Justin Germino Ramblings

I was a little upset when both of my kids left their Kindle Fire’s at a local Mexican restaurant last week and it took 2 days for the family to notice.  Fortunately when my wife called the restaurant they had held onto them and were waiting for someone to call.

We dodged a bullet and usually I remember to remind my kids not to forget their Kindle Fires but this time I had forgotten myself.  Would have been quite vexed if both of those would have been lost and they would not have been getting replacements if that would have happened.

I am a fine one to talk about forgetting things however, because I often forget things myself. I have forgotten my wallet before, forgotten my ATM card and left it inside ATM machines before and left my credit card before at a restaurant in California just last year.

So I guess forgetfulness just runs in the family on the male side and my kids are going to look forward to many years of forgetting stuff in their future.

-Justin Germino

Last weekend my son and I decided to start up some new Charr characters and test out some classes we haven’t previously been, I chose the Guardian class while he chose the Warrior class.  I had a Necromancer, Ranger and Thief already.

Rykard Parker was born and it didn’t take too long to level him up to Level 11, only about a few days of play.  I did find that you can get a lot of money really fast if you are lucky enough to find an unidentified dye and I don’t care much about dye colors for my secondary characters so I am quick to sell them on the Black Market trading post where you can get over 10 silver for a single unidentified dye sometimes.

I also go into the crafting pretty early on as you can just gain levels by crafting so take the time to collect the ore, wood and herbs so you can sell them.  Don’t forget to sell your collections they are shared in your bank across all characters as well this helps give you funding to add up currency.

My Charr guardian is slow, but is a massive force in combat and his ability to teleport to his foe, set them on fire and then strike with a whirlwind of attacks with his two handed sword is a devastating intro move into most battles that usually wins me minor combats immediately.

Overall out of all the games I have played in 2012, Guild Wars 2 continues to be the one that impresses me the most and keeps me wanting to come back and play more.

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I have been meaning to study for my CISM certification exam for the nearly the past two years and I can’t decide if I am just too busy (which I am) or I am just procrastinating at this point.  I haven’t yet taken all the time to absorb all of the free online training available to me, nor looked up any research papers on the topic that might save me time neither.

I have always been bad when it comes to testing, I practice stuff in the real world and even when I know stuff I second guess myself on tests, probably because of my Libra trait but I always think a test question is trying to trick, it can’t be that easy, or if there are multiple choice questions where more than 1 answer is correct I can get tripped up as well.

I find that in order for me to take the time needed to study I would have to do it late at night to avoid distractions, this is typically my unwind time from a busy and stressful day and hardly a time I want to spend researching, learning and trying to memorize more information to pass a test.  Yet I really wanted to add this career certification to my resume and need to hunger down.

Maybe by writing a post about it I will motivate myself to actually take some of the free courses available to me and then schedule the test for next year.  just need to push myself.  How many others out there hate tests, research papers, essays, and anything else you have to study up for just to try and pass a few hundred questions or some scrutiny to see if you deserve a paper?

-Justin Germino

Went to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra for the first time the other night in concert at Jobing.com arena and have to say it was a spectacular event that blew away all expectations.

We had exceptional seats in the 5th row from the stage, but I wasn’t able to get pictures as I had no camera on me (even though the event allowed recording provided you didn’t use a D-SLR).  I had always loved listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra during the holidays but had never seen them perform live and I was impressed at the talent of the musicians and performers.

The performance reminded me a little bit of a rock concert combined with a play as a narrator illustrates the setting and meaning between songs and does a good job setting the story so you have a visual and mental picture to accompany the audio.

The concert makes excellent use of lasers, lights, pyrotechnics and yes the fire was making it very warm in the first few rows they needed more air conditioning if they use that much fire in a concert.  There were even fog effects and snow (bubbles) raining from the sky at one point which really added to the atmosphere of the concert.

In addition to doing a full Christmas performance they also include some extra songs at the end and the concert lasted nearly 3 hours which was an incredible length of time for a single concert.

Super impressed and if you enjoy rocking Christmas music and like listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra then I highly recommend you see them when they come to perform in your city.

-Justin Germino

It is rare these days that I get out to a new restaurant in Arizona, this is in part because I live in Casa Grande and it is about an hour drive each way to the nearest new fine dining restaurant and Casa Grande only has about two dozen or so restaurants with most of them being chains like Chilis, Olive Garden…etc.

So when I took my wife out to Arrowhead Grill I was excited and I did my research based on location (it was fairly close to the Jobing.com arena) and looked at reviews 5 star Zagat rated.

When we arrived at Arrowhead Grill the atmosphere is similar to Ruth’s Chris except with an open kitchen.  It has the air of a fine steakhouse and we were promptly seated our reservations having been made a week beforehand on OpenTable.

The restaurant is your typical high end steakhouse and the you will find various cuts of steak, seafood, and each side item is purchased separately but large enough to share with 2 or 3 people.

The night I went they had imported Kobe style beef from New Zealand, but I opted to get their classic Delmonico steak with Shrimp Scampi on top.  For an appetizer I chose the European pretzels with mustard / cheese fondue.  My wife chose the lamb rack with goat cheese fondue and we both split a few sides including Scalloped Cheese Potatoes and Creamed Spinach.

My wife also ordered the wedge salad which was amazingly delicious with thick applewood smoked bacon.

The appetizer was fantastic, I am a huge pretzel lover and the European Pretzel with mustard cheese fondue blew away any pretzel I have ever had.  Seriously, no theater, Wetzel pretzel or any other pretzel compared to the warm soft dough, hard crust, salt and the right amount of hot mustard in the cheese fondue was a fabulous compliment.

The steak itself was also fantastic, a thick 10oz cut of Delmonico steak which was tender, medium rare (my order) and full of flavor.  I did order a side of the brandy peppercorn sauce as well.  The shrimp scampi was fantastic as well, but if I had to give one critique is that don’t order the scampi on top of the steak.  The Shrimp and scampi sauce is poured over the steak this overrides the natural flavors of the steak and you are eating steak with scampi sauce.  This made it pointless to get the peppercorn sauce on the side as all I taste was the garlic scampi sauce with each steak bite.  Now it isn’t unpleasant, it is delicious but I would have rather had a plain steak that I could have tried without sauce, then dipped in various sauces to compare rather than subject the whole steak to scampi sauce.

My wife really enjoyed her rack of lamb with goat cheese fondue and the two of us finished the dinner off with one of their famous butter cakes which was delicious and extremely rich.

Arrowhead Grill in Glendale Arizona is a treat and if you haven’t been and enjoy fine steakhouses then you will not be disappointed.  Price wise is comparable to Ruth’s Chris or other fine steakhouses and you can estimate about $150 – $200 for two people dining if you both get an entrée, salad, 1 appetizer and a few drinks of alcohol.  Obviously some entrees are more than others, so plan your budget accordingly and prepare to have one of the best meals of your life.

-Justin Germino

Arrowhead Grill

8280 W Union Hills Dr
Glendale, AZ 85308
(623) 566-2224

My iBuyPower PC that I bought back in August 2008 has a lot of USB ports, the problem is that most of them are on the back of the case and there are only 2 on the top and 2 in front of the machine.  I have at any one time 7+ peripherals plugged into my home computer which include, Wireless Keyboard, Wireless Mouse, USB Flash Drive, Digital Camera, iPhone, iPad (charges on the USB 3.0 port), Sony Bloggie Camera, Webcam, USB Mic and more!

This is where the Anker Uspeed USB 3.0 7-Port Hub comes in, this is an external USB hub that you plug into one of your USB 3.0 ports and it has 7 ports all with lights on top to indicate when a USB device is plugged in and in use.

The hub works flawlessly and I tested it with various devices, the most important test was to confirm that I can get USB 3.0 speeds from all 7 ports.

That Kingston HyperX 64GB Flash Drive you see in the 7th port was swapped between all 7 ports one at a time while I transferred Minecraft .wmv files that my son makes to see how fast they would transfer.

I saw no degradation in speed performance between using the PC’s own USB 3.0 port or the Anker Uspeed 3.0 7-Port Hub USB port.  I was still able to get the expected 230+ MB/s read rates from the drive and the expected write rates as well.

Bottom line, if you need to increase the number of USB ports on your computer or especially your laptop where you typically only have 2 USB ports then the Anker Uspeed 3.0 7-Port Hub is the device for you.

At $49.99 this product is definitely worth the price in my opinion and it replaced my older 4 port USB hub by Belkin that wasn’t even USB 3.0 compatible.

-Justin Germino

IZEA is quick to offer services that allow advertisers to market to the latest social media consumers while offering bloggers a way to monetize their blogs and social media accounts.

PinableAds is the next service from IZEA

With PinableAds from IZEA advertisers can create pins for their products and services and increase the attention to them.  Obviously this has a slant toward fashion and flashy items that are visually appealing in a photo.  Remembering that Pinterest is a key demographic for women bloggers and social media enthusiasts and you can leverage this offering to get your product in front of a demographic with a lot of viral marketing power.

PinableAds already integrates into SocialSpark Ads platform for those who are bloggers so just make sure you are applying for the SocialSpark Ads program and are taking advantage of it.

I haven’t seen any PinableAds show up on my blog yet, but I am curious to know how it integrates and what it will look like.  If you haven’t used SocialSpark to earn money from your blogging platforms yet I highly recommend it.

-Justin Germino

Earlier this week I was on a Google Hangout Interview with Social Web Café owner Deborah Anderson. In this Interview I talked about gadgets for the holidays, tips on buying gadgets, ebook readers and more. 

There will be a 2nd part to this interview about blogging coming up in January.

This was my first Google Hangout Interview, I realize that my microphone volume is too low for my headset, and I wanted to originally use my awesome Behringer Podcast Studio USB mic, but couldn’t use my speakers as they caused feedback. 

I also still speak too quickly in my opinion and need to slow down a little.

-Justin Germino

After moving about 3 more miles away from my gym membership my wife and I decided to instead sign a contract with a closer gym that is only 4 minutes away instead of one that is a 12 minute drive each way which costs me almost 1/2 hour of drive time just to start one of my workout programs.

I had a really good workout routine last year and was consistently going 3 days per week, but I started letting it slip and this was especially true after my hernia surgery in April and my move in October.  So I am determined to start back up in a 3 day per week workout program and one of the good things about this new gym is that it is 24 hours compared to only 5:30am – 10pm of the previous gym I belonged to.

This gym also includes 1 personal fitness session per month with a trainer and includes a ton of various classes and other workout programs that help jump start either cardio goals, weight loss goals or other fitness goals.

I really don’t have a regular schedule, I try to work out in the small amount of time between dropping my kids off at school and starting my morning meetings at my day job, this is often just 1/2 hour so I can’t tell you that I have a specific set of workout programs that I follow.

I do of course encourage everyone to make fitness and working out a part of their life, it is important not to be sedentary in a chair for too long, sitting on your butt all day at your desk is detrimental to your health in the long term and I recognize the benefits of adding fitness even if I don’t practice as often as I should like many of us.

What fitness program or workout programs do you follow to help prevent yourself from neglecting your body?  Or are you one who wants to but just can’t find the time or make the time like I find myself in often?

Finally Comments & Reactions are showing on the Dragonblogger.com homepage for the articles.

It is pretty cool, but I didn’t change anything in the theme for Reactions to show up, instead I had some issues with Disqus not syncing comments back to my blog, I opened a support ticket and 5 hours later BAM everything is synced and I have this new comments + reactions showing up on my homepage.

Disqus hasn’t yet contacted me to tell me what they fixed or what they did to make the sync work, but I am happy all looks to be working now and the WordPress database is in sync with Disqus again.

-Justin Germino