Justin Germino Ramblings

Though I am not a real sports guy by any stretch of the word I believe that sports and physical activity have a tremendous amount of benefits for kids of all ages, especially toddlers whose limited hand eye coordination can benefit greatly from practicing certain sports and activities.

For little kids you will want to stick with games that don’t really involve catching a ball, they have slower reflexes and poor ability to estimate speed and spacial distance of objects so tossing a ball at the face of a toddler is likely to just bonk him on the nose and he will have little ability to improve as his reflexes are just too slow at this age to adapt.

Soccer

Soccer is one of the most common and perhaps one of the best games for little kids as they use all core muscles in their body and kicking and blocking a ball with their bodies and feet is much easier for them than catching with their hands. Just remember to set small field sizes and small goals for them since their little bodies can’t cover a wide area. My three year old loves to play “kick ball” and will often run around kicking the ball at goals attempting to out maneuver his six year old brother.

Fencing & Sword Play

While little kids can’t catch balls very easily they are just learning how to react to objects coming toward them.  Playing sword fights with foam swords and shields is an ideal way for them to improve their agility and reflexes because you can tailor the speed of your blows to how fast they can respond.    You can increase your speeds slightly to keep them a little challenged and help them learn to swing and deliberately let them score more hits than misses to keep them engaged and having fun.  My kids love engaging me in sword play and Nerf makes some fine Foam Swords that you can safely use without worrying about cutting or bruising each other.  (Though an eager and aggressive toddler can hit pack a whallup when they hit you with those foam swords, particularly when you are hit in the particulars.)

Running & Track and Field

Kids love to run and having running competitions can boost their endurance and help them become better sprinters.  Just remember that small kids trip very often and should always were fitting sneakers, never have your kid run in flip flops or sandals which are more likely to make them trip.  Keep in mind that you will want to have them wear long pants (preferably jeans which help absorb impact and reduce scrapes).  If you live near grassy area’s or beaches, running along sand and grass will help avoid injuries when falls occur.  If you must run on concrete then keep even steady paces rather than racing as fast as possible.

There are so many other simple physical activities and sports you can do and I recommend bouncing a beach ball or basketball for little ones, bowling plastic balls at plastic pins (heavy bowling balls are not a good mix for a three year old who can crush their little fingers and toes).  Just make sure you reduce the weight and size of objects appropriately when involving your little kids and opt for foam sports equipment wherever possible to reduce the risk of injuries.

-Justin Germino

In the last two weeks my three year old has taken to exclaiming “Damnit” at key moments of frustration and anger. His usage and accuracy when using the word is remarkable and we have tried many methods to attempt to convince him not to use swear words. Unfortunately growing up in New York my household is no stranger to swear words and I am just as much to blame for my kids hearing the words as some of the TV shows they watch.

That being said the more we scold our son for using the word the more he enjoys getting a reaction and this is typical of most kids. So when your own toddler drops a few curse words, trying not to overreact which may cause them amusement is key. Finally now we are just ignoring and reminding him not to swear but he still enjoys trying to bring a rise out of use by testing our patience.

I did threaten to wash his mouth out with soap a few times, but my questions “Do you want me to wash your tongue with soap?” were promptly followed by “Yes” and I decided to finally call his bluff one time and wash his tongue with bar soap only to find he didn’t think it was that bad an experience.

Headstrong and stubborn with a hint of cleverness and brave as the most stout warrior my three year old is virtually immune to any form of punishment imaginable and he can really test even the most patient parent’s nerves. All I can say now is “at least its only Damnit” and he isn’t repeating the F-Bomb ten times a day.

-Justin Germino

I had to stay up working a few nights in a row and my fatigue levels were rising so I decided to try the 5 Hour Energy drinks that you see highly advertised on Television and I can say that you do get a boost of energy, but for me the price was too high to purchase the product again.

I have sworn off energy drinks before because they upset my stomach and I get these upper stomach pains which lead to vomiting and ulcer like symptoms as a result. 5 Hour Energy provided me with energy and I felt fine until about 2AM, where I did crash (they advertise no crash, but they mean from Sugar, you still suffer the caffeine crash as one of those little shots of energy has as much caffeine as a 12oz cup of coffee). When I awoke at 7am my stomach was killing me and I thought I could quell it with some breakfast, alas the pains overcame me and I went into a vomiting fit a short time later and was wracked with upper stomach pain for the rest of the day.

Now, I get these stomach pains from other energy drinks so I am not saying only 5 Hour Energy causes these stomach pains, or if everyone suffers stomach pains from drinking energy drinks. I am just saying that my stomach is too weak to handle these products and I shan’t be doing this in the future. (Of course I have said that before and I did try the 5 Hour Energy drink which is hypocritical).

My advice:

If you are exhausted and desperate for a pick me up, go with plain old tea or coffee and avoid the stuff with all the extra chemicals (even with loaded B vitamins and sugar free, its just not good for you).
I also did feel a flush and heat on my skin within minutes of drinking the product, they call this a niacin reaction as more blood flow opens to the skin. It just made my skin feel a little hot and subsided quickly.

I need to stop being a Guinea pig for Energy Drinks

-Justin Germino

This past month and for the next month I am truly tested in my day job as I have been managing what is by far the biggest project so far in my career. The scope of the project is monumental and due to the tight timelines of the project nearly everything in my personal life has suffered a bit as I cram in 14+ hour days to try and stay on top of it. I get fewer chores around the house done, my blogs are becoming stale and idle (other than posting new articles I am doing virtually no promotion and not even actively seeking advertisers) and I have been getting less than five hours of sleep on average.

I have managed to not take away time from my kids and all my extra hours are taken from my sleep time after the family is in bed, but I am hoping to try and get ahead of this game. My advice for people in similar situations is to set clear goals and ways to reach them. Break tasks down into manageable chunks and make sure you can reach those smaller goals which add up to reaching the larger ones. I do this by setting a certain amount of “tasks” I need to get done in a day and then I work until I get those tasks done. On some days I can reach the goal in 9 hours, some days it takes 12 or more hours to reach the goals but as long as I reach my daily goals I am getting closer to completing the project on time and successfully.

-Justin Germino

At the time I wrote this Avatar was over 2.6 Billion dollars in revenue world wide from BoxOfficeMojo.com

This means Avatar has almost earned more money than Titanic and The Return of the King combined which currently hold the #2 and #3 slots.

I know James Cameron has already done interviews talking about a 2nd and 3rd Avatar film and envisioned it kind of being its own “universe” in the likes of Star Trek, Dune, Star Wars and I think it has enough enterprise to be that big. Dune started with just a planet and become a Franchise with books, magazines and though it didn’t reach Star Wars popularity it centered around a planet. Avatar will likely center around Pandora and the Na’Vi but would expand to include probably more worlds and possible the Earth system and other human colonies.

I think it would make a good “universe” for a role playing game set in the future if done right actually. What do you think of the idea of Avatar growing into an enterprise, does it have enough weight behind it? Is there enough story that can be written into the universe to make it successful? Or will it be a one hit wonder thanks to James Cameron’s magic with the 3D of the film and the marketing brilliance behind it?

-Justin Germino

My wife and I have been watching the show Medium ever since it was on NBC and followed the show since it moved to CBS. The show has actually been a little darker on CBS than it was on NBC but stayed intact very well and is just as enjoyable. The most recent episode had a very questionable moment where one of the characters on the show, a Detective named Lee has a brother who is a sex offender and was recently paroled only to be accused of assaulting a young woman.

In a parallel storyline on this episode a woman who was assaulted when she was younger became kind of a vigilante who hunts down and kills registered sex offenders. She gets into hot water when she kills an undercover cop who was posing as a registered sex offender who was trying to uncover and expose the detectives brother. Long story short the plots align and the detective knows that this vigilante is planning to kill his brother and lets it happen because he knows his brother is guilty (he practically admits to and admits he likes who he is and doesn’t want help).

The dark gray scale of the characters here and the whole episode just left me pondering how dark of a decision this character made on the show. What would one of us do in such a situation?

If someone you knew was a serial murder, rapist would you let them be killed if they can’t face judgement or trial due to to lack of evidence?

I can honestly tell you that I am not opposed to faster and harsher penalties for these types of offenders, but there has to be 100% positive proof that person is guilty and I would be okay with the harshest of sentences. But because in real life there is still false positives and people falsely accused (you read about it all the time in the news) one innocent death isn’t worth the price of rushing the system without proper procedure and trial.

-Justin Germino

This was my first year filing taxes as a blogger and here are some helpful tips to other bloggers who earn and make enough money that they have to file taxes and report them in the United States. First when you are blogging you are a sole proprietor, this means you have to be extra resourceful and accurate when tracking your income and expenses. You must clearly document all of your blogging sources and keep receipts and web site printouts of payments and keep them on file in case you are audited.

You also have to do the same to track your expenses, I don’t know about other countries but in the United States if you are a blogger and sole proprietor this means you get to write off web hosting fees, part of your internet connection, house payment, utilities and anything else that is used and related to blogging. Don’t forget that you can write off any payments you make in promotion or advertising of your blog as advertising expenses. So if you pay for SEO links, or SponsoredTweets to promote your site you can write this off.

As I earned over $1800 blogging in 2009 after tallying up all my earnings and my two 1099’s one from PayU2Blog (Triangle Media) and one from IZEA (SocialSpark, PayPerPost, Sponzai…etc) I then tallied up all my expenses which added up to give me a negative earnings of over two hundred dollars. This means not only I didn’t have to pay taxes on my blog earnings, but the negative helped with my normal taxes and helped with my refund.

I filed my taxes through H&R Block and had paperwork for everything, I even paid for the peace of mind guarantee in case I get audited. So in doing all this work myself I made a little checklist for bloggers for when you file your taxes.

Income:

• Collect all 1099’s from companies
• Track all earnings from direct paid links (print and tally)
• Track all earnings from AdSense and other CPC programs (print and tally)

Expenses:

• Web Site Hosting Fee’s
• BroadBand or Internet Connection Fees (a portion writes off if you use for work and personal, if you are a full time blogger you can write off about 50% of your broadband bill to be safe)
• Advertising, Promo, AdWords or any other type of money you paid to promote your blog or sites (print receipts)
• Take square footage of your home office or area you work to blog (compare this with total Sq Feet of house)
• Note your home payments for month and year (including interest and total payment separately if you own your home) a portion can be written off
• Note your utility bills for the month by month and year totals (electric, water, sewer..etc) a portion can be written off

If you are not comfortable with doing taxes I suggest you go to a professional tax service and make sure you get the maximum amount of write-offs possible and make sure you have receipts and proof for every source of income and expenses on file for 7 years.

-Justin Germino

One thing I have not done in the past eight months is show my traffic statistics for this blog which is my third blog and the one I use as more of my personal diary and musings than anything specific. This blog itself is starting to average almost eighty to one hundred visits per day and has outpaced my poetry blog in recent months.

This blog received just over 2300 visits in the past month and that was down about 8% as I stopped relying on Entrecard Marketplace, StumbleUpon and and other site submissions to drive up artificial bursts in traffic and visits.

For visits, most of my blogs have the majority of traffic coming from Google Search engines and I like this, though it means I don’t have an enormous amount of direct followers and my twitter referrals for this blog in particular are very low.

All in all, I am trying to build this site up so that I can qualify for better opportunities on SocialSpark and PayPerPost. The main thing that hurts this sites earnings right now is that I have a PageRank 0 and it takes at least a PageRank 2 or above to start getting some quality offers from many sites. Even though I have more traffic than many other blogs with a higher pagerank, Advertisers care more about the PR Juice you get from the link than the # of visits to the site it would seem.

-Justin Germino

I had taken Friday off of work to chaperon a group of four first graders to the Phoenix Zoo. The day had a few bumps and bruises in the time line due to some mix up in buses and classes that caused our class to not have a bus until almost 11am instead of 8:30.

We arrived at the Zoo by 12 and had about 1 hour before we were required to regroup and be back on the bus. I took my group of kids to as many exhibits as possible and still leave enough room for the petting zoo. Meanwhile I bought a bag of kettle corn and was surprised how much the first graders reminded me of the goats as they all came over hoarding a single bag of feed.

The trip was an experience and my son was really happy to have me be a part of it with him and his class. I have an even greater respect for teachers of the lowest grades, for they must have deity like patience levels to do what they do. I was literally exhausted on the bus ride back after the Zoo trip.

Here are some pics of the Zoo:

-Justin Germino

My family had consolidated to a single car for over a year and as we became busier and adding more functions, events and errands that we had to do on a weekly basis it became a necessity to start looking at a 2nd car. We live about fifty minutes from the Metro Phoenix area, so with having to go into the Valley two or three days per week we are adding hundreds of miles on our single car, plus every time someone had to go into the valley during the day we had an issue picking up my son from school.

My wife had gone to her favorite dealership Mercedes Benz of Chandler and even spoke with our #1 guy over there who helped us with our last several cars, his name is Harold in case you want to know who the best guy to buy a car from at Mercedes Benz of Chandler. Luckily there was a beautiful 2002 Mercedes E420 that was in outstanding condition and for a great price. My wife set it up and we arrived the same morning only to find that the vehicle was on a test drive with another sales associate and customer.

Fortunately we did a quick test drive and were able to start the paperwork and lock in our claim on the vehicle before it was taken by somebody else and now I am the proud owner of this beauty.

This makes a good quality 2nd vehicle for the family and now we can divide the miles evenly between our two cars so that my lease doesn’t keep absorbing so many miles. I did purchase a three year extended warranty as it was a 2002 and did have 68k miles on it. Still the car was in virtually perfect condition and had new tires, and only one slight cosmetic defect with a plastic piece when you open the rear passenger door. We will pay to have that piece replaced sometime in the next few weeks.

-Justin Germino