Justin Germino Ramblings

So I take a lunch break this week and next week to take my sons to swim classes, I get in with my two year old and I can’t help but be a little self conscious by my stomach flab while getting in the pool with my kids. I try not to be self conscious and worry about it, after all nobody should stress out over what other people may think about how they look and what not, but I want to keep myself in fairly good physical condition for many reasons including health benefits and being attractive to my wife…etc.

We all want to lose some weight, and there are dozens of products including Decaslim which may assist, but in the end, only changing your eating habits and exercise will give you a sustainable weight loss you can be comfortable with.

-Justin Germino

I realize I have no room to put all my Wii accessories somewhere out of reach from my two year old, and where they can be easily organized. I have to install wall shelves next to my television, I originally had velcro holding the wiimotes to the wall, but the nunchuck cords would hang down and my son would tear them from the wall.

With 3 Wii Motes, nunchucks, guitar controller, Wii Zapper, fifteen games, wireless GameCube controller, I just don’t have a good idea on how to organize all of this stuff. I want to eventually get rid of the TV and put in an LCD TV mounted on the wall with an LCD mount that hangs higher than sitting level. I always play the Wii standing up, but the TV is lower to the ground so my neck and eyes are always looking down at the screen, and I wish it were mounted at eye level.

Ah well, will have to buy some mountable wall shelves and put them up next week next to the television I suppose. That takes care of everything except the Guitar controller, which though tiny, is too big for a simple wall shelf.

-Justin Germino

I watched an episode of Raising The Bar on TNT this Monday which had a very controversial topic that can be applied to everyone who runs a blog or social network site.  In this episode, a father was brought up on charges for posting a picture of his toddler in the bath tube naked. An internet X-rated website had stolen the image from his social site and sold it online.  The father was charged with all sorts of crimes including child endangerment, sexual misconduct among others. Ignorance of what happened with the innocent photo was not sufficient defense.

This episode was powerful, strong and emotionally charged. I sided with the law, though I sympathize with the father.  The internet is a dangerous place for online predators, when you knowingly post an even innocent image on a public website, it can be stolen and used for nefarious purposes, and knowing this it is our responsibility to minimize these risks.  I have seen bloggers and people post pictures of their little children on their MySpace pages or blogs, there is nothing wrong with that, however I don’t think under any circumstances someone should post an unclothed picture of their child online. Even if it is a baby picture in the tub, sink or getting a diaper changed.

These photos are innocent to the common people and the loving parents that take them, but they are not to the people who would steal them and list them on other pornographic websites. As a result it is just poor judgement to post such pictures on public sites.  As parents we all make judgement calls on many issues surrounding our children, and this is one call where you need to err on the side of caution.

Since I was a kid I have loved the Monkey Island series by Lucas Arts on the Commodore 64 and Amiga computers, it was a classic pirate story that was done before Pirates of the Caribbean became popular. As you played the hero “Guybrush Threepwood” who was a bumbling newbie who had to learn the ways of the pirate to rescue his gal from the clutches of the evil “Le Chuck” a skeletal undead pirate.

The game was a classic and pioneered (along with LOOM) the side scrolling adventure genre where you moved from screen to screen to find clues, solve complex problems and had selectable dialogue choices. Many games were inspired by the series, and you don’t have nearly as many games in this category that are as original and fresh.

I was excited to find out that LucasArts updated the series with all new graphics, voice work, and I am eager to dive again into a game that I remember from when I was ten years old and I haven’t seen or played in almost twenty years.

-Justin Germino

With all the talk about Madoff in the news and the Ponzi scheme, I could play ignorant no longer, I had to wiki what a “Ponzi” scheme actually is, I know it is about defrauding investors, but what are the methods that make it the “Ponzi” scheme and how did it get its name?

Well, it turns out a famous person who became famous for this type of fraudulent investment is “Charles Ponzi” who came the United States from Italy in 1903. Charles Dickens actually may have “thought of” the scheme as it is published in the 1857 novel “Little Dorrit” but Charles Ponzi is the person who used the tactics to collect a substantial amount of money in that era.

Note: A Ponzi Scheme is not a MLM (Multi Level Marketing) pyramid, or a bubble scheme.

Here is the basics on how it works:

The seller uses impressive statistics and metrics to entice investors with claimed return rates higher than average on their investment, the initial investors of a Ponzi scheme often make some money initially as the scheme is sold, and then their returns are paid on future investors, in the end all of the money goes bust however.

Since the “schemer” is paying returns only on future investments, there is no actual revenue generated to sustain the rate of promised return, there has to constantly be new investors into the “Ponzi Scheme” to pay the promised returns of the first investors. As more investors participate there needs to be a constant influx of a higher number of new investors just to keep paying the previous ones.

This eventually causes a collapse as new investors aren’t picked up fast enough to pay out the returns of the previous ones, but these schemes often fail far sooner as the government or regulatory agency picks up on them and shuts it all down prior to it running the full course.

If you wiki Ponzi Schemes, at current writing there were over 50 notable Ponzi Schemes performed between 1899 and 2009 currently listed.

There, now you all know what a Ponzi scheme is.

-Justin Germino

As I struggle to make sure I have at least one new blog post each day on my three primary blogs, I find that this is taking about an hour per day to maintain this level of content production. To help keep pace I spent several hours staying awake on Saturday night doing nothing but writing blog posts, I was able to create seven quality blog posts within an hour and queued most of them for my Dragon Blogger blog. Three of them were movie reviews which I staggered out a week apart, since I don’t want too many movie reviews day after day on my technology heavy blog.

The main difficulty of a blogger is

A) You have to find time to write quality content and enough of it so your blog has many indexed pages

but, you also have to try to find time to

B) promote and spread your blog across the web

This is done by commenting on other blogs, submitting your posts to various submission services, building links, keyword advertising, posting in forums, spreading information on your social networks…etc.

The problem is if you write quality content alone, but you don’t spend anytime marketing it is akin to creating a great product that people would want to buy, but never purchasing a TV commercial to advertise your product or putting in large stores like Walmart to sell and display it.

Bloggers must remember to put some time into promoting and networking in order to eventually build web presence and increase their indexes in the various search engines. Creating content alone is not enough to expand your blog anymore when you are competing with millions of other blogs.

-Justin Germino

I was surprised when I heard that the TV Pitchman Billy Mays was found dead this weekend on CNN, I had been watching commercials for the Discovery Channel Show Pitchman and he was very recognizable in the As Seen On TV product industry. In reading more of the details about what may be the cause it turns out that Billy Mays was on a US Airways flight the day before that blew a tire during a landing which caused Billy Mays to hit his head as a result of the bumpy landing.

People don’t know if this incident could be something similar to what happened with Natasha Richardson, where a head injury from a skiing accident turned out to be fatal. An autopsy was ordered to determine the cause of death, it is just coincidence that Billy Mays was the same age as Michael Jackson and the both passed away within the same week.

As one of my twitter followers replied me on twitter “Oxi Clean will never be the same”, and its true, there are a handful of products that I don’t think would have ever been as successful had his strong and charismatic sales presentation vouch for it. The industry loses a talented salesmen and I wish his family the best in these troubled times.

-Justin Germino

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give for couples is to be there for your partner when they have a bad day, and I don’t mean just be there physically, but be there emotionally and mentally. Let your partner vent and share their frustration and be a good listener.

Sometimes the best thing you can do to help your partner when they are going through a stressful situation or had a bad day is to let them just unload all of their thoughts, feelings and emotions. Don’t try to interject and interrupt unless they ask for your opinion or advice.

Being a listener is key, and make sure you are listening instead of just ignoring or half paying attention. Turn the TV off, get away from the computer and sit together staring at each others eyes. Your partner depends on you for support and comfort just as you would for them when you experience a stressful and bad day.

People need to remember that with all the distractions of technology, true relationship communication is done completely unplugged where the two of you can just sit and talk alone and privately without the distraction of technology all around you.

-Justin Germino

With the banking and finance industry finally making some recovery there is a slow but steady resurgence of Wall St jobs that can be found for those who are looking to get back into the industry or enter it for the first time.  It is still a very tight and competitive market and more struggles are just around the corner for some sectors, but you can at least put your resume out there and compete with all the skills and talent you have to offer.

Good luck job hunting.

-Justin Germino

In tribute to Michael Jackson I wanted to share my favorite Michael Jackson song, and then hear from my readers and fellow bloggers on what their favorite song is and why. This post could be like a viral chain of people sharing their favorite song story, and I am curious to see if it catches on.

As I as only a kid when Michael Jackson was really popular, I never got into the Jackson 5 stuff as I was not born yet, my favorite song of all time is Thriller (not original I know), but it was the stage in my life where I was about 7 years old and I was into B horror movies anyway (watched movies that no kid that age should watch) and I loved Zombie Movies, Horrors such as “The Thing”, Howling series…etc

When I first heard and saw thriller I was mesmerized by how cool the story of the video was, like many others it remains one of the best and most pronounced music video’s in my mind that I can recall clearly as one of my childhood memories of seeing it for the first time. The catchy beat on top of it all was excellent.

I would say my second favorite song is “Remember The Time” which also had a very good music video with state of the art special effects for its time, but the story behind the song was what I really liked. Even at an early age I had a poets heart.

So I want to hear from my readers and fellow bloggers, what is your favorite Michael Jackson song and why? Blog about it and I will link back to you here, or leave a comment if you like.

Update:

Bumble Blog shares her favorite Michael Jackson song with readers, find out which one it is and why.

Looks like Supernova Splash also posted Thriller as their favorite Michael Jackson song as well, find out why.

Pehpot over at the Make or Break blog talks about their Michael Jackson song experience, although not a fan per se.

Over on Deborah Katy’s Diary you can read about one of her favorite songs “The way you make me feel” and why it is one of her favorites.  Thanks for taking the opp.

-Justin Germino