a shared, communal space, which means that when children use them they get an opportunity to learn sharing and community-building skills by practice. They learn to wait their turn, to give the smaller kids a boost and to care for a shared community resource. Commercial playground equipment prices are certainly worth paying when you begin to see the playground as an investment in the long-term mental and emotional development of the neighborhood children.\

3. Good for the Soul

A central playground is a lovely thing to have in a town, and it greatly enhances the overall quality of life there. Community leaders should be on the lookout for park playground equipment sales so that they can easily take advantage of a good deal should it arise. Communities benefit aesthetically, socially and even financially from a vibrant, active town center, and what better way to draw families into town than with a well-designed playground? Everyone benefits, especially the children, and that makes the community stronger for years to come.

Jessica writes about a wide variety of topics.  She especially enjoys writing about equipment. You can learn more about playground equipment at http://www.miracle-recreation.com/

I can literally see it in my wife’s face when she goes over to our neighbor’s house and see’s how my neighbor’s husband gets up at 3:30am and spends days installing a custom patio deck piece by piece.  You would think their yard was put together by a professional team of DIY experts based.

I see that look in her eye as she wishes I were that "creative" or "handy" with tools and had mad level 20 carpentry skills and can magically turn our yard into some covered patio paradise.

I get embarrassed, sure they put in a doggy dear by sawing a hole in the wall and installing a doggy door into their house itself.  I install a doggy door by buying one that fits into your existing sliding glass door.  Hey, it works though may not be as handy.

Realistically, I can barely keep up with the landscaping which always requires work.  I am just not cut out for "home improvement" type projects though I can install ceiling fans, replace drip systems and do some other minor repairs.  I still promised my wife at some point I would build a brick oven in the yard, I found a website about building your own brick ovens http://www.traditionaloven.com/ but truthfully it all looks so intimidating.

I seriously need to start increasing my blogging income so I can hire contractors to do the handy man work that I am so inept at. 

-Justin Germino

Lately it seems like I am tired all the time, ironically I seem to crash around 1pm – 2pm and even though I get about 7-8 hours of sleep I just get mind numbingly exhausted by the afternoon.

I used to think I suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome when I was younger because I literally was tired all of the time and can fall asleep in just minutes no matter what time of the day it was.  I would nod off in car rides, sitting on the couch or anything else with ease if I just sat still without moving.

Now it takes almost a constant influx of caffeine to keep me running all day long lately, I tried no coffee for about a week and it was one of the most difficult weeks to get through. 

I hear that allergies can make people feel exhausted all the time, so maybe it may be related to allergies, I should investigate it further at some point.  In the meantime I find that all it takes is a 15 – 20 minute power nap and I have enough energy to last until bed time.

This would incline me to think it was related to just not getting enough quality sleep, and I don’t know if I need a new mattress, pillow or a new bed time routine to help get better quality sleep.

I should look into it more because I am tired of feeling tired all the time and it has been like this for twenty years, though probably worse in the last six years or so.

-Justin Germino

Thanks to MyHost my Apache instances are recompiled and now running FastCGI on my servers to help improve php performance which will hopefully keep my blogs more stable and allow my admin screens to update faster.

Moving to a VPS definitely required some tweaking and optimizing of the SQL, PHP and Apache servers to make sure it was tuned properly based on the size of the WordPress site and the amount of traffic it was receiving.  It is important to realize that when you own a VPS or dedicated hosting and you have full control over your systems it may require you doing a lot more of the investigation and tuning manually and it isn’t like a shared hosting provider where you simply rely on global configurations that apply to all shared hosting accounts.

I will give props out to MyHosting who have gone out of their way to test and optimize even going so far as to run load testing, pingdom tests and have spent days helping tune my sites to make them faster and more stable.

I don’t know of any other hosting provider that has given me ever such unbelievable support and service that MyHosting has provided in the past 5 years of having online hosted sites. 

If you really are serious about upgrading to a VPS hosting solution because you need to host more sites and handle more throughput, then you can’t go wrong with MyHosting.  In just three weeks with them I am completely blown away by their level of support.

I am expecting to cut the last of my sites DragonBlogger.com over to MyHosting VPS solution sometime in July 2011 after I give some more soak time on my other sites.

-Justin Germino