Damien Riley was kind enough to let me guest post on his Inspiration blog called Postcards from the Funny Farm or (PFTFF) for short. I wrote my point of view on when you should give up when the going gets tough, and it applies to bloggers or any line of work.  You can read my guest post on Postcards From The Funny Farm titled “When is the right time to say: I Quit?” and let me know what you think.
-Justin Germino
I want to give kudos to Popular Science magazine for their latest issue which highlights some of the brightest kids coming out of High School including students who already have multiple patents pending and are using technology and their raw gift of intellect and desire to help humanity to develop robotics, drugs and other sciences to help human kind as a whole. Most of these kid geniuses glamorized already have won tens of thousands of dollars in scholarship money, have received 1400 SAT scores and many have been offered full free passes to such institutions as Harvard and MIT.
I wanted to also note that most of the gifted and brilliant kids were “home schooled” and this just proves that public education systems just aren’t up to snuff in this country. The other thing I wanted to point out is that if more companies, TV shows and society as a whole glamorized achievements and abilities of these kids instead of football players, actors and celebrities then we would probably be further along scientifically and academically than we are now as a Nation.
Here’s hoping the future generations can solve some of the worlds toughest problems, and thanks to popular science for showcasing these genius kids as rockstars in science and technology.
-Justin Germino
This concluded my son’s first week of school and I am already dismayed by the school he is going to, the District supposedly allowed schools to determine if they would require homework in grades K-5 and this school opted to not provide kids any homework for first grade. My son was used to getting homework in Kindergarten and I didn’t want him to get used to no homework, I also think with school lessons being so short homework is required to help instill and reinforce the learning requirements.
This is most distressing, the teacher seems a little apathetic as well about the kids and their general learning, and research shows the principal of the school has a similar mentality. The only positive note is they can give homework to kids whose parents request, so we opted in to have homework assigned to our son weekly. We need to keep on top of the school and system to make sure he is getting a proper education.
I guess what you pay for, and public school systems are getting worse every year it seems.
-Justin Germino
Ninety nine percent of mammals who have children have the instinct to nurture and care for their children, it is an oddly disturbing trend when reading the news on how Mother’s, Father’s can injure or harm their children or babies in any ordeal. I read news stories on how a father drowns his toddler in the pool, or how a mother savagely mutilates her two year old while high on one drug or another.
These articles always cause me grief and leave me greatly disturbed that there is so much suffering and violence not only in the world itself, but in what is supposed to be a great and civilized Nation. How are we expected to stand up and assist global issues when we can’t even fix whats broken in our own society, justice needs to be overhauled, in fact people themselves need to be overhauled.
The only problem is, I don’t know how to solve these problems I can only lament like so many others that they exist. If I had solutions or answers, I would have gone into politics to push for solutions. For now I just hope someone comes along with a suggestion or solutions to problems that are widespread and one of the biggest is that children are just not protected enough in this world.
All children are born innocent and deserve a chance at a healthy, happy and successful upbringing. This does not matter where they are born, raised or live and somehow the International laws on human rights are failing on a global level.
-Justin Germino
You have heard about it and seen the commercials on television, now you can see exactly what I think of The Magic Jack. I actually purchased this product about four months ago and have completely ditched my landline now and use the Magic Jack exclusively in my home in place of my land line.
Simple and easy to use, just watch my video on why I think the MagicJack is a revolutionary product that replaces the home phone in your house for a fraction of the cost:
-Justin Germino
A study conducted by Oxford University on Rats who were fed high fat and low protein diets have shown that rats who take in excessive fat not only have heart problems, but apparently show the effects of having decreased mental capacity as well. Because fat makes muscles less effective at effective at using oxygen, this causes the heart to enlarge and also deprives various body systems of oxygen including the brain.
Rats fed this high fat diet made considerably more mistakes when traversing a maze than rats who were kept lean and with optimal protein, low fat diets. These same rats made more frequent mistakes after just nine days of consuming such bad diets, and performed better on the mazes prior to starting the high fat diets.
Bottom line, we all know fast food is bad for you, and time, money and studies continuously show how fast food has nothing but negative impact on our physical health, yet humans continue to eat it. You can complain about people who smoke cigarettes, while you are chowing down on your fast food burger and fries and not even realize you are doing just as much if not more physical damage to your body as smoking.
You can go here to read the full article about Fast Food Makes You Less Intelligent.
I was at a birthday party for a friend of my wife’s in Scottsdale last weekend and the place was pretty posh up in Kierland Commons, one of the negative aspects of the evening was the staff at the place. They were inattentive and just huddled around in groups instead of actively seeking out and taking orders for drinks. Several people were standing around for fifteen or more minutes waiting for a server or host to come by and take a drink order.
Poor, slow service is something that really drives me crazy when I am at a restaurant or bar. When waiters or servers are just standing around watching a party instead of taking order fulfillment, I can’t help but think they are just not being proactive enough about making sure people are getting drinks and being tended to.
It’s about customer service and in this economy and the hospitality industry you just can’t afford to have a lack of good high quality customer service and attentive staff members.
-Justin Germino
Reading in the news lately that births are down across the country due to the economy being poor and people choosing to put off or delay having children until they can face better economic prosperity. This seems like a good decision because according to BabyCenter.com calculator, if you have a newborn baby in 2009 you will pay at least an estimated $355,906 dollars over the next 18 years supporting your new child.
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| Thats right, if you have two children you are spending almost 2/3 of a million dollars over eighteen years to support those children, families of three or more kids sink over a million dollars over that length of time into child expenses. I have a childless friend who is very money focused and declares kids as “income reducers” and I see why when you add the numbers up.
That being said, those who choose to have children clearly have enough love and know that life is not all about money, and in the end of eighteen years, would you rather have a healthy and successful child or a few extra hundred thousand dollars? -Justin Germino |
Seems like everyone is trying to find ways to cut their expenses and try to save some money each month to stretch out their paychecks more and more. People are looking for ways to cut cost in any way possible from buying cheaper groceries, cheaper houses, cars and even shopping for cheap insurance.
Before you can find ways to cut costs, you need a bottom line on all of your income vs expenses and the best way to tabulate this is with an excel spreadsheet. Even if you use websites like Mint.com which are great, they take a lot of time to add in account numbers and they don’t factor in non-bill expenses fast enough, instead relying on trends.
Now you should have how much you have coming in, and how much you have going out.
If you are fortunate, then you have more money coming in than going out and this means you can put more of it toward paying down debt, or toward savings. If you are not so lucky, then you have to cut expenses.
Ways to do this involve cutting back on television services (cut out premium channels, or if you have boxes in 3 rooms, cut down to 1 or 2 rooms)
Go out to eat less and if you do, make price a factor (eg. no more than $100 per month in eating out or something like that)
Many people say sell things from the garage that you don’t need, and this supplies maybe a small one time influx of funds, this is best used to payoff a small debt or put right into savings or you might be tempted to spend it.
Good luck managing your bills folks, in this economy it is harder than ever for the average person.
-Justin Germino
I am not one who should be giving financial advice as I myself have made many financial mistakes in the past, but one of the things I have learned over the years is to make sure you keep an emergency fund so that should a situation arise where you have to pay for an unforeseen expense, you can cover it without having to shoulder it on a credit card. I have read the book “Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey and he mentions that before you even attempt to chop your debt down you should save up and have $1,000 in a savings account that is used strictly for emergencies only. Only after you first establish an emergency fund you start focusing on paying off your debts from smallest to highest.
Recently an unforeseen expense with one of our vehicles which requires fixing had me thankful that I had put that money away for such a purpose, now to grow it back and continue the course to hack away at debt which is a long term goal.
-Justin Germino