Justin Germino Ramblings

This was a milestone week in our household where my 4 year old started Preschool on Monday for half days, for 4 hours now the house is almost completely quiet with my wife working from downstairs while I work from my office upstairs. I miss the little one asking for another drink or snack and it is a feeling of “change” as both of my sons are old enough to spend hours away from the house in school scenario’s.

Both of us thought that preschool is a good way to introduce a child to the structure of traditional school with introductions to classes, and getting used to a setting around other children and learning. Our youngest had been wanting to go to school for a year because he wants to be just like his big brother and was so proud to have a backpack and lunch box to call his own.

My youngest may start Kindergarten in August too, but this was cut back to 1/2 days instead of full day Kindergarten like when my eldest attended a few years ago. Children grow up so fast and all you can do is make the most of the time you have before it is gone. I remember when both of my kids were toddlers barely able to walk, stumbling and crawling around the carpets. Where has the time gone?

-Justin Germino

Legacy Traditional School in Casa Grande, AZ was recently named part of America’s Best Brigade for 2010 for being one of the top 100 schools in the nation for a recycling program for drink containers. For a year the students have been recycling their Capri Sun Drink pouches, more than 47,000 total which helped the TerraCycle’s Drink Pouch Brigade reach the milestone of 50 million pouches and $1 million paid to schools and nonprofits.

This excellent program was actually lead by Wendy Carlson who is a parent of two children attending Legacy Traditional Schools in Casa Grande, AZ. This is one of the best schools in the state, and the best school in Casa Grande in my opinion and my own family has been very happy with my child’s education at Legacy Traditional Schools. My son also has developed “green habits” and is very Eco conscious and aware of recycling as he wants to constantly help contribute to recycling programs.

Congratulations to Legacy Traditional School for achieving such a high honor as a relatively small and new Charter school, Legacy Traditional has only been opened for just under 2 years in Casa Grande but they have a school in Maricopa and Queen Creek as well.

-Justin Germino

I have grown weary of shopping at Fry’s Marketplace lately after I bought some Oscar Meyer Deli Creations just last week on January 4th and opened it up to a foul stench. The expiration date for the product was December 5th 2010 and they still had it on the shelf in January… YUCK!

In the past 3 months there were 4 such problems with purchased products, granted I buy about 300 products per month and 4 expired or foul products out of 600 is a very low percentage but it shouldn’t happen at all. Some Kroger frozen apple crisp desserts were covered in green mold while still in the freezer at purchase time, some frozen shrink cocktail pre-cooked was bad and I can’t even remember the other bad product at this time.

Makes me wonder if I should start doing all my shopping at Walmart again, yet Fry’s Marketplace does have better testing and higher quality meat from the meat counter. I should probably complain to corporate and they should have someone doing better inspection and removing products when they hit the expiration date so they don’t make it into customers hands.

-Justin Germino

Though I am not the fittest person in the world I do try and work out as often as I can find time for and I enjoy testing out new types of exercise equipment.  Last week I purchased the ISO-7X Isometric Workout Bar and was really impressed at how much resistance the machine has and how many flexible workouts you can do with it with the attached poster.

The workout system is simply this bar that you push to slide it in, the harder you push the more resistance there is.  There is a measurement on the side indication how many pounds of resistance you are pushing against. 

There are over 30 workouts detailed on the wall chart they provide and I have done many of them in the first day feeling my muscles tense and ache after working out.  The key is instead of using many repetition movements, you are applying pressure and then holding for 7 seconds.  This causes your muscles to strain to prevent the bar from expanding back to original position so you are fighting against this force which causes your muscles to be exercised.

So far I have only been using the ISO-7X for a few days but it appears to work pretty well at providing resistance to work out your muscle groups to help strengthen and increase muscle mass and at less than $30 this is one of the least expensive systems that provides this high of a bang for the buck.

-Justin Germino

Since NBC discontinued Heroes I was looking forward to the next TV Show that would involve people with abilities or heroes against villains.  It turns out that NBC is the same show that is airing "The Cape" which stars David Lyons from E.R. (and had a cameo in Eat, Pray, Love) as Vince Faraday who is a cop whose family is abducted by a gang.

From what I have read and the previews Vince Faraday turns to a carnival crew to learn tricks and illusions to become a Batman like vigilante to help rescue his family and bring justice to the thugs infecting the city.

The show has potential, and David Keith is always fun to watch with his strong personality and almost sinister voice and laughter.  I am wondering just how much of the show will be like batman, or will it be similar to "The Crow" or Daredevil (minus the blind guy) in execution.  Let’s face it, the whole plot is right out of Marvel or DC comics, but execution is everything and I am curious to see if it will be done right.

So I will be watching The Cape on NBC tonight to determine if the premiere is worth following a new series this Season on Television.

What do you think, will the show be a hit or miss this year?

-Justin Germino

I wrote a post earlier in the week on how my wife and I launched J&S Travel company to help people find vacations, specials and more.  Well our biggest event is today with our first booth at the Arizona Bridal Show and we are hoping to get the word out and get our business out there.

The recession is slowly ending and truthfully with all the stress, people need to take vacations and find some pieces of life to enjoy and memories to look back upon.  That is the mindset we have in helping people plan and book their vacations, we want to help others make vacations as great as we have done for ourselves.  Though our favorite vacations tend to be cruises, we are able to cater to any vacationers needs.

Wish us luck and lets hope we meet and make lots of new clients and folks looking to set up their honeymoon’s!

-Justin Germino

I was watching The Closer on Monday and saw the preview for Falling Skies an upcoming TNT show that has Steven Spielberg producing and Noah Wyle as the main star. The show preview has a very War of the Worlds meets District 9 feel to it. It looks promising as long as it keeps the story believable though I am wondering how much budget a TV Show can have, the lack of budget is what hurt NBC Heroes from reaching potential as well (besides faltering script).

Check out the preview for Falling Skies and let me know what you think:

-Justin Germino

You ever wake up and feel completely out of character for some reason? Maybe it’s a mood or a change caused by environment, stress, lack of sleep or a combination of factors. Most times when people declare or notice you are acting out of character it is not really a good thing. However, for people who are known for a specific temperament this can be something like being overly thoughtful or nice is acting out of character.

Mostly I wake up feeling optimistic, enthusiastic and ready to face the day but on rare days I sometimes can wake up feeling the exact opposite. Inspiration vanishes, a sort of emotional lethargy and nonchalant wave sinks over me. This mostly can be caused by stressful situations but sometimes it can just happen without rhyme or reason and I just sit back and find ways to break the funk so to speak.

My most effective means for combating a foul mood or mild depression is working out, running or breaking routine and doing something different. I don’t feel like working out of course, but I just put on some loud music with lots of energy and drum beats and force myself to use the stepper or lift weights until my heart is pumping and I am out of breath. I know that the endorphins will soon kick in and maybe about 2-3 hours later I will feel better both physically and mentally.

Sometimes a good comedy show or movie is all you need to snap out of a funk, other times it is a walking the dog to the dog park to play. Just break the monotony when feeling the blues or out of character in a negative way. This is one of my methods for trying to keep centered and myself in character.

-Justin Germino

I always worry whether or not I am being a good enough role model for my kids when something like the following happens. My son who is four years old recently has taking to swearing and says things like “Damnit, Friggin, Stupid, Idiot….etc” so I tell him don’t say bad words, say something like Tartar Sauce like Spongebob. So my 4 year old promptly then replies to me when he drops something he was working on “Frigging Tartar Sauce” and all I do is slap my head in frustration.

Kids truly are sponges and absorb everything they see and hear around them, this is especially true for parents. My kids will often absorb some action or reaction that I have done in previous weeks and display the same trait, words or behavior if they encounter a situation similar. I tend to handle most things pretty well, but being from New York (no excuse, I know) swearing is almost like built into our common speech. For some reason, I am perfectly able not to do it when at work and on conference calls but at home I tend to swear without even realizing it. My seven year old is very good about knowing “adult words” and he won’t repeat anything bad, but my 4 year old actually enjoys repeating curses and scolding him just causes his stubborn mode to switch on while he pushes back to see how much he can get away with.

For every good action or behavior I role model all it takes is one bad one and that is what sticks the longest with them, all I can say is Frigging Tartar Sauce.

-Justin Germino

I must say that the Netflix streaming is pretty awesome and combined with my Roku box I am able to find content for my family that I would never have even thought to look for. For instance, the other night my kids and I found the Dragon Hunters European cartoon which was based on the French 3D animated film. It reminded me of Dave the Barbarian a little bit, but slightly more serious and my kids and I enjoyed watching the first few episodes.

The real treasure was when I stumbled across Jim Henson’s The Storyteller last week, it was like a Jim Henson version of Tales from the Crypt with stories/fables using puppets as creatures. So reminded me of the movie Labyrinth and I forgot just how much I liked Jim Henson related material. Unfortunately there were only 8 or 9 episodes made, but the story teller himself is real convincing and it feels like you are watching a Dungeon Master weave an RPG story before your eyes in some of the tales. Of course the puppets are cheesy by today’s standards, but the 1987 series is still quite a bit of fun to watch.

I have seen a ton of more Japanese Anime content hit Netflix as of late and in fact, so much of it I hadn’t heard of before. There really is far more shows and content to watch than I could ever have time for, but hey when I have down time and all my TV shows are in re-runs, Netflix and Roku will never leave me thinking there is nothing to watch, there is always something to find and watch.

I did a review on the Roku XDS and how to find private roku channels on my technology blog for those who are thinking about picking one up.

-Justin Germino