Justin Germino Ramblings

I have been working on a major project at work for the past six months that involves working with hundreds of customer applications and literally have averaged about 200 work emails per day for the past four months related specifically to this project. This project all comes down to a massive amount of work that starts this evening and lasts all weekend. I bought 4 cans of Diet Amp Energy Drink and will be probably working all through Friday and Saturday.

I did my best to balance my family time and give extra play time with the kids this week since I knew I would have a busy weekend, I know my wife is going to take the kids out to a movie on Saturday and some other activities so I can work in peace.

This was by far the largest single project I have coordinated at my current job and the amount of coordination was staggering for me, it took a team of fifteen people working with me to help get it accomplished and I am very glad that I work with such fine and competent engineers in my group.

-Justin Germino

Yesterday to my dismay I learned that my upstairs Air Conditioning Unit was making clicking sounds and wouldn’t come on. I had just paid to have my A/C units tuned and serviced last month so I am a bit furious that I have no cooling air in the upstairs of my house. The temperature upstairs quickly rose to 90 degrees in my office and I had to shut down my home PC and several other pieces of equipment to keep them safe from overheating. Nothing makes you appreciate the A/C more than doing without it when the temperature outside is almost 110 and you have nothing to keep you cool inside.

I am now working with two fans blowing in my office and the A/C guy should be coming out between 8am and noon to see what the problem is and hopefully resolve it ASAP. It is times like this that it is better to have a laptop/notebook with wireless than to have a large monster of a desktop machine with no wireless that you can’t simply move to another part of your house and work from there. With my Disneyland trip coming up next week I didn’t need the added expense of a potential costly repair today.

Perhaps I should look for a cooling solution from Cool Breeze Air Solutions who is a locally owned heating and cooling company that offers Tucson air conditioning repair and maintenance.

Here’s hoping that the part that broke was the part covered in the warranty they replaced last month.

-Justin Germino

I have 1 empty 125×125 ad slot on my sidebar and I just don’t like empty slots, so since I don’t have any advertisers paying for one at the moment, I am going to give away a free 125×125 slot for 30 days to one lucky commenter. Just leave me a comment and make sure you have a 125x125ad already created that you can email me if I contact you. The winner will be chosen at random, but I will look at the target URL to make sure it is a site I am willing to have an advertisement for.

Who wants to win a free 125×125 ad for 30 days which will yield you an average of 3500 pageviews? Just leave me a comment.

I will choose the winner on Thursday 6/10.

-Justin Germino

Fifth Disease which is also known as erythema infectiosum is a viral outbreak caused by the parvovirus B19 and is a fairly common illness with among 60-70% of all adults having contracted it as a child. Surprisingly I have never heard of the disease so when my son came down with an outbreak last week we had to take him to urgent care to identify what illness he was afflicted with so that he didn’t miss too many days in the final week of school.  My son never really had the slapped cheeks which is a common symptom and his rash was relatively mild compared to the images you see on Google or other websites, so note that in several cases you can be almost asymptomatic with the disease and not even know you contracted it.

Fifth Disease Symptoms:

• Red flushed cheeks (red slapped cheeks)

• Rash & Red spots all over body (generally not raised and often not itchy like chicken pox)

• Fever (low grade typically 101 in children is common)

• Runny Nose

Fifth Disease Onset

The disease starts to present symptoms within 4 to 20 days of contracting the virus though typically it is within a week.  The disease is spread through saliva, nasal secretions and a person is most contagious in their first three days of contracting and usually is not contagious after they are already broken out with a rash and red bumps all over the body

Fifth Disease Duration

The disease supposedly takes between 7 and 21 days for all symptoms to clear normally though some report the average is five days.  I found out that at least in the state of Arizona a kid is allowed back in school after their third day of breakout, so even while they still have the dots and rash they can attend school if they are over the fever.

Fifth Disease Treatment:

To treat Fifth Disease you have to give plenty of bed rest and fluids, there is no medicine other than some medicine to address the runny nose and fever that can help speed up recovery from erythema infectiosum.   Because it is a virus not a bacteria antibiotics cannot help fight the disease.  It was recommended by doctors and various websites including WebMD that you can use various skin care products like Aveeno Oatmeal bath and aloe vera and oatmeal lotions to help soothe and calm the irritated skin.

For more information on Fifth Disease (erythema infectiosum) I suggest the following resource material:

KidsHealth.org

CDC.gov

FifthDisease.org

-Justin Germino

I have had an exhausting but fun weekend with my two boys who are ages six and three. Unfortunately they both wanted to do separate activities with my youngest wanted to play Super Mario Bros Wii and my oldest wanting to play Starcraft with me in a LAN battle on both of our machines. This resulted in me metering out 1 1/2 hour time segments where I play with one son with his activity, then switch turns and play with my other son in his activity. After nearly six hours of switching back and forth then I take a break from playing with the kids to get some work done for a project I am working on, and after that I spend about an hour or two to catch up and queue some blog articles for the week.

Can’t really complain, I enjoy spending time with my boys and wanted to get some extra play time in with them this past weekend because I will be working almost the entire next weekend on a work project. I think my wife is going to take the kids one day to the movies without me while I am working (probably to see Marmaduke).

This week will be a hectic one and I am going to be challenged to keep a decent home / work balance as I approach the final few days of a project that I have been working on for about five months now. Meanwhile exactly one week from tomorrow is when the family drives up to Disneyland in California where we will be spending three days and two nights just trying to enjoy all the rides. We even purchased a breakfast with Mickey and the gang that the kids will love.

-Justin Germino

Hot Air Ballooning in Casa Grande is fairly common but when you see a hot air balloon whisk between two houses at rooftop level and land in the middle of a residential street it is bound to stir up some buzz. I awoke to my dog barking frantically and the sounds of a flame thrower outside my window and was surprised to witness a hot air balloon at rooftop level slide between two houses and land right in the middle of our residential street.

Turns out the Hot Air Balloon landing was a stunt by Hoot’s Hot Aire Adventures in order to draw buzz and interest, boy did it work! At least fifteen people in the neighborhood came out and many asked for business cards. The operator Jeff “Hoot” Hooten perfectly steered the balloon so the basket slide right between two houses and showed some real talent at operating a hot air balloon. The funny part was watching the balloon deflate in the middle of the street where it blocked the entire street and part of the balloon covered a lamp post and part of somebody’s house.

I took photos of the event:

So if you are looking for a Hot Air Balloon experience and live in the Casa Grande, Maricopa, Coolidge, Eloy area then you might want to give Hoot’s Hot Aire Adventures a call and let them know you heard about their landing in a Casa Grande neighborhood.

The unusual think is Hoot’s Hot Air Adventures appears to say they are a local New Mexico site based out of Albuquerque on their website and phone number, but Jeff talked about doing Casa Grande Hot Air Balloon rides so maybe they are relocating or service multiple areas. You would have to call to find out more information.

Hoot’s Hot Aire Adventures
505-681-1155

-Justin Germino

With Arizona about to hit its first 110+ degree day almost three weeks earlier than normal, this is a good time to bring up sun safety to all my readers.  It doesn’t matter whether you live in the desert or in the North East you still want to follow some basic tips to avoid getting sun burns.

According to WebMD almost 80% of a human beings sun exposure is received before the age of 18, this is why it is of the utmost importance to prevent sunburns in children.  Studies have also shown that people who received sun burns as a child or teenager were more likely to have skin cancer as an adult because of the cellular damage to growing skin cells.

So remember this with the balancing act that the Sun helps the body create Vitamin D in a way you can’t get from substitute products and by using sunblock you also avoid the benefits of Vitamin D absorption and creation.  So as with anything you have to weigh the benefits and the risks.

Here are 5 Sun Safety Tips:

• Apply sunblock of at least SPF 30 one half hour prior to going outdoors.  Sunblock takes some time to absorb and become effective, if you apply it when you are outside you can still burn before the sunblock has become fully effective.

• Avoid going out in direct sunlight between 10am and 4pm (these are peak times, and this is especially true of 11am and 3pm in Arizona desert).    When the sun is at the highest point in the sky is when you are most at risk, when the sun is low in the sky like dawn and dusk the angle of the sun reduces the amount of radiation.

• Always wear loose fitting clothing and hats when out in direct sun.  If going on hikes, walks, bicycle rides or the like you will want to follow this rule.  Obviously if swimming in a pool it is unlikely one would wear a hat and shirt underwater.

• Reapply sunblock every few hours as it wears off, if you go swimming it wears off even faster even with “waterproof” sunblock and needs to be reapplied more frequently.  If you have 4 hour sunblock you want to reapply at about 3 hours to take into account the time it takes effect.

• Wear sunglasses to protect your eyes from the sun.  The Sun can and will damage the eyes over time and deteriorate vision if you do not filter the light from entering your eye.  Never look directly at the sun, each time you do you slightly harm your retina and can risk getting a disorder like Solar Maculopathy.

• Women should wear make-up with an SPF of at least 15 on their face.  Most people don’t remember to put sunblock on their face and most women do not put sunblock over makeup, so make sure you have SPF in your foundation to protect your face and nose from sunburn.  (Okay technically this is tip #6)

You do want to have some sun exposure without sunblock, but want to limit your outdoor time to 15 – 30 minutes between 7am and 9am.  You can also repeat for after 6pm to dusk if it is still light out that late.

Bottom line is that you want to make sure you keep your body and skin healthy during the hot summer months and make sure you and your kids are protected from getting sunburns.

You can find more sun safety tips over at WebMD but if you live in arid desert climates you need should research tips more specific to your climate and state.

If you do get a sunburn you will want to moisturize and hydrate it and I highly recommend pure Aloe Vera gel and cool lotions.  Avoid oils and harsh chemicals, you want something a soothing as possible and most lotions have some sort of alcohol content and oils can hurt sunburns.  Find a remedy salve in your health food store or pharmacy that has “few” chemicals.

Stay safe out there in the sun.

By the way, if you go to Hawaii you can get the worst sunburn of your life in less than 10 minutes.  I know my family has been twice and have seen how fast it happens.  Make sure you swim in sunblock if you go to the beaches of Hawaii, just fill up a bathtub with pure sunblock, bath in it for 30 minutes then you can go to the beach.

-Justin Germino

I made a critical mistake and choose a different type of insurance offered from my company in an effort to try and cut costs and save money.  In the end this backfired and my medical expenses have risen into the thousands of out of pocket costs.  Word of the wise to my readers, read the fine print and always assume there will be unexpected medical costs.  When thinking on whether you want to go with a PPO or a Health Care Spending account (HRA) consider the pros and cons as compared to an HMO or EPO type of health care plan.

Plans where you pay a percentage of the cost add up fast if there are high medical costs and you should always try to have reserve money in your savings to cover unexpected emergencies such as medical bills, car problems or house problems.  All I can do now is try to play catch up with my medical bills and switch my insurance plan when open enrollment comes around for 2011.  In the meantime I will be using my blogging income to help cover and pay down some high medical bills and it will be  a while before I can start to save for my blogging goals again.

I can’t even imagine how hard it is for the people who have no insurance and get stuck with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, I have always thought that there should be something done about the healthcare industry.  It just isn’t right that you can go from making an honest living and providing for the family to utter ruin from one unforeseen medical expense, and I support a health care plan option that would allow heathcare to be offered to everyone in the country.  I don’t necessarily agree with the plan that is being put in place, but I still think it is better than nothing and everyone should have coverage.  People complain that they shouldn’t be penalized for purchasing health insurance, but truth is that it is mandatory to have auto insurance in all states I think.  This is to protect those who are injured, someone who goes to a hospital and is uninsured costs the states tens of thousands of dollars and this adds up to millions of dollars in taxpayer money to pay for people who are not insured.  So complain about not having to pay into a healthcare system all you want, but you are paying for others healthcare anyway whether you realize it or not.  Why not pay into it and at least get full healthcare coverage.

-Justin Germino

I found myself getting lost reading about fifteen blogging articles in a row the other night, it started while looking for the latest submissions on BlogEngage which is a fantastic place for bloggers to submit and vote on each others articles.  It then went on for me to discover MarketGid which has titles only with unique pictures to draw your interest to high profile articles, I went to the technology section and found half a dozen articles of interest which lead to other articles and before you knew it I had spent a half an hour just reading blog articles.

I did leave a comment on every article I read and really enjoyed the stories, with all the reading material online it is amazing that print magazines and newspapers even exist anymore and once broadband Internet permeates 100% of the world and the world has a wireless internet access from every point then I imagine paper reading sources will start to vanish much faster than they already are.

So if you ever are bored and looking for something to read, check out the two mentioned sites above for a completely different experience, you can find some amazing stuff that isn’t on Google News or other sites I have searched.

-Justin Germino

In an Associated Press article written by Rick Callahan I read about how 3 people in Indianapolis locked a 65 year old woman suffering from dementia in a small eight foot by six foot room where she was literally tortured and kept in inhumane conditions.  This small forty eight foot room had a drinking bowl on the floor for her to drink from, a urine soaked mattress and the woman was covered in bruises and had a black eye when found.  She was released one time per month to go and cash her Social Security check and the people accused bought her a single pack of cigarettes per month and kept her alive with barely enough food.  The poor old lady weighed only 85 pounds when picked up.

The despicable nature of this crime and many others like it are just astounding to me and I cannot fathom how such indecency and lack of morality exist in our culture and environment.  In this day and age and in such civilization nations how such arrogant behavior and crime can exist is beyond me.  One would think that a combination of society structure and technology advancement for detection, evidence gathering and conviction to prevent such crimes from continuing to happen but alas there is still so much crime in the world and it doesn’t appear to be getting any better.

Few things upset me more than crimes against children and against the helpless elderly and the people who commit such crimes are the worst of the worst and should be brought to swift and harsh justice.

-Justin Germino