Justin Germino Ramblings

Our Boston Terrier Porky was suffering from red irritated skin and itching and scratching so badly he was causing scratches and bleeding on his feet, face, chest and stomach. We took him to the vet and they ran blood work, tested for fleas, mites, ticks, bacteria and more.

It turned out he probably has allergies and he did have some bacterial infection on his skin, so the vet prescribed various pet supplements that had omega 3 fatty acids, and special spray to clean his fur and skin. His red irritated skin looks like it is starting to clear up and fur is starting to regrow in his bald spots near his ribs.

We managed to find a “bath free” cleaning spray with aloe that seems to be really good at cleaning up his skin and making him seem more comfortable, he doesn’t scratch as much and is feeling better.

As mentioned in my article Owning Pets Costs Money you never know when your pet will come down sick or need to go to the vet, make sure you can afford to keep pets and keep enough money saved to cover unexpected vet bills.

-Justin Germino

Karen over at Blazing Minds asked me to do an interview with her and I was more than happy to oblige.  BlazingMinds is a blog I have been following for a while and I consider to be very well written, informative and a benefit to bloggers and technology enthusiasts.

Everyone should check out the Interview with Justin Germino over at Blazing Minds.

Thank you again Karen for the opportunity.

-Justin Germino

Owning Pets can cost you quite a bit of money, in fact even if you go by the ASPCA.org pet care costs and assume all averages, you are probably low balling the cost estimates for owning a pet.

According to this ASPCA calculator, the first year of owning a small dog breed will cost you $1,314 dollars which includes the one time adoption fee, neuter or spay, training, initial medical, treats, food, and first year coverage of all of those items. A large breed of dog has an estimated cost of just over $1800 dollars, but these assume that you are spending only $55 per year in food for a small dog and $235 per year on a large dog.

I know I have two Boston Terriers but due to their dietary needs, we have them on high omega 3 salmon dog food that is $50 a bag, which we go through about 1 bag per month for two dogs, so we are looking at over $600 just for food annually. Take the fact that my eldest dog who is over 8 years old, which is old for a Boston Terrier with a life expectancy of 10 years who has suffered a spinal stroke, urinary tract infection and pneumonia all in the last year which has cost over $500 in medical bills.

It is no suprise that if you factor your dog living for lets say 8 years on average, and estimate the $1,500 per year, you are looking at spending $12,000 caring for a small family dog over the average lifespan of the pet, with costs increasing as the dog gets older and more frail.

Many people do not consider this when choosing to adopt or purchase a pet for their family, and with economic times being as lean as they are you might decide now is not the time to financially afford a pet. By the way, even a cat as a $1000 per year estimate (which I think is too high, they are estimating you buy health insurance on cat which is $600 per year itself). A cat is more likely to cost about $400 per year if you don’t purchase health insurance, and a hamster or rat is estimated at $300 per year due to costs of litter, food and treats, no medical factored at all on hamsters in the calculator.

I believe pets are as essential to a family for so many reasons, but you must consider the financial aspect before adding a pet to your family or you could be stuck suffering financial hardship that you didn’t realize, or your pet may need an unplanned medical expense that you just will not be able to afford.

-Justin Germino

Sometimes I wish I could develop some custom software that can parse through all the social networking and article sites and submit my articles automatically. I mean it takes more time to promote your content than it actually does to write the content on your blogs, and when you run as many blogs as I do, it means you not only have to write 21 posts per week, but try to find time to promote the articles in the right social sites and networks.

You can’t submit poetry and personal blog posts on technology social networks, so I had to build a vast array of different social networks each to fit my own blog themes. I tried to simplify this by using Firefox folders, but it still takes far too long to submit content. That is one of the biggest things they don’t tell you about blogging when you first start out, that even though you can have good and constant content churning out, if you aren’t promoting and networking it is like having a concert in the middle of an abandoned desert.

In the meantime, back to writing more content and promoting, it seems like an endless cycle.

-Justin Germino

I have been eating some items from the Fresco Menu at Taco Bell for about two months now and figured I should do a blog post about it. Taco Bell has some of the healthiest options as far as fast food is concerned. If all you are watching are calories and fat, then you should check out the Fresco Grilled Steak Soft Taco which only has 160 calories nad 4.5 grams of fat. This is my favorite and I normally order 3 of them for dinner, I can gorge on 4 of them and still come in under 500 calories. The Fresco Grilled Steak Soft Taco tastes a little like pot roast in a flour tortilla, and the fresco tomato/cilantro/onion mixture they put on top actually tastes better to me than the sour cream and cheese normally found in taco’s.

If you want to pack more calories into a smaller package, you can get the Fresco Burrito Supreme Steak which has 8 grams of fat and 330 calories. If you haven’t tried the Fresco Menu at Taco bell, I do recommend it as many of the items taste at least equal to the regular menu. If you are trying to cut down on your white flour, or corn, you can get a Border Bowl which has less than 400 calories and cuts out the unnecesary carbs.

-Justin Germino

I have seen the effects of smoking for forty plus years first hand, my father in law was a heavy smoker and now has COPD and is on an oxygen tank. Every month it seems he becomes weaker and weaker with less energy as he struggles to breath and take in oxygen.

He could barely take a few steps without a tank hooked up now, and he catches pneumonia more frequently and several times a year since he has been on oxygen. One thing he would have had a hard time with is getting in and out of the shower.

Fortunately the house they bought has one of those walk in tubs that also has a shower attachment, so he doesn’t have to struggle to get in and out of the shower, and this was a complete coincidence when they bought the house. Had they not had this, we would have had to pay to install one in the last few years.

It is hard watching your family and/or friends become sick and their health decline rapidly, it is even harder and you can’t help but feel anger when you know the problems could have been avoided or at least risks greatly reduced by decisions made in their life.

If anyone still smokes or is considering smoking I strongly urge you to quit this habit before you end up with damaged lungs and a badly decreased lifestyle, you will live long enough to regret it. Few people have the genetics to withstand 40+ years of smoking without having their lungs corroded and destroyed.

I never did smoke in my life, not a single cigarette, but I also know that eating is just as likely a cause and risk. Overeating and obesity are habits and decisions (in most cases) that lead to the same end result, health problems and decreased lifestyle.

Be healthy my friends and try to make healthy decisions.

-Justin Germino

This morning my family has decided to take the 2 hour drive up to Willow Springs Lake in Northern Arizona do spend the day fishing. We did buy a full year fishing license back in August, we mine as well make the most out of it. The weather is still 98+ degrees here in Casa Grande, so it will be nice to spend a day in the low 70’s and just eat some PB&J while casting hooks into the water. My kids love to catch the crayfish and hunt for bugs while waiting for the trout to bite.

It is good to spend some time in nature way from computers and technology, and just spend some time with the family. I don’t do it as often as I should, but when I do I never regret it.

-Justin Germino

When choosing a web hosting provider or wanting to switch your existing web hosting provider, there are so many choices it could make you dizzy. Depending on your web site needs you may be more interested in price, uptime, performance, throughput, Unix or Windows hosted servers, memory, bandwidth, mail storage and much more.

Consonus offered one of the most interesting things I have seen from an IT Solutions and web hosting provider, they let you choose which datacenter you want your web server located in. I found this to be a unique choice I never considered before when looking at web hosting, but the state you host in can determine its availability and performance based on distance traffic has to travel to reach your site.

All of these are factors you need to consider when choosing a web hosting provider, make sure you do your research and find the list of features and functionality you are looking for. Check with other bloggers and web site owners, ask what they use and if they are happy with their hosting provider.

Nothing is worse than dealing with site outages, performance problems and it can cost you downtime and traffic to have to switch later on.

-Justin Germino

In an effort to reward people who comment on all of my blogs, I have converted this blog to become a DoFollow, KeyWordLuv, CommentLuv, and Top Commentator blog. You can read my primary Dragon Blogger article titled Dragon Blogger is now a DoFollow Blog to learn more about these plug-ins and links to download them.
In summary, now everyone who leaves a comment will get a legitimate link back to their site or blog, as well as the top commenters for the month will be listed in my sidebar widget with a linkback to their site as well.

In reading and consulting with several other bloggers it is my opinion that it is better to be a dofollow blog in the long run, than being a nofollow blog even though your Google PageRank may suffer a little, it is better to foster communication with readers.

-Justin Germino

My nearly three year old has become a terror to electronics everywhere. In the past six months he has single-handedly destroyed my Wii video cables by jamming them in and out of the composite video inputs of the TV, which broke the connector and embedded it in the TV so that I can’t use my front inputs anymore.

Now just yesterday the power button on the TV is missing, it was jammed in and broke off only to fall inside the TV itself. With the power button being the size of a tic tac and no way to recover it, I had to tape up the hole and now only use the remote to power on the TV. Fortunately the TV in the kids room is an old cheap 27″ CRT and it isn’t my 48″ rear projection TV, but still toddlers and electronics don’t mix.

The problem is they have a natural curiosity to plug, unplug, plug again, as well as suffer from the button on, button off syndrome. It reminds me of Homer Simpson every time “Bed goes up, Bed goes Down…”. In the case of televisions (especially old style ones) you often have the set close enough to the floor that the toddler can reach the buttons and poke away.

When they factory test these electronics, they should hire a curious mob of toddlers to come in and stress test all the buttons and plugs before turning them over to sell to consumers.

-Justin Germino