Justin Germino Ramblings

Tonight I return back to Arizona after spending the last two days in Las Vegas with my wife and some family friends. They hosted us at their place for a New Years celebration and we are very grateful for the good company and fun times. The really nice thing is that we already put away all our Christmas decorations on December 30th before we left, so I don’t have to do decorations this weekend. Tomorrow I am taking my son to see Avatar in 3D IMAX, since we only saw it in 2D theater a few weeks ago.

Then its back to the grind on Monday as we kickoff the first official non-holiday weekday of 2010. I have projects of monumental proportions facing me at work and I am ready to tackle the technical and administrative challenges.

-Justin Germino

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As I am in Las Vegas right now for the first time during New Years, I think back and reflect on all that has happened in 2008.

This has been a rough year for my household and I vow to never stop trying to model myself the following way:

I vow to be a better Father, I can always use more patience and understanding and modeling how I am and act is the best way for my sons to learn from their dad how to be a man.  I also vow to be a better husband, nobody is perfect and mistakes are made around the board.  I have my fair share and anyone who thinks they are perfect is someone who has gotten too complacent and content, never stop working to please your partner and being a better person for them.

Mainly I use 2009 as a turning point to grow and not repeat mistakes made in 2008 and previous years, to try to be a better person, continue to identify my strengths and weaknesses and try to improve on area’s that can be improved.  Most of all I strive for knowledge, understanding and the ability to make sense of it all and use what I learn effectively.

Happy New Year Everyone,

Justin Germino

Life Ramblings spewed forth a whole set of blog awards for me this morning, I was pleasantly surprised and very appreciative.  I have received some of these on my tech blog before, but some of these awards I have never seen.  I had thought about passing these awards on, but it would seem that everyone I know has already received most if not all of these awards already.  I also found that I annoyed people when passing on awards after they just did an awards post a few posts earlier, so I will just keep these to myself and just say that there are many great bloggers out there.

Damien Riley who helped me create my first blog and continues to help me invent new tactics and techniques with blogging would be the primary person to deserve all these awards in one shot from me.

-Justin Germino

Here is the award list:

Back in last May when I bought my wife a new laptop for Mother’s Day, it barely functioned with Windows Vista preloaded. The laptop only had 1gb of RAM and Vista was so sluggish that my wife agreed to try Ubuntu Hardy Heron as an alternative. She learned the new operating system, adapted to Open Office from MS Office and uses Thunderbird and Firefox as her primary browsers. I had most of her programs working with WINE or found the Open Source equivalents on Ubuntu.

But recent problems with visiting certain web sites and the lack of ability to play certain flash and active X stuff is having us consider re-imaging the laptop back to Windows Vista. If I do this I am going to have to purchase more notebook memory at least another gig of ram should suffice.

In the meantime I can’t figure out why she can’t hit MercedesBenz.com from Ubuntu Firefox, it just locks up loading, it works fine on my Windows Firefox, IE and Chrome. I think it is some sort of servlet or something that just wont render right. I know it is flash based, so maybe I am missing a flash plugin or something. I will troubleshoot and if I can fix it, maybe we won’t have to re-image the laptop after all.

-Justin Germino

• Update 12/30/2008

I fixed the flash problem with Firefox 3.x on Ubuntu Hardy Heron, I had to redownload and update the libflash-mozplugin from the Ubuntu archives which resolved my issue.

These instructions worked for me:

1. sudo apt-get install libflash-mozplugin
2. restart firefox

I work with my wife on her Music Production Company called Rock Along Productions.  The company is just kicking off and has its third show planned on February 7th 2009 in Mesa, Arizona.  She has decided to branch the company out to also put together events and functions for companies, private parties, school events, special interest groups…etc.  Basically her company finds the talent you are looking for and arranges sound, talent, times, and puts together the show that you want for your company or party.  It saves you time and effort from having to coordinate all of that yourself and in the end you wind up saving money because we can negotiate deals and rates with sound companies and bands we have worked with before.

Meanwhile, I am the graphic design, company blog, web site designer and help do some promotion.  I have been busy working on the poster for the new show, index card which give $1 off if you show up with them at the door, as well as advertising medium which will be sent out via mail to companies soon.

I have been drawing and designing several of these in Paint.NET and will be posting some of it soon.  If you want to take a look at my latest poster check out Rock Along Productions website, the poster is on the main page.

-Justin Germino

As I enter 2009 one of my primary goals is to gain better control of my finances, one way I am going to accomplish this is when the lease on my 2006 Chrysler Pacifica comes up I intend to turn it in and go several months without a 2nd car payment for a while. This way I can save the six hundred dollars per month I spend on my Pacifica Lease and use it to pay off some other bills and play catchup for a brand new refrigerator I had to buy the week of Christmas.

When I am ready for a 2nd car again I don’t know if I will lease a new car or purchase an older model outright something less than seven thousand dollars I would be looking for, on the one hand a new car means full warranty, usually no car trouble, peace of mind and better gas mileage. On the other hand, it means I would have a monthly car payment, instead of a fully paid off car. I have always had new cars and leased vehicles for the last ten years, I have never known what it was like to have a fully paid off car with no monthly payment, so I am curious if saving the money would it be lost in car maintenance?

While I ponder that over the first few months of the year I think that if I don’t get a 2nd car, at least I won’t be needing another car insurance quote for a while.

-Justin Germino

My Christmas Day was a great memory this year and started at 5:40 in the morning when my two year old woke up.  We had decided to wait until the grandparents came over at 7am to go downstairs and see the presents, so I kept the baby on my lap and did a little blogging work.  Then my five year old woke up at 6:20am and I knew I could keep the kids upstairs only a short time longer, we woke mom up and laid in bed with the kids drinking milk and watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on TV.  I called our parents up and asked them to come over as soon as possible and they arrived just fifteen minutes later.

I had the Video camera rolling to record the kids excitement when they saw and opened their presents and I could barely hide my own inner child as I got to see and play with all the cool toys and games that my kids received this year.  My favorite memories indeed revolve around the whole family just coming together and enjoying each others company while the kids are in pure bliss.  Was a very good Christmas this year, and only the rain prevented the kids from using their Power Wheels Jeep outside.

They had plenty to keep them busy inside though as the oldest received action figures, clay, a lightsaber, 2 board games and a bunch of Planet Heroes stuff.  The baby got the #1 item this year, the Spike The Ultrasaurus which astounded the entire family.  We all had to take turns playing with it, it is the most amazing remote controlled dinosaur and full of fun and surprises.  Our two year old loves pressing the remote but is scared to get up close to it (it is bigger than him) but he loves laughing as it roars, sniffs, and chuckles.

I hope everyone made some good Christmas Memories this year and I would like to hear about them.

-Justin Germino

As I was looking forward to seeing the smiles on my children’s faces as they unwrap their presents from Santa Clause today I wanted to tell all of my readers and friends that I hope everyone has a special holiday season this year.  I have made so many friends and gotten to know so many fellow bloggers and I hope each of you has something you wanted under your tree for you this very day.  Make sure you take some time out for your family and friends if you can.  I know some of you may have to work on Christmas Day and if thats the case at least you can be happy you are still working right?

Each and everyone celebrates Christmas or the Holiday’s differently and there are so many wonderful traditions out there, one of the ones we do in my family is allow all gifts from the grandparents to be opened by the kids on Christmas Eve, as well as the adults exchanging and opening gifts.  We save Christmas Morning so we can focus solely on the kids opening their gifts from Santa Clause, I usually film the event with my JVC Everio Digital Camera and make a Holiday DVD for future years.

I have no idea what I will get this Christmas and was hoping for a Hellboy 2 or Iron Man DVD, so maybe I just might have some cool entertainment to watch tonight (not like I haven’t seen them before, but I am always willing to watch again.)

Merry Christmas to all.

-Justin Germino

My bad luck from yesterday spilled over to today a little bit as after my fridge was installed this morning the family took a trip to Chandler to pick up our Honey Baked Ham.  I had to stop at my office to get mail and send some mail and when I arrived at my desk I see that the ceiling is nearly collapsed and there is a puddle of water all over my desk equipment, floor, and wall.  The ceiling must have leaked from last nights store, so on my day off of work I had to get in touch with building maintenance and the security guard downstairs and show him the damage over my work area.

It is a good thing I telecommute as I am sure the amount of water damage is going to require the wall and ceiling to be ripped open, I think it will probably take at least two weeks to fix in my opinion.  Ah well, at least I caught it before it had worsened, nobody was in the office and this leak would probably have gone unnoticed for another few days had I not caught it.

Was nice spending the day with the family nobody has to work in my house the rest of the week and we can just enjoy the holidays, I am looking forward to Christmas Eve tomorrow with my in-laws coming over for dinner.  Wife is making Spaghetti Pie (really really good) and we have Shrimp Cocktail bought fresh from AJ’s as appetizer with a fruit covered angel food cake for dessert.

Merry Christmas Eve my friends,

Justin Germino