Justin Germino Ramblings

The A+ certification is very important in information technology. It is a certification that attests and verifies the competency of professionals in the computer profession. If you want an internationally recognized certification that will permit you to handle any issues pertaining to computers, you need this certification. It has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that A+ certification is indeed one of the largest and most widely-accepted certifications available. It is originated and was initially sponsored by CompTIA. This is a worldwide association of industries and companies in the IT sector. The common goal is usually to have professionals who have standardized qualifications of working in the IT sector.

A+ Benefit – It’s Widely Accepted

There are many reasons that make the A+ certification the most popular for computer repairs and computer maintenance. The fact that it has received tremendous support from computer industries makes it the best. This is what makes it different from other credentials. A+ certification is famous and widely acknowledged because it is backed by nearly all the leading vendors and manufacturers. It is also recognized by service providers, manufacturers and various professional bodies.

A+ Benefit  – It Covers a Range of Skills

If you are a keen observer, you will concede that an A+ certification is the sole generic information technology support qualification today. If a person is A+ certified, it is a clear translation that he or she can successfully handle computer equipment and users. In addition, the busiest area or part of information technology is the technical support. Technical support is usually the focus if A+ certification. This is what makes A+ to be popular and widely recognized.

A+ is essential and focuses on the support of micro computers. If you want to achieve the certification, you ought to pass the A+ essentials and an exam of IT technician or remote support technician. Technical support is very important and this is why A+ certification was specifically designed for technical support field. The IT profession definitely needs a good background if you want success. As such, if a beginner wants to make a good foundation, learning the basics of technical support is very important. It paves the way for a good working knowledge. If you have been in the tech support field for sometime with little recognition, the only way is to go for A+ certification and be the competent technician you want to be.

A+ Benefit – Real-World Application

A fully qualified certified professional should be able to carry out installation and set up. He or she should be in a position to handle troubleshooting, upgrading, repairs and maintenance of laptops and printers. In short, everything that pertains to computers should not be an uphill task. A+ certification will make you comprehend various network configurations.

About the Author

Daniel Ruyter writes on behalf of dinaliC.com, a firm specializing in technology consulting and staffing services.

I was helping @JohnAguiar out with some WordPress issues a few days ago and lost quite a bit of my lunch break going through trying to solve his problems which may have been related to a single plugin.

The problem was first that his last 2 posts weren’t showing up in his Feedburner RSS feed, this put is on a goose chase where we did everything from troubleshooting Feedburner itself, 512k max size feed being blown, a feedburner plugin, to finally narrowing it down to W3 Total Cache which was caching the RSS feed.

In doing all of this troubleshooting we also updated his WordPress to 3.4.1 and all plugins.  This didn’t resolve it but when I disabled W3 Total Cache, problem went away, this narrowed it down but another problem surfaced.

Now his last 2 articles were not showing up on his homepage, but did on his RSS feed.  This one blew me away, it took me quite a while and I attributed it also to W3 Total Cache at first (must be cache not clearing) and I went through everything, then I read tickets online about theme and WordPress updates causing this issue so looked at that, switched to default theme for 1 second and it didn’t solve it.

Then Checked WordPress Plugins

Disabled all WordPress plugins and problem goes away, re-enabled plugins one at a time until when I enabled the WP Filter Post Category the problem immediately returned.

Learned more about the plugin and found out that John had created a new category a recent time ago and this plugin doesn’t automatically add new categories to it’s allow list, so this plugin was blocking any posts in this category from displaying on homepage and it was coincidence his most recent posts were in this category.

Lesson Learned

Always take a snapshot of all WordPress plugins that are enabled and then disable all plugins to see if problem goes away, there could be multiple problems at the same time but this is a sure way to rule out plugins really fast.

-Justin Germino

Today is the last day to enter the Video Game Giveaway on DragonBlogger.com and I was thinking about one reader who said they don’t play games so have no reason to enter.

I told them this, don’t you play something on iPhone, iPad, Android Phone or Tablet?  Something that is a game that you would want to win the value in Paypal cash?

I am going to expand all future video game giveaways to clarify that iOS and Android are valid "games" and you can win credit for iTunes or Amazon which you can apply toward Amazon Android App store or Kindle Fire games…etc. 

This way everyone should feel like they could enter, not just those who play PC, PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo Games.

Remember, if you are International then you win the Paypal cash value of the game.

Click on Banner above and enter the contest now!

-Justin Germino

I am super excited for the release of The Secret World which is still scheduled to be released on July 3rd and I have participated in 4 Beta weekends including the Public Beta but was discouraged after realizing my character would not port into each separate Beta or to the final game.

So I am hesitant to join any more beta’s and just want to join the full game when it releases, but I will be on my Anniversary vacation that week so will have to wait until I return.

Meanwhile, The Secret World seems to be shaping up and improving even from the previous beta.  The quests are engaging, the dialogue interesting and the whole story original, haunting and requires some serious problem solving and investigation work.

I am hoping to do a routine segment of video’s, reviews on DragonBlogger.com if I can find the time at some point, but I did do a video showcasing the early beta combat to show how spooky it is fighting monsters in an underground train station.

-Justin Germino

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Don’t underestimate the need for keeping track and monitoring your web server performance because when readers can’t visit your site or their experience is negatively impacted because your site is performing poorly or not loading in a timely fashion this could mean you lose readership which could be potential customers and revenue.  Having a blog that takes 2 minutes to load a post or homepage is almost as bad as having the website being down altogether.

Sure it is great to have a monitor that just keeps track of when your site is up and notifies you when it is not responding, but if you run a site that gets a lot of traffic or does a lot of conversions and sales then you will need something more flexible like a Web Application Monitoring that can handle detecting slow page load times, slow loading elements, provide real time alerts and good diagnostic information when errors are encountered.

In looking at Dot Com Monitor I like that they have packages that can include all of these and you get a free trial to sample the services before you know if you want to commit.  They support almost every type of alert possible including: Phone, Pager, Email, SMS and more to make sure you are alerted to the moment there is a problem found with your website.

Their BrowserView Monitoring looked most interesting to me as it performs testing and monitoring of your website with Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox browsers for page-element load time reports and alarming.  This can help tell you when your website may be buckling under peak load times and with trend analysis you can see if you have problems during specific times of the day.

You also get response time reports from various locations around the globe to see how your website is loading not just from your location but from many locations to give you a broader picture.

Bottom line is you should have some sort of monitoring on your website if you do any sort of service or business on it and be notified right away to minimize your potential revenue losses as well as minimizing negative reader or customer experience.

-Justin Germino

Another interesting article in Scientific American worth sharing about a study where mice were fed dog dirt (pet dander, shedding…etc) and then deliberately infected with RSV.

The mice that had been exposed to dog dander had more diverse microbes in their guts and far lessened symptoms of RSV than those mice who were not exposed to any dog dander.

Now, they are assuming this relatively applies to humans too and is more about exposure to dirt, pet dander and other natural filth as a means to building up the microbes in the gut as well as strengthening the immune system properly which reduces the risk of diseases like Asthma which are thought to be prevalent due to “too clean” environments where the body doesn’t know how to properly react and doesn’t build the immune system optimally.

You can read more about this article here: http://goo.gl/mag/uS4Wz

It is true though that more studies are showing side effects of being in a too clean environment. Sure we all want to prevent germs and food poisoning so we want to wash our hands and use sanitizer frequently but you shouldn’t be afraid to let your kids play outside in the dirt, grass and mud and don’t think you “shouldn’t own a pet” because it isn’t clean or could make your kids sick, the opposite is proving to be true and owning a pet can actually help boost your baby’s chances of building a stronger immune system later.

What is most interesting is how breathing in the pet dander helps build more diverse microbes in the gut, there is more science learning just how important gut microbes are to the overall immune system and health of the body.  With many auto immune disorders like Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Coalitis and such starting from immune disorders in the gut learning what microbes play a factor in helping train the body not to attack it’s own organs could be a key role to helping find a cure for such diseases.

-Justin Germino

It was some fun on a few of my day’s off last week spending time at the beach in SoCal where the water was perfect (cold enough to chill you, but not too cold once you get used to it).

I helped my kids build sand castles, caves, forts and we jumped waves and got sandy.

We even found a crab up on the sand who forgot to bury or flee so we picked him up and made him the king of one of the sand castles for a while.

Prior to recently I used to only get to a beach maybe once a year at most, but now we get to go every month or two which is nice as I used to love the beach as a kid.

I still hate getting all sandy, but love swimming in the waves.

-Justin Germino

So after a contractor failed to show up on time for a paint job it was with great hesitation that I offered to paint the bathroom myself so that my wife wouldn’t be disappointed on her birthday weekend.  In retrospect this was one good intention that went horribly wrong.

It turns out that painting over a surface that has wallpaper built into the surface is much harder than you would think, even calling the manufacturer and them recommending a coat of Kils before painting and following the instructions didn’t prepare me for what was in store.

The Kils was too thin, leaving streaks and gaps when painting over the wallpapered surface (this isn’t removable wallpaper it is built into the paneling so stripping it wasn’t possible) and even when I coated the whole bathroom the wallpaper was still visible.

I decided to see if the paint could coat over it and at first I thought this would be okay, it kind of was with a roller.  However because it is a bathroom there are way too many crevices and tight places you can’t get to with a roller, it is in these places that things went horribly wrong.  Even two different brushes left horribly noticeable brush streaks and marks of unevenness due to the slippery nature of the surface.

I did about as much as I could before panic started setting in and I started looking in the classifieds to find a painter to fix this mistake that I was only making worse.  I called a few people to find one that wouldn’t be able to do it until Monday, finally someone said they would come out same day and give an estimate.

Unfortunately he never showed up and by this time I had tried 3 separate contractors who all couldn’t do it on such short notice or just never answered their phone.  Meanwhile, I wanted to hire somebody to paint and fix the mess job in the bathroom on my wife’s birthday but when I finally did get a company they couldn’t have somebody out until Monday and we were leaving CA on Monday.

In the end I bought about $120 worth of paint supplies, new rollers, brushes and tools and just went at it on Saturday night to see if I could get it done before my wife woke up for her Birthday on Sunday

-Justin Germino

Today is my wife’s birthday and I am looking forward to taking her out to dinner at Anthony’s Fish Grotto in San Diego Harbor which is one of her favorite places.  We kicked off her birthday weekend by seeing Brave on Friday, getting her Gluten Free birthday cake from 2Good2B Bakery on Saturday and of course her gifts were presented on Sunday.

The kids got her an assortment of cool stuff, and I tossed in something special that keeps on giving myself.  In our years together, for some reason or another she has had a string of bad luck around her birthdays which caused many of them to not be as pleasant as they should have been.  Some indirectly caused by me, but others not.

Hopefully this year will be a great birthday and there won’t be any mishaps.

Happy Birthday Shona,

-Justin Germino

I have been on the fence about kicking off a Kindle eReader giveaway with contest domination on my technology blog, or proceeding with the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 giveaway hosted with Rafflecopter instead for my next giveaway starting July 1st.

Contest Domination gives me something I have been meaning to do which is showcase and add growth to my mailing list, but doesn’t have some of the custom entry methods I like leveraging with Rafflecopter plus it doesn’t allow me to create custom entry methods.

So I have done some more experimenting with Contest Domination, send some feedback and recommended updates to Travis the creator and hoping he can have features added in next version which will push me to holding a Contest Domination contest sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, should I be giving away an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 in my next contest?  Which would my readers like better, or should I let the winner decide?

Speaking of contests, I need support for my Blog Engage contest article, I am going to be using the prize money (if I win) to help fund the game console giveaway, so I really need the support of my fans to help me win.

Just go to this article: http://www.blogengage.com/blogger/what-would-it-take-to-sell-your-blog/

Read it, comment, like, retweet, Pin it…etc.  Help spread the word and help me secure a high enough spot to win cash to help put toward my game console giveaway.

-Justin Germino