Justin Germino Ramblings

Over the course of human history, societies have had to make collective decisions about what sorts of buildings and infrastructures are necessary for an ideal community. The Romans called for theatres, temples and public forums. Twentieth century New Yorkers wanted massive apartment complexes and skyscrapers. And in towns and cities across America, families demand good schools, safe streets and spaces for outdoor recreation.

Although the modern playground, as we know it today, is a relatively recent innovation (especially when it comes to safety), societies have always recognized the importance of providing playground equipment for children to play freely. The following are a few of the top reasons why a playground must be included in any thriving community:

1.Good for the Body

The childhood obesity epidemic in America is a direct result of the stationary, inactive lifestyles led by many children. Television, video games and the Internet have made it possible for children to lead a social life with a stimulated mind, but they do so without even getting up from the couch. The most exercise many kids get is the tortuous routine of P.E. class. Kids, especially the youngest ones, need a place they can go to get their heart rate up in a way that is fun and that they actually enjoy. Playgrounds provide a safe venue for kids to get up, move around and breathe the free, un-air conditioned air.

2. Good for the Mind

Playgrounds are a shared, communal space, which means that when children use them they get an opportunity to learn sharing and community-building skills by practice. They learn to wait their turn, to give the smaller kids a boost and to care for a shared community resource. Commercial playground equipment prices are certainly worth paying when you begin to see the playground as an investment in the long-term mental and emotional development of the neighborhood children.\

3. Good for the Soul

A central playground is a lovely thing to have in a town, and it greatly enhances the overall quality of life there. Community leaders should be on the lookout for park playground equipment sales so that they can easily take advantage of a good deal should it arise. Communities benefit aesthetically, socially and even financially from a vibrant, active town center, and what better way to draw families into town than with a well-designed playground? Everyone benefits, especially the children, and that makes the community stronger for years to come.

Jessica writes about a wide variety of topics.  She especially enjoys writing about equipment. You can learn more about playground equipment at http://www.miracle-recreation.com/

I can literally see it in my wife’s face when she goes over to our neighbor’s house and see’s how my neighbor’s husband gets up at 3:30am and spends days installing a custom patio deck piece by piece.  You would think their yard was put together by a professional team of DIY experts based.

I see that look in her eye as she wishes I were that "creative" or "handy" with tools and had mad level 20 carpentry skills and can magically turn our yard into some covered patio paradise.

I get embarrassed, sure they put in a doggy dear by sawing a hole in the wall and installing a doggy door into their house itself.  I install a doggy door by buying one that fits into your existing sliding glass door.  Hey, it works though may not be as handy.

Realistically, I can barely keep up with the landscaping which always requires work.  I am just not cut out for "home improvement" type projects though I can install ceiling fans, replace drip systems and do some other minor repairs.  I still promised my wife at some point I would build a brick oven in the yard, I found a website about building your own brick ovens http://www.traditionaloven.com/ but truthfully it all looks so intimidating.

I seriously need to start increasing my blogging income so I can hire contractors to do the handy man work that I am so inept at. 

-Justin Germino

Lately it seems like I am tired all the time, ironically I seem to crash around 1pm – 2pm and even though I get about 7-8 hours of sleep I just get mind numbingly exhausted by the afternoon.

I used to think I suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome when I was younger because I literally was tired all of the time and can fall asleep in just minutes no matter what time of the day it was.  I would nod off in car rides, sitting on the couch or anything else with ease if I just sat still without moving.

Now it takes almost a constant influx of caffeine to keep me running all day long lately, I tried no coffee for about a week and it was one of the most difficult weeks to get through. 

I hear that allergies can make people feel exhausted all the time, so maybe it may be related to allergies, I should investigate it further at some point.  In the meantime I find that all it takes is a 15 – 20 minute power nap and I have enough energy to last until bed time.

This would incline me to think it was related to just not getting enough quality sleep, and I don’t know if I need a new mattress, pillow or a new bed time routine to help get better quality sleep.

I should look into it more because I am tired of feeling tired all the time and it has been like this for twenty years, though probably worse in the last six years or so.

-Justin Germino

Thanks to MyHost my Apache instances are recompiled and now running FastCGI on my servers to help improve php performance which will hopefully keep my blogs more stable and allow my admin screens to update faster.

Moving to a VPS definitely required some tweaking and optimizing of the SQL, PHP and Apache servers to make sure it was tuned properly based on the size of the WordPress site and the amount of traffic it was receiving.  It is important to realize that when you own a VPS or dedicated hosting and you have full control over your systems it may require you doing a lot more of the investigation and tuning manually and it isn’t like a shared hosting provider where you simply rely on global configurations that apply to all shared hosting accounts.

I will give props out to MyHosting who have gone out of their way to test and optimize even going so far as to run load testing, pingdom tests and have spent days helping tune my sites to make them faster and more stable.

I don’t know of any other hosting provider that has given me ever such unbelievable support and service that MyHosting has provided in the past 5 years of having online hosted sites. 

If you really are serious about upgrading to a VPS hosting solution because you need to host more sites and handle more throughput, then you can’t go wrong with MyHosting.  In just three weeks with them I am completely blown away by their level of support.

I am expecting to cut the last of my sites DragonBlogger.com over to MyHosting VPS solution sometime in July 2011 after I give some more soak time on my other sites.

-Justin Germino

White Collar and Men of a Certain Age are back with new seasons this week which makes me a happy camper. Combine that with me picking up True Grit on DVD and I have my evenings set until Friday.

Going to be a busy weekend as I unload and unpack the boat and get it ready for a trip to the cabin where we are staying on Rainbow Lake.  One thing that concerns me however is the Wallow fire which is now the 2nd largest fire in Arizona and is only about 60 miles east of where I am supposed to be staying.

There still may be a risk the fire will spread west and my whole camping trip could be in jeopardy.  With 3 wild fires spreading through the state right now (that I know of) it is announced that all three fires were caused by man and not nature.  The fact that people still flick cigarettes out their car windows or leave untended campfire without making sure all the embers are extinguished is just simply irresponsible or negligent.

Millions of dollars in damages and resources spent combatting the fires, lives at risk and this speaks nothing of the ecological damage to the landscape and wildlife as a result of the fires.  People need to be more responsible when they go into the dry country up north, they need to be more accountable and aware of their actions.

-Justin Germino

One activity my wife and I really enjoy doing is having some Dim Sum at C-Fu Gourmet Chinese restaurant in Chandler, Arizona.  This is probably our favorite Dim Sum place in the valley and they have at least 40+ items to choose from and include everything from Shrimp Dumplings, BBQ Pork Buns to more exotic items like Shark Dumplings and much more.

I really enjoy opening up with a serving of Bok Choy with Oyster sauce then diving into some assorted dumplings, the noodles are great, the roasted pork slices are amazing and you can gorge yourself silly in a hurry if you don’t pace yourself.

Your eyes are always bigger than your stomach when you order Dim Sum at C-Fu Gourmet Buffet, which is located at Dobson and Warner in Chandler.

We had to spend hours shopping for a new wardrobe for myself and prior to the mall excursion we enjoyed some Dim Sum.  Of course this meant I had to try on clothes while stuffed like a sausage, but I didn’t mind so much.

-Justin Germino

So last week I purchased Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 from Steam the game service by Valve so that I could play with my son.  I wasn’t thrilled that I had to buy 2 copies of the game, 1 for his computer and one for my own just so we can play together but what happened next frustrated me even further.

The purchase and installation itself were flawless and Valve definitely makes it easy for you to instantly buy/download/install and play games from their library.  I don’t think the faults I encountered are specifically a result of the Steam service, but it is possible it is related to their installer somehow.

After installing Red Alert 3 it works fine in single player campaign, but the moment I try and set it to work with Multiplayer I start running into trouble.  I registered and created a new EA Profile for my game just as I had done with my son’s game.  Of course I used a different email/username….etc for my own profile since you can’t have 2 separate profiles under the same email account. 

No matter what happened next I was never able to connect to the game server with my new account.  The error "Disconnect Notification" followed by The EA account name or Online ID you entered is invalid would plague me forever from that point on.

I tried re-registering with 2 separate EA profiles and neither one worked, I Googled the issue and some said that passwords with special characters have issues so I changed passwords but that didn’t resolve it.   I finally opened a case with EA Support who told me it was wrong password at first, which I showed them my password change confirmation and that I could login to EA profile just fine online.

They then told me to uninstall my game from scratch and not only uninstall it, but send me instructions on how to manually wipe out all registry entries and folders/files for the game.  This is a very manual and ugly set of instructions to give to an average user, but I am no average computer user and so I followed the instructions (though I had to tailor them a little because I installed the game through STEAM and not from CD’s or DVD’s which the instructions must have assumed).

After game was wiped out I rebooted my computer and reinstalled my game, literally another hour spent waiting for another install.

I loaded it up only to encounter the exact same problem again, so here I paid $20 for a game for the sole purpose to play multiplayer with my son online and I have no ability to get it to connect online.

Generic error messages like The EA account name or Online ID you entered is invalid suck and companies should put error codes that they can use to identify more correctly what issues are whenever users encounter issues.

In the meantime, maybe there is something about the Windows 7 64bit system I am running, and when I get a new computer in August and try re-installing it the game will work then.

Again, the same Steam install of Red Alert 3 worked fine on my son’s computer two months ago and was able to get his account connected just fine via multiplayer.  When I used my son’s EA Profile, it signed in just fine but just gave an error about the license key not matching the one on the account, so I don’t know what went wrong with the new EA Profiles that were created.

-Justin Germino

Between my new iPad, BlueTooth headphones, USB Microphone, Camera, MagicJack, Printer, BlueTooth Mouse, Wireless Keyboard, iPod, Blackberry, and USB external hard drive I have left myself with 0 free USB ports on my home computer.

I was at Walmart and just saw a cheap and quick 4 Port Belkin USB 2.0 powered hub and picked it up.  It works well and was able to move 3 devices to the hub (it takes up 1 port in the PC) plus add a new one for the iPad 2.  The one problem is the iPad 2 cannot charge via USB from the computer, I tried on several computers and it seems to only be able to charge from being plugged into a wall outlet.  I don’t know if there isn’t enough power to the USB from the Power Supply, or if USB 3.0 is required to charge or what, but this means I can’t leave my iPad 2 plugged into my computer assuming it is charging like I do my iPod.

Meanwhile, I did find there don’t appear to be any USB 3.0 external hubs yet as only the latest motherboards are sporting them and I don’t know of any USB 3.0 devices at this time.  USB 3.0 is supposed to have 4.8GBPS transfer rates and real world analysis by PC World puts this should be around 1.2 Gigabyte moved between PC and USB 3.0 Flash Drive in 3.3 seconds compared with almost 40 seconds on a USB 2.0 drive.

This rate would make USB 3.0 drives much more desirable for doing backups of Terabyte drives instead of through a LAN which are still really slow to backup a huge hard drive to a NAS on 100MB lan and worse on a Wireless G network.  It can take more than a day to sync a large hard drive over a slow wireless network to a SAN drive.

Anyway, after looking at Amazon online, I realized there are far better USB 2.0 powered hubs with more ports that are cheaper, so I probably should have not been so hasty and just ordered one from Amazon.com.  I am not unhappy with the Belkin USB 2.0 4 Port Hub, it’s just that I probably could have gotten a 7 or 10 port hub for cheaper.

Even Walmart isn’t much of a deal compared to Amazon.com lately.

-Justin Germino

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I don’t go clothes shopping very often, but I have to actually pick up some outfits for our vacation to Rome where there is a different clothing style and dress code than the United States, this is especially true for Vatican City where you can’t wear shorts of any kind, even docker shorts.

I already have a more fashionable hat than a ballcap and will likely wear more polo and button shirts and far fewer T-shirts on my vacation this time around.

I still think clothing is expensive for men, but even more so for Women, the fact that you can spend over a hundred dollars on a single outfit is just nuts.  I maybe spend a hundred bucks a year on clothes for myself with the exception that I have to buy a new pair of sneakers every few months because they wear out fast.

Women, can spend hundreds of dollars on an outfit they wear once and then sits in the closet on a rack forever.  They should just have clothing rental stores everywhere so you can rent outfits and such for evenings out for those who don’t dress up often.

Then again, I should start dressing up more often, but if I dressed up just to walk into my home office and telecommute all day, who would I be dressing up for?  I am lucky if I wear anything other than a T-Shirt and shorts while working on my computer all day long.

-Justin Germino

My son clearly is a chip off the old block and instead of drawing a typical get well card showing a sick person or a doctor, he presents me with a fantasy style map showing human, elven and orc kingdoms.

I thought it was such a cool drawing I just had to share, not bad from a 7 year old LoTR fan.  He even said Arcundor to rhyme with Gondor 🙂

-Justin Germino