Justin Germino Ramblings

Why is it that as a society we have come to accept 2-3 hour delays at hospitals, doctors offices and airports. Industries can come up with all the excuses they want, but society as a whole can end this worsening practice that costs us time and money.

Take our business elsewhere is the most prominent method, but is ineffectual if only a small handful do it which isn’t effective enough to alter a company practice or routine.

I like the new law that prohibits planes from keeping passengers trapped onboard and on the tarmac for more that 3 hours or be fined for doing so. These same types of regulation need to be done elsewhere, but not by the government. Insurance companies should fine clinic offices who make patients wait more than a certain time as well if there is no good reason.

Time is money and we lose it by suffering from delays that cost us hours, not a few minutes like a lunch drive thru line. We should expect and demand accountability and impose pressure for companies to show more respect for our time.

-Justin Germino

As I start to get much busier at work lately with projects keeping me working into the later hours, I am finding it harder to keep up on my blog socializing, SEO and my Random Twitter Poetry game. Yet I continue to do my best for several reasons.

My poetry blog and game are my art and creative expression, it is an outlet for my creative side and is.a great way for me to reduce stress. I just take a lunch break and craft a new poem from random words, I go into a zone of creativity for fifteen minutes that is like a form of meditation for me.

My personal blog is like my therapy, I enjoy being able to write about anything on my mind with full freedom of expression. I can rant, share good news, share horror stories, or just tell a joke.

My technology blog is my hobby that I enjoy as well, I like learning new software, playing with new gadgets and sharing. Though this blog has just as much blogging and SEO related tips and information as I share what I learn with other bloggers. I also do movie reviews and some entertainment stuff, but may cut these in the future, Heroes reviews are a big draw of traffic to my blog though.

So I try to find 2 hours a day to keep up with blogging while not neglecting my kids and wife at the same time. Bloggers all juggle their time with day jobs, and families and I have known at least 4 bloggers who “stopped” cold turkey in the last year because it was hurting their families, or they just couldn’t keep it up and work or school at the same time. Blogging isn’t easy, and even if you enjoy it you can find it hard to keep at it but make sure you don’t hurt your families and true career with your blogging endeavors.

-Justin Germino

This weekend my wife and I rung in the New Year with a few firsts. It was the first time we visited the M casino, the first time she got a players card for a casino, the first time I played Ultimate Texas Hold-em (I did very poorly) and the first time she put a bet down on a football game (She bet on Ohio to win and on them for 5 point spread and won both bets). Also through a stroke of lady luck my wife was playing the last two hands of her budgeted gambling money and won $500 in one quick side bet on Blackjack. This now won us the entire gambling pot back, and this is the first time we leave Vegas broken even without having any gambling losses. It’s as if we played and gambled all weekend for free (minus the cost of meals).

All in all it was a fun 3 days, though I am a bit sleep deprived and am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again. Time to get focused this week, I have many things to accomplish at work and am hoping to gain some ground.

Happy first Monday of 2010

-Justin Germino

Starting now I am saving up to buy an LCD TV for the kids playroom and am looking at something around 40″ and must be 1080p. This will not only benefit the kids but this is the same TV I have my Nintendo Wii hooked up to and will be using with my Playstation 3 when I get one later in the year. I do want to mount the TV on the wall above the reaching fingers of my three year old, so I will have to do some research on LCD and plasma mounts to see what works best and install one. This may also mean that I need to purchase shelves to hold the DVD Player and other electronics equipment, so just buying a TV now has additional costs to get the configuration the way I want it.

With any luck a few successful blog months and I can have my setup done by March.

-Justin Germino

The year 2009 will not be remembered as one of the better years in my life, having suffered many hardships and personal tragedy’s it is a year that I gladly put behind me. However, it is of the utmost importance that I don’t repeat some of my mistakes that have been made in 2009. My only and truly most important resolution for 2010 is to learn from my past and grow and improve myself as a husband, father and human being overall. We are all human and have our faults, but we are given the gift of being able to recognize mistakes and change our patterns and improve ourselves which separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

So I plunge headlong into 2010 with no intention to look back and repeat the past, but to learn from it and to take every single year over the past decade and improve upon it to become the best person that I can be.

Happy New Years, what might your resolutions be if you have any?

-Justin Germino

For the second year in a row I will be ringing in the New Year in Las Vegas with some family friends of my wife and I. They have invited us up to stay in their condo and this year it will be much more low key as compared to last year where we actually partied on the Strip which was packed with hundreds of thousands of people ear to ear. We also couldn’t see any of the fireworks from the strip because the crowd was so thick and they have to launch the fireworks away from the hotels, that the strip is actually not a great place to be if you want to see the fireworks.

It is a weekend getaway with my wife while Grandma watches the kids, we will eat some good food, maybe gamble a little just for the heck of it and enjoy a few days with just adults and without children which is always a breath of fresh air, as no matter how much I love my kids, it sucks the energy out of you to be around little ones all the time. They constantly demand attention and need guidance and patience and you can really run ragged without a break every so often.

-Justin Germino

It is funny how a movies from over two decades ago can have the same longevity with families like Ghostbusters, this new Wii game does a great job of taking you through the original movie while still treading on new ground. The game takes place five years after the original Ghostbusters and all of the original characters are there, Ray, Peter, Egon and Winston to guide the new “recruit” who is played by your character an eager Ghostbuster in training.

The game captures the feel of Ghostbusters and is far more enjoyable if you have a buddy to play with, I only played the game with my 6 year old son who was the 2nd player and helped me wrangle ghosts, destroy gargoyles and torch the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. When you fire your beams at ghosts you drain their life and have to slam them in different directions to weaken them enough to set the traps and capture them. The wrangling part is the most fun in the game and very much looks and acts like when they wrangled the spirits in the movies series.

Surprising is the voice acting in the film is done by all the original cast of Ghostbusters, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson all reprise their roles as the Ghostbusters and help guide you along. The commentary is witty and I particularly think Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis did the best job with the voice work, Bill Murray was funny but was a little more stifled and sluggish in his portrayal of Peter, but I found myself laughing at all the puns and banter that was very reminiscent of the original film. My six year old has never even seen the Ghostbusters film and enjoyed it, with my three year old watching us play the entire time.

The game is relatively short, but is incredibly fun to play two player as you both wrangle Ghosts together. This alone lets it keep its value if you have a bunch of friends and you enjoy teaming up to play the game together. I had a blast playing it and being a rookie Ghostbuster. Ghostbusters is highly recommended for a unique Wii game experience and for Ghostbuster fans.

-Justin Germino

I was reading in Popular Science about a new institution and team of researchers and scientists who are striving to achieve the capability to transfer human consciousness to a computer by the year 2045. The first goal is to achieve true artificial intelligence and then to see if a human conscious can be transferred and stored inside a computer system or robot which would technically be reaching immortality at the price of the human physical body. I was discussing this with my wife on the choices one would make and if this became something that people can purchase (and was within the average price range), would you choose to merge your intellectual mind into a computer system at the expense of losing your physical form?

Realistically who is to say we deserve immortality, perhaps the highest intellectuals and true brilliant minds of the world come close to deserving such preservation but why become immortal? Would you want to attain it for the fear of what exists after you are deceased? In my case, I would want to see the technological breakthroughs of the future, live to see what other worlds look like and the future technology of centuries beyond. I mentioned this to my wife who also reminded me that you are much more likely to witness horrors and atrocities at such a scale, there may not be a society far into the future.

If your mind existed in a computer, you wouldn’t have hormones, chemicals and all the physical and natural elements that make up mood and influence how people think. Without these factors would you really be conscious or just a collection of memories and thoughts? Imagine never being able to smell, feel, taste, desire…etc from losing a physical form. My wife made it absolutely clear that giving up “Humanity” is not worth it, however if conscious could be transferred from one body to a genetically cloned one of your own DNA, thereby preserving youth and vigor this might be a path she would be willing to take.

This again points out, why? Why should people who think they deserve immortality be granted immortality? It would be selfish for me to want it, but I would want it just because I am curious and want to explore the infinite future. What are your thoughts on immortality? Is this a sin that mankind should avoid? Is this destined to never be achieved? Or do you think individuals will eventually be able to “exist” forever in some state or another for a price?

Which would you choose?

-Justin Germino

Porky our Boston Terrier was a bad dog on Christmas Eve and this is a pretty funny story. My kids and their mom had worked on making raspberry filled sugar cookies during the day and all but six were given to my in-laws as a treat. The six that were left behind were put on a Christmas plate and supposed to be left out for Santa on the ottoman near the Christmas Tree and couch. So the kids put the cookies out on the ottoman and we went to tuck them into bed to say goodnight.

By the time my wife and I arrived downstairs after just tucking in the kids, the plate was overturned on the floor and not a cookie was left in site. A black and white boston terrier stood there with a sheepish “Oh, SH!T I’m in trouble look on his face” and we couldn’t help but laugh more than be upset. The dog in the span of a few minutes consumed every cookie on the plate and enjoyed it immensely. Meanwhile I never did get to eat those cookies I was hoping to have that night. (Good thing I had two of them earlier in the day, or I wouldn’t have even known what they taste like).

-Justin Germino

The play room was literally a minefield of toys all decked out and battling against each other as my two sons and their Dad played for about 4 hours straight with all the action figures in the room. My two favorite toys this year that Santa brought the kids are the PlayMobil Royal Ship Of Egypt which was a pain to put all the stickers on, but the real canvas sail and the spring loaded ballista were a really nice touch and the Star Wars Octuptarra Droid which stands almost as tall as my three year old and has an awesome 3 legged spider / octopus type of look.

This one has 3 spring loaded rocket launchers that shoot really far, but they are very small and thin and easy to lose under furniture. All in all I have to say I haven’t had so much fun playing with toys since I was a child and this is one of the best things about having kids is being able to get down and play with toys again.

-Justin Germino