One-A-Day puke (4) Jan 3, 2007
For as long as I've been taking vitamins, I've taken Centrum.  But one time when I was in college and on a fixed (or nonexistent) income, I went for One-A-Day because they were cheaper.  No more than 20 minutes after taking one, I would vomit.  The back of the package said to take it with a meal, so I tried that but didn't have any better luck.  I stopped taking them for a while, and my puking stopped.  I started taking them again, and my puking resumed.  When I told my dad about it, he suggested it might have been a bad batch.  He said I should write the company and sue their pants off, but I already threw the bottle out. 

A while later, a friend at school said he had the same experience with One-A-Day.  He stopped taking them and swore off them completely.  This led me to the conclusion that it wasn't just a bad batch.  Several years down the road, I still hear about people who have the same experience.  They try One-A-Day vitamins for whatever reason and end up puking their guts out for apparently no reason.  After talking to a friend or seeing a doctor, they figure out their puke is a result of their vitamins.  Whodathunkit?  Searching the internet only turns up a few comments from a product review, which say the vitamins are fat-soluble, so an empty stomach will cause the body to reject them. 

Has anyone out there had a similar experience? #health
Dreamhost cron database backup Jan 3, 2007
If that title doesn't make sense to you, please stop reading.  You're wasting your time. 

This is quite possibly one of the most complicated and confusing things I've ever done.  All I initially set out to do was find a way to periodically and automatically backup my website's database and email it to me.  The database is probably the most important part of my website, and Gmail gives me tons and tons of space, so it would be dumb to not do it.  It's a fairly simple task, but I wasn't able to find any reliable, well-explained information out there.  So I used information from a bunch of different places and finally developed something that works.  With web hosts that use cPanel, life is easy.  But with DreamHost, things are a bit different.  And since I know nothing about Linux/Unix, there was an unnecessarily large learning curve.  Here's what I finally ended up with:  A easily-customizable and fully-functional bash script that backs up, gzips, and emails a copy of the current website database then deletes the backup from the server.  That sounds easy, but here are my notes from this several-month task: 

Create a plain text file and put some stuff in it.  Replace the generic details with your specific ones. 
#!/bin/bash

DBNAME=something
DBUSER=username
DBPASS=password
DBHOST=server.com
EMAIL="user@mail.com"
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`

mysqldump --opt -u$DBUSER -p$DBPASS -h $DBHOST $DBNAME > $DBNAME$DATE.sql
gzip $DBNAME$DATE.sql
mutt -a $DBNAME$DATE.sql.gz $EMAIL -s "$DBNAME Database Backup"
rm $DBNAME$DATE.sql.gz
After the initial configuration variables, the first line spits out a sql backup and gzips it.  The second line emails the file to the specified address.  The third line deletes the file so it doesn't waste space on your server. 

Save the file as "backup.sh" and put it in your server root.  The server root is above any usable file, directory, or domain.  It's not publicly accessible by anyone but the owner of the domain/server (that's you). 

Setup a crontab that executes the file at given times or intervals. 
  1. Setup shell access and login to your domain (PuTTY worked for me).
  2. Type "crontab -e" to get into the crontab editing screen.  Type "0 0 * * 2,4,6 /home/username/backup.sh", which will run the backup script every 2nd, 4th, and 6th day of the week (customize as desired).  Save the crontab and get back to the main shell screen.
  3. Enter "dos2unix backup.sh" to make the script readable as a Unix file (I read this somewhere), and then enter "chmod 777 backup.sh".
After many trials and failures, things finally worked.  If this information was helpful to anyone, please let me know.  I could use an ego boost. #technology
LoudLaunch Jan 3, 2007
LoudLaunch has launched.  It's the next PayPerPost/ReviewMe website that pays people to write things about specific websites and topics.  Compared to PayPerPost, the site is faster and has a nicer design, but the payouts seem to be a little less (though I'm not sure if they're employing some sort of ranking system like ReviewMe).  Also, advertisers can't specify whether a review is positive or negative.  Compared to ReviewMe, the site seems like it could possibly be available for use by more people (ReviewMe's system has advertisers choose bloggers, not the other way around).  Advertisers wishing to use LoudLaunch can start a campaign with as little as $50, though more money will allow more bloggers to write about it.  As a whole, it seems that LoudLaunch is more geared towards generating buzz about product launches and press releases, not just products and websites in general. 

This is a sponsored post. #technology
The Marshmallow Incident Jan 3, 2007
Pretty much every day, when I come from work, I'm greeted with some sort of cat-initiated disaster.  Papers on the floor.  Broken cups.  Footprints on the counter.  Half-eaten people food.  A few days before Christmas, Wendy and I stumbled upon quite possibly the best one yet, hereafter referred to as "The Marshmallow Incident". 

We were getting ready to travel to Virginia to visit my family for Christmas, and Wendy packed a bag of food that would eventually be dipped in chocolate and eaten (by humans).  In that outer bag (pink) was an inner bag (white) with several food items:  Pretzels, cookies, and of course, marshmallows. 



Recently, our boy cat, Dilbert, has been getting into (and eating) more and more food that you wouldn't think cats would like.  He gobbles up all kinds of vegetables.  He ate an entire package of cheese crackers.  He ripped open a plastic bag and ate part of a wheat roll.  So I guess it shouldn't be surprising when he eats any other people food.  But marshmallows?  In their original, unopened packaging?  In a bag within another bag?  Apparently, yes.  So this is the sight we came home to: 



Allow me to elaborate.  The picture shows 3 largely uneaten marshmallows (the one on the left has some teeth marks), 1 partially eaten marshmallow, 1 Oreo cookie Christmas ornament (unrelated to this incident), and quite a few small white bits of chewed-up marshmallow.  And by quite a few, I mean somewhere around 10,000.  What the picture doesn't show is the area due north, which had another 10 or so marshmallows and another 30,000 little white bits of chewed-up marshmallow.  What the picture also doesn't show is how much time and floor cleaner it took to remove 40,000 little white bits of chewed-up marshmallow.  It was ridiculous. 

Also of interest in this incident was the ferocity of our little gray and white cat.  He's been known to be a little mean with strangers, and his bite is much worse than his growl (actually, he never growls).  The picture below shows the marshmallows in their original packaging, complete with several teeth marks and large ripped wholes. 



The following picture is a closeup of a thoroughly gnawed marshmallow.  Notice the puncture wounds and cat hairs.  Dilbert obviously wasn't just seeing if he liked it.  He was either (a) attempting to kill it, or (b) trying to eat it piece by piece.  Judging from a few of the other marshmallows, I would say he was going to town on the stickiest meal he ever found.  Note to pet owners:  Sticky going in, sticky coming out. 

#nature