Justin Germino Ramblings

My wife wanted to go see Shinedown at the Marquee Theater in Tempe tonight and I volunteered to go along with her, believe me the thought of missing Heroes while it was airing live was tough to bear.  However I decided that I would DVR Heroes and watch it at midnight when I returned and this made me realize just how pathetic I am.  I actually was a little bummed about missing a show because I wanted to blog about it and get the 400+ boost in unique visits from my Heroes review on DragonBlogger.com.

I almost considered giving up on leaving the house to see a rock concert because I wanted to blog?  How low can I be getting with my blogging addiction?  I haven’t actually gotten out of the house to go to an event with just my wife and I in over a month, so it is time I get off my duff and “Just Do It”.

Don’t let blogging become so compulsive that you find yourself wanting to stay up late every night, or get annoyed when you have to leave your computer or leave the house because you aren’t able to spend that time writing, or testing SEO tactics.  It is far too easy to become addicted to blogging and become obsessive about it.

-Justin Germino

I can’t believe that my oldest boy turns six years old today.  The time flies as I remember the moments of the previous years and he has grown so much as a person and a child.  Now able to read and write as well as do basic arithmetic his creative strengths and personality are becoming more concrete and clear every week.  I could not express in words just how much my boys mean to me and my eldest and firstborn has that special place in my heart.

I hope he enjoys some of the presents for his birthday, I know I enjoy his presence each and every day.  I could not have asked for a better child and a great human being and I am already so very proud of him.

-Justin Germino

I write for both Helium and Associated Content and originally was favoring Associated Content for the up front payment of articles and the fact that it is easier to just write and submit anything you want instead of having to find a category and title to write for.  Plus many titles are closed and you have to find alternatives on Helium which can be a time waster.  Helium also requires you to rate articles and maintain a certain amount of rating starts to earn via performance from your articles.

However, then I looked at September’s earnings and saw that I have 144 articles published on Associated Content and have earned just over $2.05 from view performance.  Yet I have only 17 articles on Helium.com and earned $3.07 from page view performance for the same 30 days.  Theoretically at least this means if I had those 144 articles on Helium instead of Associated Content I would have over $20 per month in page performance revenue.  This makes me want to write and publish more on Helium to see if this pans out.

Whichever you decide to use I recommend you create a writing profile on both, in many cases you can use some of your articles on both sites, as well as reusing the articles for your blogs once and a while.  When you create articles on these two sites and occasionally include links and references to other articles or your blogs, you can also build some backlink traffic to your other works as well.  They both should be leveraged, but my AdSense for my blogs earned me $37 this month and far exceeds any writing for A/C or Helium so if you are looking to make money writing online, know that creating a quality blog will earn you more than either of these services in the long run.  Don’t forget A/C keeps the AdSense earnings from the visits to your article.

-Dragon Blogger

I read in the Casa Grande Dispatch the other day that the City of Casa Grande and Pinal County have used “criminal funds” seized from drug operations to fund a new Lenco Bearcast for the Swat team. This armored vehicle holds 8 fully armed police officers, has bullet proof armor and is equiped with a sniper or observation turret. The armored SUV is designed for SWAT missions or off road search and rescue operations and you would think why would a small city need such a unit? The answer is simple, there have been between 80 and 100 deployments of the SWAT team for Pinal County, so this armored vehicle will help keep the officers safer and help them do their jobs.

I think it is a good idea that seized funds can be used to purchase better equipment for the officers, and that money should be put to use to better fight the criminals. Though it should not be paid as salaries or bonuses, as this would encourage risky behavior or motives in acquiring it.

-Justin Germino

This is the real world everyone and there is a 99.99% chance that the person you will spend the rest of your life with, or a significant portion of your life with will not be 100% perfect. The problem why most relationships fail is somewhere along the line people start focusing on more what they wish the other person could do for them, and less on what they can do for the other person.

Whether your partner makes the best friend, lover, parent, spouse or any other category or label you are looking for, chances are there will always be some things you wish were a little more simpatico together. One may be the best lover but not make a great friend or listener, while another may be wonderful in several categories or areas but maybe a little clingy or not affectionate enough.

Bottom line is you have to look at overall happiness and think to yourself, what do I really want out of this relationship? List the positives about your relationship and do not list the negatives instead focus on whether the positives are enough to sustain what you think are “lesser” qualities in the relationship. If you are spending your time wishing something could be better, then try focusing your attention to the following:

• What might my partner wish was better in this relationship?

• What can I do to improve on that area?

The more you focus on what you can do for your partner instead of what your partner can do for you, the less selfish you are. Though the opposite can happen, some people can give and never receive equal relationship commitment or focus and effort. You have to truly analyze and work with your partner to find a fair balance and make sure you both are meeting each others needs in as many areas as possible.

Never approach this subject in a harsh and negative light, it should always be discussed with positive and light tones with the intention to improve the relationship not criticize or damage it further.

We are all human beings, we all have flaws and nobody is 100% going to fill every wish, need or want in the other party. It is wrong to expect it and puts too much pressure and demand unfairly.

-Justin Germino

The decline in script or cursive handwriting is becoming more prevalent in the last ten years with it being almost eliminated from grades prior to 6th. With high school essays required to be in “typed” format and computers being used virtually everywhere it is no longer considered an essential skill to write elegantly, but just to write and read.

People thought the typewriter would decay societies ability to write elegantly and penmanship would start to degenerate as a result, but the real death of handwriting comes from instant communication. Not only can you text a message and instantly beam it to someone within seconds, but virtually everyone is connected to each other on the planet via phones using twitter, IM and other services.

Within 20 years there may not be a single written letter hand written and mailed except for the romantics and the truly dedicated, society by then will be almost completely able to communicate in real time to virtually anybody in the world they need to reach.

I for one write hand written letters and cards only for special occasions, or to jot down notes, I usually write in cursive only because I can write slightly faster though sloppier than each letter separately. Other than signing my name in cursive though, I haven’t written a cursive letter or note in probably several months which only further illustrates my point.

Do you think cursive is something that should still be taught, or will it become a forgotten art only practiced by artists and calligraphists who keep it alive?

-Justin Germino

As I turned 32 years old day I can’t help but reflect over my past and think about the things I would change and the mistakes I would undo. I have made my fair share of mistakes and caused pain to many people including the ones I loved most, most of these mistakes were made due to immaturity, stupidity that comes with youth and the lack of wisdom that it entails.

Another mistake was that previously I had gained far too much weight by being complacent over the years, I had gained fifty pounds over ten years between twenty and thirty years of age. I had spent the better part of last year losing all of the weight but this past year I have seen it creep back a little as my willpower and commitment to being fit seemed to wane for no other reason than simple laziness.

So on my 32nd Birthday I challenge myself to start focusing on eating less again, I have been working out but unfortunately my eating has increased and outweighed my working out benefits. For anyone with a goal and a challenge to lose weight you need to make a decision and you could either finally get committed to an exercise and fitness routine, or just click here for weight loss pills and see if you want to try that route which millions of people try and few have long term success with.

For my other mistakes I can only hope that I won’t repeat the past, studying the past and learning from it is the whole purpose of being human. For human beings make mistakes and what we take from those mistakes and how we grow and learn from them is what sets us apart from animals.

-Justin Germino

Last Sunday I went fishing with the family for a day, and though we caught not a single trout the boys and I walked up and down the rocky ground rolling over boulders weighing 50+ pounds and discovered and caught some cool looking lizards and bugs.  Here are most of the critters we caught last Sunday, including the Blue Tailed Skink which I had never seen before, it has this electric blue tail and I wouldn’t have believed it was common until I caught 2 on the same day.

-Justin Germino

For my birthday which is Tuesday, my wife bought me the Behringer Podcast Kit and I decided to take it for a spin. It comes with a high quality microphone, headphones and a Xenyx 502 Mixer with Mic preamp. After tweaking Windows Vista for about an hour (My control panel kept crashing, turned out to be a bad .cpl file in my \windows\system32 directory). I was able to get my USB mic configured and setup, then it took another 1/2 hour fiddling with Audacity to get it to recognize and use the mic.

Here was my test podcast using this new birthday gift, I intend to use it to make more screencast training demonstrations and post them on YouTube and in my blogs.

-Justin Germino
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These past several weeks have flown by in a blur with days seeming to pass like hours for me. I need to figure out a better way to slow down and enjoy each day a little more and let each day have a longer lasting impact instead of days and weeks blurring together. It used to be that time was very slow when I was younger, I think as kids time appears very slow with hours seeming like days. I have been told that time seems to speed up as you get older.

This week I had some huge project milestones at work and frantically worked 10 hour days to make sure I keep up with all my projects, while blogging has taken an interesting turn as I reached my biggest milestone with DragonBlogger.com hitting a high of 1139 unique visits on a single day. Most of the traffic coming from my NBC Heroes review which I do weekly and have seen huge spikes since Heroes has started again.

I found two new blog networks to get my blogs registered on, and started configuring my blogs on my facebook profile. I also configured all of my blogs to be DoFollow blogs last week.

-Justin Germino