I personally don't think anyone can possibly be neutral about anything.  Everyone has an opinion.  Everyone has a perspective that's slanted one way or the other.  No one can ever be in the middle; it goes against who we are as human beings.  This is fairly obvious with things like religion, politics, sports, and other opinion-driven topics.  But I also think it's evident in more "neutral-sounding" topics. 

One example is the so-called "War on Drugs".  I'm not a drug user (except for crystal meth ... kidding) and I don't suggest anyone becomes one.  But a simple look at modern American history shows that most drugs were deemed illegal for political and/or racial reasons.  Opium was first outlawed because Chinese men were allegedly seducing white women.  Marijuana, because of the fear of Mexican immigrants.  By criminalizing these substances commonly found in medications and drinks, people were forced to obtain them through illegal means.  Begin downward spiral.  "Hey, I want some drugs."  Sure, but you have to launder this money first.  "I'll do that if you promise to kill my brother-in-law."  Every kid that went through public school was indoctrinated by D.A.R.E, which taught us that drugs are bad.  But are drugs bad?  Aren't they the same as caffeine and alcohol, which any person in their right mind will tell you are perfectly normal and safe in moderation?  Or were we cultured to associate drugs with "badness" by a carefully constructed educational program and nationwide crackdown policy?  This obviously borders on a conspiracy theory, but I'm at least halfway convinced. 

Another recent momentum-gainer is the diamond.  Thanks to movies like Blood Diamond, more and more people are learning the truth about the diamond trade.  The past 70 years of advertising have told us, "A Diamond is Forever," and the diamond ring is the de facto symbol of getting engaged.  But who's been telling us this?  The same people who enslave children in diamond mines in Africa and help boost corrupt governments in the process.  My point is not that diamonds are evil, but that the things we believe about them are so painfully ingrained in our minds that it's hard to discern between truth and propaganda. 

I don't really have a strong opinion about either of these two examples, but I think they help prove my point:  People can't be neutral because they're taught by non-neutral bodies.  It's extremely difficult to have any amount of neutrality with topics like this because so much of the information out there has some sort of slant to it. 

Update (2007-01-08 3:28pm):  Another point that was originally swirling around in my head is the idea of doctor-prescribed medication.  It's no secret that doctors receive some sort of compensation for recommending a particular pill or potion.  Just look around a doctor's office:  Pens, pads, clipboards, etc., all advertising the latest miracle cure for whatever you have.  I think it would be naive to believe doctors didn't give some sort of preference to one medication over another.  And based on my experience with my own doctors, all they want to do is fill me full of medication, without any regard for actual "health".  When money is involved, how can a doctor possibly be neutral? #psychology

I recently heard someone say he doesn't mind paying for people to do things.  His example was with moving:  Instead of packing up all your junk, renting a U-Haul, and conning your friends into spending the whole day helping you, he said he was ok with paying some dudes to do it for him.  While I agree with him in that example, I don't agree with most other examples.  This is partially as a result of my cheapness, and partially as a result of my desire to do things myself and solve problems.  In most house-related examples, I could easily pay a guy a bunch of money to fix my problem.  But I ain't got no money, or rather, I try to avoid spending money on things when a cheaper, yet equally effective alternative will suffice.  I can figure things out.  And when figuring fails, brute force can be employed.  Like Scott Adams, I use a process called "jamming it in there". 

On the other hand, there are a few things I'm willing to pay for.  Car repair is one of them.  The only thing I know about cars is where gasoline goes.  Plus, I don't have many of the proper tools, and I don't have the desire to learn.  Electrical work is another one.  I'm scared of electricity like certain groups of people are scared photographs will steal their soul.  I can't see electricity.  I can't smell it.  But I'm told it's there.  And a simple wrong move or a misplaced metal object can instantly kill you.  That's not cool in my book. 

There are a few things I should be willing to pay for because of their inherent life-ending capabilities, but I instead take my chances and do it myself.  Anything involving "up on the roof" fits in this category.  Dutch colonial houses have steep side roofs, so the only flat parts are right on the top.  I have to fully extend my 24-foot ladder just to get up there, and Wendy has to hold the bottom the whole time.  Another thing is plumbing.  Although I've had great success with my little plumbing projects, soldering pipes dear drywall is in fact quite dangerous.  Our house smelled like roasted marshmallows last time.  But eh, I got the job done, and our house is still standing.  I don't know any better indicator of success. #psychology

I have a hard time asking people to do things for me, and it's solely because I don't want to do things for other people.  Hmm, that sounds worse than when it was stewing around in my head.  But here's the deal:  I'm a person with a purpose.  I'm pretty much always doing something or on my way to do something.  Even when I'm idle, I'm not really idle.  So when somebody interrupts my current action (which might look like no action at all) and says, "Hey, can you do this thing for me?", I'm usually annoyed.  For example, I was at a family's house last night where the mother asked the daughter to put away the food and then asked the grandmother to do the dishes.  These two services would allow Wendy and I to meet with the woman and her husband and talk about Bible study planning stuff.  But even though the service requests were legitimate and useful, I still wasn't comfortable with them.  The daughter didn't even eat with us; now she's being told to put away somebody else's food.  The grandmother doesn't even live there; now she's being asked to do dishes.  If I were in either serving person's position, I would've been angry and reluctant to help out.  This shows that I'm pretty selfish.  But these service requests simply open up the mother to be obligated to help out with something in the future.  And that's where my reluctance comes in.  I'd rather do something myself instead of asking someone to do it for me, simply because I don't like being asked to do things.  There ya have it. #psychology

I've been in charge of a mailing list on two separate occasions, and I always take the job pretty seriously.  Most people don't understand this.  They'll say, "Can you send out an email about this stupid little thing?"  And I'll say, "I just sent out the email for this week; it'll have to wait until next week."  I don't like to abuse mailing list privileges.  Most times, people don't even read the email in the first place.  If I send even more email, it's pretty much guaranteed to make at least a few people angry.  So I naturally get annoyed when other people abuse the unwritten rule:  Don't send unsolicited messages to groups of people, no matter what.  It doesn't matter if you think people will enjoy what you're sending.  It doesn't matter if you think it'll change peoples' lives.  This is almost inevitable with Christian groups.  There's always somebody who finds some stupid thing on the internet with clouds, rainbows, and a blue-eyed Jesus, and they think everyone else in the group will really enjoy receiving it in their inbox.  One tech geek said to just put everyone's addresses in the BCC field instead of the TO or CC field.  This is a perfectly good solution, but sometimes I like to intentionally send out the whole list in the CC field so that other people know who's on the list, and also to make it possible to send messages to the group if absolutely necessary.  I think there's a fine line between use and abuse when it comes to mailing lists, and it would take a pretty significant reason for someone other than the list owner to use a mailing list. #technology

Back in June of 2005, my 2-year contract with Verizon Wireless was about to end, so I was looking around for something different.  I settled on a specific phone, the Palm Treo 650, instead of a particular carrier, because I liked the device and couldn't see much difference between carriers.  Like any good tech geek, I searched online for the best price.  It turns out I found the best price at Wirefly:  A mail-in rebate made the phone half its original price.  Again, like any good tech geek, I looked around for online reviews of their service.  I read a few negative things about them not mailing rebates and things like that, so I was a little hesitant to try them out.  But in the end, I went for it.  The deal is this:  You have to submit the mail-in rebate 5-7 months after your phone is activated.  That sounds like a ridiculously long time, but it's so they know you're not just buying a phone and getting a quick rebate.  In my case, I "spaced on the time" and missed that time window, so I ended up not getting the rebate.  This made me incredibly mad, solely because I'm a pretty reliable person and I tend to be good with that sort of thing.  But oh well.  Other than that, my experience with Wirefly was good enough that I'd be willing to use their service again in the future. 

This is a sponsored post. #technology

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

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 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

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