Justin Germino Ramblings

I awoke earlier this morning to my wife ayign “The Internet is down or something” and sure enough there was no online connectivity, all lights showed fine on my cable modem, and my wireless router didn’t seem to have an issue, but as usual a quick unplug and re-plug of cable modem and wireless router resolved the issues.

In general my internet performance has been poor the last few days, I notice web sites in general are loading slower and my office VPN loses connectivity a few times a day, where it was rock solid for several weeks without dropping a connection. I don’t know if my router is starting to flake out or the ISP network is becoming more saturated.

Time will tell, one thing is for certain though: I wish browsing online were even faster than it is now, I mean I need 20 tabs and pages to open instantly, not wait 5-6 seconds per page. It is amazing how patience has dwindled with the internet with broadband so prevalent, I mean I remember just 7 years ago being on 28.8 kbps dial up modem and can’t imagine surfing at that speed anymore, I would rather forsake the internet.

Damn, I have gotten spoiled with broadband.

-Justin Germino

I am not greedy really, I just hope to make enough money so I can live comfortably and not have to worry about all the bills and financial woes that most people deal with. 1 million and I can live comfortably, still keep my job but have peace of mind for my future and have cushion in my financial life.

But, if shooting for the top jobs and salaries then these are positions you may want to pursue because according to an article on AskMen.com the highest ten paying salaried jobs in the United States are as follows:
(note these don’t include bonuses but raw salary positions)

Natural Sciences Major

This position manages and oversees other scientists and requires an MBA or Doctorate with a minimum 6 years of higher education.

Salary: $97,560

Marketing Manager

The highest level marketing managers oversee advertisement for Fortune 500 companies and oversee teams who help companies get their brand and image promoted. Minimum training is four to six years, MBA in business finance and marketing also very helpful.

Salary: $100,020

Computer and Information Systems Manager

Even with a tough economy IT Managers can command some serious salaries, with 4-8 years experience and a degree in Computer Science or Information Technology you can work your way toward this salary level.

Salary: $100,110

Air Traffic Controller

Nearly all Air Traffic Controller positions are hired by the FAA and are essential for the safe lift off and landings of commercial and private planes. It tkaes nearly nine years of training including a four year degree.

Salary: $100,430

Lawyer

Yep, you always hear your parents say you should have been a lawyer.  Lawyers on average command the fifth highest salary job in the United States and requires a combined 7 years of education and training.

Salary: $110,590

Dentist

Cleaning teeth is a lucrative business, and the average dentist brings in a sizeable Salary. With 8 years of education and training, you might have to spend a few years paying off the Student Loan before you can really realize the earning potential though.

Salary: $132,660

Airline Pilot

Ironically the people who transport hundreds of lives to safety every day get paid an average of a little more than someone who cleans teeth for a living. Pilots can require between 5 to 10 years of education and training depending on the types of planes they fly and earn a top notch salary.

Salary: $134,090

Engineering Manager

Responsible for plans, coordination, research of large technical or scientific projects nad goals. Engineering managers are the ones who plan out entire real estate communities or components manufacturing and processing. It takes 6-7 years of education and training to reach a position of this stature.

Salary: $140,210

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Lets face it, many CEO’s make millions of dollars in salary with giant bonuses, but factoring in the CEO’s of the thousands of smaller companies out there rounds out a CEO’s salary to almost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. It takes anywhere from eight to ten years of education and training to become a CEO of a company, less time for a smaller company and greater time for a larger corporation, some people work for fifteen to twenty years to reach a position of this magnitude.

Salary: $140,880

Surgeon

On average the top salary earner by profession is a Surgeon, responsible for saving the lives of patients and performing the most crucial of procedures. Surgeons require 10-15 years of education, internship and training to reach a position of this salary level, but if you have the commitment and means this is one of your best bets for a successful financial life.

Salary: $181,850

So there you have it, the top ten highest paying salaries in the United States, you can visit the original article for more detail about each position, but this about sums it up. The article does go on to note that more medical profession positions earn six figures than any other career type, another reason why you may want a career in the medical field.

-Justin Germino

I enjoy the benefits of telecommuting enormously, but sometimes you can feel isolated from your peers and be out of touch with the “human” element of working beside your coworkers. One benefit of my current office location is they have a lake on site and when the weather gets cooler, it is really nice to have a lunch setting at one of the benches overlooking the ducks and water.

I don’t know if the lake is treated or stocked with fish, I do see some people try to fish it and I wonder what kind of pond supplies are necessary to prevent such a small lake in Arizona from becoming completely green with mold. Either way it is one of the nicer cosmetic features of working onsite, and I see many a coworker take a break and jog or walk around the small lake to relax.

-Justin Germino

I find myself in a variety of struggles every day in life like most people. These struggles include everything from meeting my deadlines at work, making time for my family, making ends meet, carving out time for my wife and working on our relationship to keep things healthy and happy and keeping up with my blogging and poetry. I sometimes reflect on how much simpler my life was 10 years ago, but at the time I was just as stressed and felt pretty much the same way.

So my ability to absorb and adapt to increased responsibility, roles and duties in my various functions in life keeps growing every year. I am one of those people who really wants to try and accomplish as much as possible in this short life time I have on the planet, and would prefer to end life with a list of accomplishments and a completed bucket list a mile long. One thing I try not to do is get to hung up or stressed over an individual struggle, because this can impact your ability on all other focus areas.

If you are stressed about money or work, you will see your time with the family suffer and so forth and if you are stressed out at home, it will impact your job as well. Finding balance to all of life’s struggles is probably the most important thing to keeping ones sanity and healthy state of mind. Some people use relaxation, yoga, or even exercise, dancing or another activity to help channel their energy and set their emotional compass right again.

-Justin Germino

While my kids have been using an assortment of foam furniture that has decayed to the point of requiring replacement, I will be looking around for new preschool furniture for the kids play room. I really want to find a smaller couch like sofa that the kids can sit on and setup in their room, which would be ideal.

Children can be pretty brutal to furniture, and the lounge they have in there has been subject to juice spills, crayons, marker, diaper overflow and worse. When you buy furniture for kids play areas, it must be either very durable or very cheap and easily replaceable.

-Justin Germino

You know you are in true love when the person you are with inspires you to be a better person than you who are. Like the quote from Jack Nicholson in the movie “As Good As It Gets” when he says to Helen Hunt:
“You make me want to be a better man”

This is how it feels to be in true love, your partner compliments your strengths and you want to work on and improve your weaknesses not only for your partner, but for yourself.

My wife and I are working on our fourteenth year together as a couple and toward our eleventh year of marriage, and we have had peaks and valleys in our relationship that would have sunk the titanic had it not been for the strength and durability of our love.

Often I find myself remembering repeatedly why I fell in love with her in the first place and that if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be half the man I am today. I can only hope that I have instilled as much positive in her life as she has provided me in my own.

-Justin Germino

In an effort to improve my blog performance and stability, my hosting provider Dreamhost has converted this blog to using the mod_php in Apache, instead of using the PHP as a CGI with FastCGI, this should make my blog much more efficient, load faster and have less outages.  The reason why many hosting companies use PHP as a CGI is because then the PHP process can be owned by the “user” instead of the apache process, which means it can be tracked to each individual customer account, instead of one customer possibly overloading the PHP module and breaking apache for everyone sharing the same server.

Since I did purchase VPS (Virtual Private Server), I don’t share my hosting with another user and have dedicated resources, so this means I am able to run my apache with php build in as the module instead of as a CGI extension.  Already my page load times are 40% better, and my free RAM on the server went from 31mb to over 140MB just by converting to mod_php.  Hopefully this means my days of outages when I reach 20 concurrant users are over.

-Justin Germino

There is nothing pleasant about someone who parks their RV Camper in a home community where it takes up about two driveways and creates an eyesore just sitting there for a long period of time. Somebody should just call a company that does rv towing to haul it away.

HOA rules in most communities typically prohibit long term parking of RV’s on the open streets, that is why a home should have an RV gate so you can store it on your property, but not on the street. These create visibility blocks to for cars can’t see past them and when kids play in the streets, they can sometimes run out in front or behind an RV and not be visible to any passing cards.

If you are one of these people who keeps your RV parked on your street or community, do the right think and find a proper parking facility for it.

-Justin Germino

I was at a gas station last week and saw a father of two girls filling up his truck, one of the girls popped open a 16oz can of Rockstar energy drink and starting downing it. She had to be under 10 years old and was already drinking double serving sizes of caffeine and chemical energy!

When I was a kid growing up my parents wouldn’t let me drink soda at all except on special occasions claiming it was for adults only, my wife and I take the same point of view with our children. Root Beer is about the only soda they drink and even then it is once a month at most. They don’t drink pure fruit juice all the time either, usually we always mix 3oz of juice with 5oz water so it is always diluted.

But this isn’t even soda, this is like letting your eight year old drink two cups of coffee, it is absurd and borderline neglect to let children under teenage years to consume these type of beverages. The nervous system is not capable of handling that much dosage and stimulation and this can cause major health problems later in life.

People tend to abuse any substance that gives them energy, good feeling or artificial stimulation and companies will always be there to try innovative ways to provide such products.  It is up to parents to educate their children and at best, not contribute to the problem and hasten their addiction and entry into such products.

-Justin Germino

I normally don’t mind doing dishes, but one side effect is water tends to splash all over the counter tops and floor. The reason is because my kitchen sink isn’t large enough or deep enough, so when washing a big pan or pot, water bounces everywhere. If I had done a little research I would have looked at some deep copper kitchen sinks when I had my home built so I could have avoided this minor annoyance.

I also don’t like my dish washer more often than not, it smells like dead fish (we have to run vinegar and cleaner in it monthly) and the dishes come out with food still on them sometimes. I will be replacing it with a better one if it ever craps out on me.

There, that is my rant on dishes, now time to do laundry.

-Justin Germino