Justin Germino Ramblings

I actually wrote this post before I went on the trip trying to imagine how I am gonna feel on the day before I return from Cabo.  Here is probably how I am feeling at this very moment, knowing that today is my last day on the beach and staying at the Cabo Azul resort.  I will be peaceful, rested, 50% chance I am sunburned and just starting to think about the 1000 emails that will be waiting for me tomorrow when I arrive back in Arizona.  Seriously I average about 200 work emails per day on average, and a five day vacation really means a thousand work emails including another 100 related to blogging at home.

This thought now makes me wonder if I should return at all, or maybe just retire early….

Seriously though, I hate coming back from vacations and having to spend the last weekend days just catching up so that I don’t hit work on Monday morning and waste the entire day trying to play catchup.  This means I will probably work about 5 hours on Sunday to catch up on everything.  I am pretty sure I had a good time though, I will post pictures of my trip in the next few days.  I wonder if my Twitter followers missed my Random Twitter Poetry game?

-Justin Germino

Back in October 2007 there was a massive migration of Woolly Caterpillars which swarmed over some parts of Casa Grande, alas we didn’t see barely any last year in 2008, I wonder if we will see another massive amount this year.  These woolly caterpillars were so numerous the roads around our community looked like a moving carpet, there were thousands of them crawling through the streets at the same time and many of them were mashed under car tires.  I later learned that these Woolly caterpillars are called “Woolly Bear Caterpillars” and that they turn into Tiger moth’s and not butterflies, still these are some of the shots I took back then.

So I come downstairs and learn that one of my son’s favorite (okay,its one of my favorite that I bought him) toy’s, his Justice League Superman Action figure is severely maimed, his hands chewed off at the wrist, his shoulder and skull gnawed.  Superman met his match against Porky the Kryptonite toothed Boston Terrier that decided Superman was his next victim.  Alas, now whenever the other toy’s see their hero, (who is now sitting back and collecting disability), they all quiver at the thought of which one of them is next?

Who will porky choose as his next victim, and can this dog ever be stopped from terrorizing the toys of our two boys?

-Justin Germino

I like doing trivia questions as an ice breaker for my meeting, so I was researching animal trivia when I discovered there really is such a cat called the Liger.  Correction: It is a cross bred male Lion with a female tiger, and they produce fertile offspring.  It is also the largest cat species in existence and is larger even than the sabre tooth tiger.  The largest living cat on earth is a Liger named Hercules who lives in Miami Florida with his trainer and weighs just over 900 pounds.  The largest Liger on record in history according to the Guinness Book of world record weighed over 1700 pounds and lived to be eighteen years old in 1888.

Here is a picture of Hercules the Liger, I swear I didn’t believe it, but just look up Wiki Liger and you will be able to read all about this interesting species of cat that resulted from Tigers mating with Lions, this is not a genetic experiment or a bizarre trick, Ligers were dated back to the 1700’s and have existed for quite some time.

Today is my much anticipated week long getaway in Cabo San Lucas with my wife. We are flying down for five day’s while her mother watches the kids. One of the things I look forward to most of all is having some alone time with my wife, where we can sleep in as late as we want and just be together without having to be parents all day and night at the same time.

There is something magical about a vacation getaway with your partner, something that takes you out of your ordinary day to day life and lets you experience relaxation, luxury and quality time together. Everyone should try to take at least a few little getaways per year, you don’t even need a lot of money.

If money is tight just find a relative or good friends who can babysit your kids at their place for the weekend, and stay home alone for the weekend. Cook each other meals, eat in bed and just snuggle and read books together. You don’t need to be lavish just to have a getaway and spend some quality time together.

-Justin Germino

I wrote Dragon Bloggers Review of Pixar’s UP on my other site showcasing just how amazing this movie was, and this is a follow up post to tell you how this movie has touched me in more ways that many films ever could.  This movie shows you the end of the road particularly for couples who have been together for many years, and how it is inevitable that one will lose the other as you grow old together.  It is a movie that inspires you to make the most of your life that you have together now, so that you have such wonderful memories in the end.

It is a movie that also shows you that no matter how your lives end, it is the time spent together that matters most, even if you didn’t make alot of money, or take many vacations, the fact that you two have memories and experienced a life together are what matter most.  This movie ranks right up there in my heart with some other great films that explore love, loss and mortality including “What Dreams May Come” with Robin Williams, “Bi-Centennial Man” ironically also starring Robin Williams are two more amazing films that explore life and love, and how it reaches its conclusions.

I recommend Pixar’s up to any romantic out there and any couple looking to see a film, I left this film wanting to hold my wife’s hand tighter and for the movie to be “Us” in the end on how our life plays out together, I could only hope my own adventures and journeys in life end up with us being together in the end no matter what we have faced and conquered in our past.

-Justin Germino

So I have written 8 poems in the past two days in order to get make sure I have one unique poem written on my blog for every day I am on vacation next week, including 2 new poems for this weekend starting today.  This includes the random twitter poem I did yesterday and the poem I wrote for an assignment.

This has left me with limited time to get blog posts done for all of my other blogs, as I strive to have 1 unique blog post on all 3 of my blogs for each day I am on vacationing.  This means I had to write 28 posts in a span of seven days, which was incredibly difficult, especially to write quality posts instead of just filler posts.

Alas, my fingers are getting sore from typing too much.  Meanwhile, I have a few more posts to write for my technology blog this weekend, then I can vacation in peace knowing my readers have some unique material to read while I soak up the sun in Cabo starting Monday.

-Justin Germino

There is something happening that is becoming quite contagious, as I continue to do my random twitter poem daily, I am getting new people I have never heard from or met before contacting me on Twitter or my blog telling me how inventive and creative my poetry is, and people actually enjoy participating in my daily twitter poetry games as much as I enjoy writing them.  I have a list of ten to twelve people who are my consistant players, in that they play 3 or more days per week on average.  But each day I have one or two players who have never played before and many of them are coming back and playing again as they find the game interesting.

The game works like this, send me 1 random word on twitter @dragonblogger, and I will put it into the queue for a poem, on my lunch break I write a poem including all words submitted over the morning or some from the previous day that were submitted too late.  I often create some very unique poems with some very crafty words, some people give me hard words on purposes, other easy words.  You never know what I will come up with, some of it is liked, other poems not so much, but you can’t say I am not creative.

Part of the fun is hearing from and meeting new people who claim to be my latest fans, I enjoy and look forward to more twitter poems and having created over 120+ unique poems in the last six months, I intend to keep this game going.

-Justin Germino

There is a rampant amount of skin cancer in this country from people who over sun themselves and use tanning beds to extreme measures, this has caused a general panic and “Avoid the sun at all costs” attitude across the nation. The problem is that if you wear sunblock all the time and avoid the sun you will be preventing the absorption of the necessary UVB radiation which also helps the body create and metabolize vitamin D.

Vitamin D is found in very few organic foods and the chemical version is not nearly as potent and effective, vitamin D is crucial to protecting the heart, blood stream and helps prevent organ cancers. The only main source of vitamin D is through natural sunlight or drinking milk, which is hard to do for people who are lactose intolerant. It is also proven the sun helps against fatigue, malaise, depression and other symptoms.

In moderation it is imperative you allow some sunlight to penetrate and be absorbed by the body, the best time to get some sun would be prior to 10am and after 4pm in the afternoon where you run a much lower risk of skin cancer. It is still appropriate to do short five to ten minutes of getting some sunlight mid day without any sunblock just to make sure your body gets a healthy absorption of vitamin D.

The biggest risks for skin cancer are children and sunburns, sunburns in children greatly increase their likelihood to get skin cancer as adults, though adults who burn can still get skin cancer, it is the DNA damage to young and growing skin cells and DNA that pose the greater risk for mutation in the cells.

Children should wear sunblock for the majority of the day, but should also get a small amount of time each day without sunblock to absorb the Vitamin D, again these should be limited to early morning or late evening hours, or very short amounts of time mid day. All other times they should wear sunblock of SPF 50+ or more.

• In Summary:

Remember to be wary of direct sunlight and use sunblock, especially on children during peak UV Index hours. Don’t however prevent the body from absorbing natural sunlight completely and make sure that at least some exposure to sunlight without “sunblock” or with very low SPF (15) is attained in order for the body to absorb essential nutrients and gain the benefits.

And remember, everything in life should be done in moderation. If you go to extreme on anything you will end up potentially causing more harm than you are trying to prevent.

-Justin Germino

I am scrambling to complete and tidy up some projects at work and prepare to hand them over to other engineers so that I can comfortably enjoy my one week vacation to Cabo, Mexico which is coming up next week.  My wife and I booked a one week stay at the Cabo Azul Resort & Spa which is right on the beach.  We are hoping to get lots of R&R and some deep sea fishing in, we both love fishing and the last time we were in Mexico we caught 6 mahi mahi (Dolphin Tuna) between us.

The time before that I reeled in a 300lb Blue Marlin off of the coast of Kauai which made me so sea sick, I literally turned green and ached from the strain of spending almost 45 minutes trying to reel in such a strong and heavy fish.  It took the captain, deckhand and myself (sea sick and all) to pull the blasted thing on board the boat.

I have no idea if we will catch anything this time, but it sure will be fun to try and see what we come up with.

-Justin Germino