riddlermarc

<rant>

I’ve been thinking about the current crop of programming languages that currently abound, and I’ve come to the conclusion that PHP,RoR etc. are just a waste of time if you are really serious about learning something job wise. Too many kids leave school, buy PHP for Dummies and then proclaim themselves “a web developer”. Give them a look at something a little more proper and they’d run a mile.. it’s not just CSS and PHP out there in the Real World™ and they’d be stuck - write a framework in C#/.NET and make the transition from unique to Master Pages, anyone?

It also really bugs me when people say “SQL? Yep, grab a copy of MySQL as it’s free and the same as SQL Server” - of course it isn’t!

Technical differences in MySQL and SQL Server when it comes down to the ANSI SQL standard:

• MySQL does not support Triggers, SQL Server does.
• MySQL does not support User Defined Functions, SQL Server does.
• MySQL does not have Cursor Support, SQL Server does.
• MySQL does not support Stored Procedures, SQL Server does.
• MySQL does not have FULL JOIN capabilities, SQL Server does.
• MySQL has limited Import/Export capabilities, SQL Server has full support for Import/Export.
• MySQL has limited Transaction Support while SQL Server offers full Transaction Support.

I’m a complete fan of FOSS/non-MS stuff and I do know PHP and MySQL pretty well but unfortunately in the Big World out there you need MS SQL Server knowledge most of the time to keep abreast. I did implement some PHP into a site at work, it did fit the spec pretty well as it was to go on a Solaris box running Apache, hence no MS-based code.

</rant>

Well, I finally received my letter from Southampton Hospital this morning but it sheds very little, if any, new light on my situation. Check it out:

(click the above image for a larger version)

I scanned it rather than copy the text so as the contents won’t get botted (is that even a word?!)

Trying to read between the lines, it doesn’t say whether or not the two tumours have gone - “excellent resolution of the post surgical changes that have been noted”, does this correspond to the two tumours?

Regardless of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, it does reinforce the fact that the scan results were excellent and now it’s a wait until July for the next set of scans and check-up to see how I’m going.

Of course, I didn’t expect to be around by now so every day I wake up is another notch on my successful bed post - I’m not going to be around forever but I have a damned longer outlook than I was predicted last October I think.