I don't know how anybody keeps straight which CSS and Javascript magic incantations work on which version of which browser.
I'm not even joking when I say that I think that CSS and Javascript are both great technologies, but only if you confine yourself to reading the specifications. Once you try to actually do anything with them, you have just unleashed a massive platform-dependent shitstorm on yourself.
CSS itself is great, and Javascript is a great language, in my opinion. It's the implementations on all of the browsers that are a nightmare.
I don't know how anybody can keep straight which magic incantation works on which version of which browser, but more power to you guys. It's not something that I find to be worth killing brain cells over, though. I'd rather just drink a few beers.
I'm sure this is company and industry-specific, but it is very common companies to lay off workers without any notice. If you think about it, it makes sense. What effort do you expect to receive from a worker who knows he's being laid off? And don't you think the employer would be at risk of sabotage from someone who isn't happy about being laid off?
Typically the employer will pay the laid-off employees some type of severance package to avoid placing them in a financial bind while they are looking for work, so it's not a complete fuckover. But, yeah, there is no reason to think that you would get any notice. At my only employer since college (it's been a long time since I've been anybody's employee), no notice was given. For what it's worth, my wife's employer places employees whose positions were eliminated in a bit of a No Man's Land where they have x number of weeks to find a new position in the company (or outside of the company). If they don't find it in that time, they're gone.
And I don't know about you, but I could certainly get by on a take-home income of $85k/year - Hell, I make somewhat less than that gross, and live pretty damned well for my area.
Depends on the area, and depends on if you have kids.
If you're in a major city and have a couple of kids, $85k doesn't stretch very far. Don't forget he'd need to buy private health insurance, too.
My family is at a serious risk of being reduced to 1 income for the foreseeable future, and I can't bring myself to look at what that's going to mean financially. Will have to face it eventually, but why do something today that can easily be put off 'till tomorrow?
...what does this have to do with the fact that there's a considerable amount of people that make too much to qualify for government-assisted medical care, but not enough to afford their own insurance?
Two things: 1. I think that you'll find that the number of people who can't afford insurance, as opposed to those who can afford but don't want to pay for it because they are young and healthy, is very small. 2. Anyone who shows up at a hospital with an emergency must be treated, irrespective of ability to pay.
And yet, the blue collar worker who works two part time jobs to make ends meet, because neither boss will let him work full-time (too scared of having to shell out for insurance) won't get the care you're receiving. They'll die, leaving major, expensive medical bills in their wake that will bankrupt their spouse.
It is true that having access to more resources will provide better medical care, but only to a point. To use a car analogy, consider a rich person's car vs. a poor person's car. The rich person's car may have more safety features and may be more comfortable and may be more reliable (or not. Some luxury cars have notoriously poor repair records), but in the end, both cars transport the occupants from point A to point B.
It may sound callous, but as long as everyone has access to a certain, acceptable level of medical care, what difference does it make if a rich person can buy more of it? I think that there is a basic misconception that health insurance = medical care. My wife receives treatment right alongside people who aren't able to pay for it. It's not like blue collar workers are getting kicked to the curb right and left.
Also, dirty little secret here: more medical care is not always better care. Oftentimes, it's worse. Every procedure has risks and side effects. Many provide longevity at the expense of quality of life.
Lastly, bankruptcy sounds a lot worse than it really is. Personal bankruptcy is more of a reset button so people don't remain in debt for life. Many of my tenants have previous bankruptcy filings, and they just go on living their lives, I promise.
I was kind of interested in an absolute dollar figure for your wifes total care, including medico co-payments, insurance rates and out-of-pocket expenses. Percentages are less than useless when neither you nor I know what the other earns or our respective tax threshholds.
I don't have a good answer for you. I do the business finances, and my wife does the personal. I could ask her, but I'm not going to burden her with this for you.:P Hopefully you understand.
Here's a rough estimate of her cancer cost: 3 years of hitting out of pocket max on deductibles/coinsurance (she was unlucky enough to get sick at the end of 2010, so we managed to hit 3 calendar years despite being sick for only 1.25 years): $7500 1.25 years of specialist visits. I'm going to make a rough estimate here at 2 out of every 3 weeks @$40 each: $1733. Let's round up to $2000 since I could be forgetting something She received most of her drugs in the hospital, so those cost us nothing out of pocket. She received about 10 months of neupogen and maybe 4 rounds of emend (nausea control. works wonders!), which are specialty drugs at $50 each, so chuck in $700. The rest were generics at $5-20 each. Let's just round to $1000 to include those.
So that gets us to about $10,500 in out of pocket medical costs. We did some travel to out of town docs that was probably not strictly necessary, but we felt it would be valuable. Bump it to $15,000. This overstates the travel cost, but anyway, I probably missed some medical costs in there, so it probably evens out in the wash.
Also, there may be some confusion with semantics - where I'm from if you are injured you go to the hospital/GP and THEY will asses what level of care you need. Whats the difference between emergency care, urgent care or other beside price bracket? (BTW, I'm glad your Missus is on the mend)
It's a little late now, and hopefully you won't need this again, but just in case, here in the US, you basically have the following:
Emergency Room: This is for acute problems (need immediate care) or serious problems (going to be admitted to the hospital). Think car accident, difficulty breathing, uncontrolled bleeding, etc. With insurance, they will ding you for $300+ if you show up at the ER and aren't admitted, unless you can show that you had no other choice. You might be treated with a certain amount of contempt if you clog up the ER with a non-emergent condition, and you will certainly be triaged behind everyone who comes in with something acute, so you will wait a long, long time if you show up with a sniffle or a sprain or something.
Urgent Care: Non-acute problems that require a doctor that happen when your primary doc is closed or when you don't have a primary doc in the area. Cost: depends on insurance. Mine is billed as a regular office visit at $20. Some bill as a specialist visit: $40-50. Without insurance, expect to pay about $125.
Primary Doctor: This is who basically sees you for annual physicals and non-completely-minor ailments. (or minor ailments, if there are no convenient care clinics in your area). Cost $20+meds with insurance. Without, expect to pay about $125.
Convenient Care Clinics: For minor, routine issues. Strep throat, ear infections, etc. Located in drug stores and staffed by Nurse Practitioners, not doctors. So it's really more for if you already suspect what's wrong and just need someone to handle it cheaply and efficiently. For instance, when my kids were little, we'd take them there for ear infections. We'd be in and out the door in under 20 minutes with medicine in-hand, if antibiotics were required. Cost, including meds: $25.
Regarding my wife, I appreciate the sentiment. I wish I could report that she is on the mend, but the truth is we just don't know yet. Her cancer is almost gone, which is good, but the last little bit isn't responding to chemo, which is bad since it's aggressive. There are essentially 3 more options to try fo
For what it's worth, after hearing enough stories of sick people, I am completely uncomfortable with the idea of an unaccountable board of "medical experts" deciding who gets what without even examining the patient. This assumes a level of understanding of the human body that science simply does not posses. If it was simply a matter of Evil Drug Companies vs. Common Sense, then that would be another matter entirely. (I'm sure that the article that you linked to was great, but I'm not going to pay in order to read it.)
Perhaps these panels are great and all, but when they come up with guidelines based on X number of weeks, what happens if you kid is born just a few days too early? This. Note, I realize that a kid born at 22 weeks is probably not going to survive, but it should be the individual medical staff evaluating the individual kid who determines viability. Not some panel in London.
Had my wife shown up to a UK hospital with such a low chance of survival, would they have gone to heroic measures to attempt to save her? Or would they have made her comfortable?
If you don't want an unfavorable ruling from NICE, don't get old.
Based on the details you give, however, it doesn't sound like someone in the condition she was in would have had trouble being admitted into the hospital and getting treatment in a country with a socialized medical system either.
I didn't really intend for my personal anecdote to serve as an indictment of socialized medicine, but I can see where it came across that way. The idea was to provide a story for the GP of the US system functioning well.
I guess my point with bringing up the Canada story is that if you look closely, every system has its warts. I'm sure you're right that for a minor broken toe, the best course of action is to allow it to heal on its own. If that's the answer, I'm willing to accept that. What I'm not willing to accept is waiting 8-10 hours in some god-forsaken ER to have a doctor tell me that if they tried to treat it, the recovery from that would be worse than just letting the toe heal (or whatever the reason is that a broken toe doesn't need a splint or any other help like a finger might).
The other difference is that he made me feel like he actually cared about the fact that my toe hurt. I know it sounds silly, but this is important. Clearly, he knew that I'd feel better after a few weeks of going easy on it, and that's fine. But the way that he treated me was different. He didn't make we wait to discourage me from seeking treatment. He didn't just tell me to go pound sand ("We don't treat these. Go away.") He told me that I'd feel better in a few weeks, but if not, to go in and get an X-Ray and we'd take it from there. That's a plan of action. You're right that there is no practical medical difference between what the treatment would have been had I been Canadian. It's more that my doc gave (or pretended convincingly to give) a hoot about me.
What I do find surprising is that your doctor told you to stop by at a time of your choosing rather than setting an appointment. That's frankly amazing. I don't know of any doctor that operates that way, so I'm assuming you have some sort of relationship with this doctor beyond just doctor/patient.
As it turns out, I do not have any type of special relationship with my doctor, other than I think that he's great. The reason that he was able to see me on a drop-in basis is that he does not fill all available appointment slots--that way, he can accommodate those whose schedules really require appointments and those whose schedules are too erratic for appointments. You just call ahead to see if he is busy. This is not just for "sick" visits, either. He handles annual physicals this way, too.
This is not unique to this particular doctor, either. Slowly but surely, some US medical practices are moving in this direction. Some don't schedule appointments at all. I will come right out and say that this was one of the main selection criteria I had when choosing an internist. I hate, absolutely positively hate, being made to sit in a waiting room. I recognize that it antagonizes me beyond all reasonable proportion, but at least I recognize it and chose a doctor who fit with my little personality defect.
Anyway, hopefully that explains my position that US medicine doesn't completely stink, or at least stink much more than any other country's system.
I have already acknowledged this possibility. As I stated before, she looked serious enough to me, but I didn't stalk her back to the UK and hang out in her waiting room to verify.
Anyway, does it even matter if it's true? The fact that she would even think to make such a joke indicates a problem. I've never heard an American Vet make jokes about human patients pleading for care from them.
About the only issue to deal with when using NHS is a wait.
This is false. You simply haven't yet received an unfavorable ruling from NICE.
I suffered a small injury while working there, and my boss thought it might be prudent to go to the hospital. After being told how much it was going to cost simply for an x-ray and 10 minutes with a doctor I balked and waited a week until I got home. The price the US hospital was going to charge me with my traveller's insurance? $2000. Cost at home? You guessed it. Nada.
I'm surprised that your boss, assuming that he was American, would have suggested that you go to a hospital. Hospitals are for emergencies. If you could fly all the way back to Australia with whatever happened to you, then it was not an emergency. What you wanted was urgent care.
Urgent care would have run you about $125 without insurance. With insurance, I pay a $20 copay. Same as my regular doctor.
By the way, I see that you pay 1.5-2.5% of your income for your health insurance. That is not the same as "free", but it is less that what we pay here, I suppose. My family probably pays about 4% or so, but most of that is because my wife is so sick and blows through all of the deductibles in about 12 minutes.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up, because that's a very succinct way of putting it.
I've lived both inside and outside of the US, and in my experience nearly every medical story that takes places in the US is a horror story that ends in pain, bankruptcy, disability, or death, while most stories coming from elsewhere are merely horror stories about inconvenience, delays, or the occasional mistake.
As though people don't die outside the US. Talk about confirmation bias at work.
Approximately 1.25 years ago, my wife was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive cancer. It was at stage IV, having spread to 5 of her internal organs, including her brain. When she was admitted at the hospital, she was too unstable to transport anywhere. Indeed, her chances for surviving into the following week were bleak.
Any "inconvenience, delays, or the occasional mistake" would have certainly been the end of her. Who knows? Maybe in some other country, they would have decided that she wasn't worth saving. All I know is that the hospital moved mountains to get her the diagnostic imaging needed to get her patched up enough to start chemo without bleeding to death or on her brain. She has seen the best doctors that treat her cancer (she saw the doctor who treated Lance Armstrong, and three of the world's top specialists who treat this disease), and it has all been covered by insurance.
I wish I could say that she is out of the woods now, but she is not. There is still some active cancer. But her chances of making it this long were <25% at diagnosis, so we are thankful for the last year or so. And for all of the horror stories that you hear about insurance, bankruptcies, etc., our insurance carrier has not given us any troubles. In fact, they follow up with us so often to ensure that she is getting everything that she needs and taking her meds, etc., that it has become a source of mild aggravation. But I'm sure it's helpful for patients who are in worse shape than she is.
So there. Now you have a story in the US of someone with a serious medical condition who is getting exceptional care.
Here is another example. Thanks to Facebook, I learned that a Canadian friend of mine injured her toe, and she suspected that she broke it, based on the swelling. Her Canadian friends were chiming in with how she might treat it when I commented, asking why she did not seek medical attention for, oh, I dunno, the fact that she thinks she fractured a bone! She said that they don't treat broken pinky toes, and if she tried to see a doctor, that would mean taking a day off of work to wait 8-10 hours in the emergency room for them to tell her what she already knew, that there was nothing that they could do for her.
As luck would have it, approximately 1 month later, I stubbed my pinky toe. But this was no ordinary stub. This hurt something fierce. I iced it and tried not to worry too much about it since it wasn't swelling up, and I've always thought that if there's no swelling, that it's unlikely to be broken. Yet the pain continued. So after a few days, I called my doc. He said to come in whenever it was convenient for me and he'd have a quick look at it, so I did. He saw me right away, did some basic physical testing of it ("does this hurt? How about this?") and he confirmed that it was probably not broken, but if it still hurts after two weeks to go get it x-rayed and he'd see to it that it got fixed.
Well, the pain subsided enough after 2 weeks that I didn't bother getting it x-rayed, but you tell me whose medical system was more user-friendly? The US? Or the Canadian? Nobody made me wait 8 hours, just to tell me to go piss off. Nobody made me take a day off of work. And anyway, my doctor led me to believe that had my toe been broken, that there *was* something that could be done. Maybe Canada just doesn't want to pay for broken toes, which is their prerogative, but when I'm broken, I expect my doctor to a) not treat me like hell, and b) at least try to fix me.
So great that Canada has "free" health care, but I guess the old adage of getting what you pay for still holds.
But even a not-great one routinely outperforms the US system. There are horror stories to be found in both, but they're a lot easier to find in the US.
At a friend's wedding, I was seated next to a doctor from the UK. She made one comment or another about the healthcare system in the US, and since it was during the huge fight trying to get ObamaCare passed, I mentioned that we were probably going to have a system more like NHS soon. As though I had any control over the matter, she advised us not to do this based on the her experience with her practice.
She told me that every few months, she'll have someone show up begging for one random service or another for cash, outside of NHS. One time it was getting an MRI read. Other times it's some diagnostic or another. I don't remember other examples. Anyway, she invariably turns them down. They plead that they can't get the care that they need through NHS. That they are desperate, but she has to turn them down because it would be illegal for her to provide service to people. After all, she is a Veterinarian.
Now I know that Brits have their sense of humor, and I'll be the first to admit that she may have been having a little fun with me, but she looked serious to my eyes. It sounds ridiculous, obviously, but is it much more ridiculous than wealthy Canadians seeking treatment at Mayo in Rochester, MN because they can't get the health care that they need under the Canadian system? That I know is true, as I grew up in the area.
I guess these are examples of systems that supposedly work, but I've never felt the need to seek treatment for any condition in Canada or, for that matter, at my dog's Vet.
I'm in the middle of breaking up with my husband (6.5 years) and he knows some of my passwords... I've decided to go through and change all of them, just to be on the safe side.
"To be on the safe side"? That's an understatement. I would seriously hope that your attorney advised you to do this. In addition, deactivate your facebook profile and all other social networking profiles, too. Do not reactivate them again until the ink is dry on your divorce degree.
Also, what is your level of concern that your husband might mess with your email or other accounts? Do you use a shared computer? If you are concerned, you should not use a shared computer for anything he might mess with. Do your email on your phone and work computer. Password-protect your phone.
To answer your question on passwords: I really think that a password manager would be a good idea. I use one, and it's pretty straightforward if you use some common sense.
If you still don't like the idea, that's OK too. Here's the system that I used before I got KeePass: Have 3 strong passwords that I memorized. Use 1 for most secure sites (banking, brokerage, etc.) Use 1 for webmail accounts. Use 1 for low-security accounts (forums, slashdot, etc.) For the actual passwords, use some text that you have memorized (for me, it's movie quotes, for you it might be something else) and use the first character from each word in the text. Throw a few numbers at the end because many websites make you use numbers.
By way of example, one of my old passwords was a quote from the movie Casablanca: "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine." which turned into "Oatgj,iatt12" (if I used the entire quote, it would have been too long for most websites). Strong password. Easy to remember. Difficult to guess--even for people who know me. They'd know that I'm a movie-quoting machine, but they wouldn't know that I generate my passwords that way, and even if they did, I tend to quote 80s movies, so they wouldn't start guessing quotes from old movies.
Anyhow, good luck with everything. Hope it goes as smoothly and painlessly as possible.
But 10-12 years for a kidney? Tell that to a kid with kidney problems. Cripes, tell it to a 40 year old man.
Pacemakers is a better surgery, but still - 7 years is not enough. Short term fixes.
My wife is in her 30s and has stage IV cancer. 1.25 years ago, she showed up at the hospital within an inch of her life. The doctors got her patched up well enough to start chemo without her bleeding out of several of her internal organs simultaneously, and then started.
The first month or so was hell, but things improved significantly from there. She handled all her chemo, radiation, and surgery like a champ. She is able to lead a relatively normal life now, except for the fact that she isn't very likely to see 2013, and she sure gets tired easily.
Anyway, we'd be happy for another 10-12, even 7 years. And yes, even at her current comfort level (which admittedly is pretty high, considering). 10-12 years would be a blessing. I know it wouldn't get her anywhere near 90, but, well, we already know she ain't makin' it to 90.
Re:This is what's wrong with private healthcare.
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How Doctors Die
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I've always wondered why they think God needs the intervention of all that medical technology to work a miracle.
Well, I don't think anybody knows for certain how or if God works miracles on earth, or even if there is a God at all. But among many who believe, there exists a parable:
A elderly religious fellow lived alone in a small house. He was listening to the radio one day when an evacuation order came in for his area due to an impending flood. The man said to himself, "I've been a pious man for all my life. I have nothing to worry about. God will save me if anything bad happens."
An hour later, his neighbor rings the man's doorbell and says to the man, "This area is going to flood. We've been ordered to evacuate. Here, hop into my car. I'll take you to safety." The religious man considered this, and considered that the rains had already started, but replied, "I've been a pious man for all my life. I have nothing to worry about. God will save me if anything bad happens."
Several hours later, it was really raining hard and his street had flooded. A rescue worker went past his house in a boat and ordered him to board to be taken to safety. The religious man considered this, but again replied, "I've been a pious man for all my life. I have nothing to worry about. God will save me if anything bad happens." The worker could not convince the man to come with him, so he went off looking for others.
Several hours later, the flood waters and really risen. They had risen so high that the man had to climb onto his roof to avoid being swept away. Just then, a helicopter flew by, and the workers ordered him into the helicopter, but I'm sure you can guess where this is going. "I've been a pious man for all my life. I have nothing to worry about. God will save me if anything bad happens."
After another hour, the man and his house are swept away, and the man drowns and ascends to the heavens. Upon meeting God, he says, "God, I've been a pious man all of my life. I've done everything that you told me to do. How come you didn't save me?" God replies, "I sent you a radio broadcast. I sent you a car. I sent you a boat and even a helicopter. What more were you expecting?"
What do you guys do in these situations? I'd especially like to hear the prefences of anyone who is dying or at one point believed that they were going to die.
My wife is currently battling stage IV cancer, so I can answer this as best I can.
The hardest conversations for her to have with people who mean well (it's not like someone is going to bring up the really difficult topics like not being there for our kids, etc.) are the ones that keep probing her for some shred of good news. The cold fact is her chances of surviving this are low, and it's been a long while since we've heard any news that could reasonably be interpreted as "good". I understand where these people are coming from, and I know that they mean well, but it just doesn't work.
"How are you doing/feeling?" is fine. It's not like you're somehow reminding her that she feels like shit. She already knows. And I think you're right, that speaking about the distant future is best avoided, but I also wouldn't worry so much about slipping up and accidentally "reminding" her that she is going to die. Believe me, it's most of she's thinking about. Hopefully, she's reached some stage of acceptance.
Good topics are any current events, movies, books, TV shows, stuff in the news. Things that you know interest her. If that is even too hard for her, then she is probably depressed, anyway. Understandable, but hopefully her onc would treat that a bit, if possible.
You're right about respecting that she is probably too tired for long conversations. Texting a caregiver first to see if she's up for a phone call would be appreciated. Invitations to do stuff, if her health permits, could be nice. Letting her know that she's in your throughts/prayers, as appropriate, would be nice. I guess it all depends on how close of a relationship you have with your aunt.
Anyway, I wish you and your family the best of luck. Cancer sucks, and that's about all there is to say about that.
Fun anecdote. In college, I broke my leg and was in a wheelchair for three months. The officer (state school, so the campus cops were state troopers with all of the training and abilities that go with it) still wouldn't let me have a handicap sticker. He was fired less than a year later for stealing donuts from the local gas station.
He could not have issued you handicapped tags even if he wanted to, because police officers/rent-a-cops do not issue handicap tags. The DMV does, on advice from your doctor.
Perhaps this officer could have been more helpful and pointed you in the right direction, but by your account, it sounds like he wasn't interested in doing much protecting and serving.
With all due respect for your wife, is she unable to walk?
There's a difference between being unable to walk and unable to navigate a large parking lot safely. My wife has Multiple Sclerosis and now Cancer as well (come to think of it, I'm going to make her start buying lottery tickets). On good days, she can get around pretty well. You'd never even know she was sick. But on bad days, she can't get very far without having to take a rest. And it's not like there's a safe place for her to just sit down and take a rest in a parking lot. Also, it's not always clear what type of day she's going to have until it gets bad.
Every time I see the said person with fibromyalgia she is out partying and getting drunk. The main point I was trying to make is that fibromyaligia is a disease which is an easy target for con artists looking for a government paycheck and a disabled sticker on their car.
I'm not arguing that some people don't suffer horribly from it, just that we lump everyone who has anything worse than a cough these days as disabled and give them benefits which they don't at all need.
Your neighbor is malingering; we get that. Doesn't mean that everyone with a Fibro diagnosis has it for the purpose of scamming Uncle Sam. I believe that they legitimately "hurt", but there is no diagnostic for it yet.
FWIW, it's not like the diagnostics for other diseases are so cut and dried. For example, healthy individuals with no clinical Multiple Sclerosis symptoms (and who will never experience clinical MS symptoms) can have brain lesions show up on MRI that look exactly like MS lesions. My wife had her spleen removed because active cancer showed up there on a CT scan, but once pathology had a look at it, it was just a clump of blood vessels (I forget the exact name for it, but anyway, it was normal and harmless). Life isn't so simple as "if it shows up on imaging then it's there, otherwise you're a faker".
yeah, there was a libertarian streak, and the argument that you can't mandate compassion (two things that your post addresses, so you seem to remember it fairly well)
I don't think anybody is trying to mandate compassion. The idea is to mandate a place for handicapped people to park their cars so they can use the same stores that we use.
As far as businesses making themselves accessible because they want the business of handicapped people, good luck with that. It's usually much cheaper to just write off that small percentage of the population. Building ramps, widening doors, remodeling bathrooms, etc., all cost a lot of money. Many businesses would simply tell the handicapped people of the world to take their crutches and shove 'em.
Also, I agree that people shouldn't abuse the handicapped spots, and I think for the most part they don't. But then, why rant about enforcement? If people did behave correctly, no enforcement would be needed.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one, then. I completely agree with all of your points on Java and J2EE being a great platform and community, and I share your concerns about Oracle. But think about the sheer quantity of learning you're asking this PHP guy to bite off, recognizing that his project is probably, at most, something he could hack together in about 20 hours, tops, if he used PHP.
If you look closely, I think you'll see that you're making my point for me. You say that an inexperienced developer could mess things up quite righteously using JSF/Hibernate, and I agree with you. But then you suggest that he use JSP/JDBC? And this is an improvement over Pear/PHP, how? I vomited enough vomit over JSP/JDBC code between 1999-2001 to know that JSP/JDBC is not the correct solution to any problem. In order for the OP to be effective in any Java-based web framework (J2EE, Spring, whateverYourFavoriteMightBeThisWeek), he's in for hundreds of hours of work, assuming he doesn't first give up in frustration.
After considering the matter, I'd advise OP to do his web app in one of the many PHP MVC frameworks. Cake or Symfony would be great choices. That way, he can begin to educate himself on good web design principles using a language that he's already familiar with. Good design principles are always more important than choice of language, anyway.
I've done a lot of work with J2EE, and I disagree with your suggestion. With a background in only PHP, this guy is going to have a huge learning curve. He'll have to learn Java, Object Oriented principles, the JDK, various Apache libraries, and that's before even getting started with the J2EE framework. Sooooo not worth it.
All he wants to do is make a frickin' website. He could probably hack something together in PHP in a few hours or a few days at most.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how anybody keeps straight which CSS and Javascript magic incantations work on which version of which browser.
I'm not even joking when I say that I think that CSS and Javascript are both great technologies, but only if you confine yourself to reading the specifications. Once you try to actually do anything with them, you have just unleashed a massive platform-dependent shitstorm on yourself.
CSS itself is great, and Javascript is a great language, in my opinion. It's the implementations on all of the browsers that are a nightmare.
I don't know how anybody can keep straight which magic incantation works on which version of which browser, but more power to you guys. It's not something that I find to be worth killing brain cells over, though. I'd rather just drink a few beers.
Go to France. Labor laws in there are incredible. It actually makes you feel like you landed in a different planet.
But then wouldn't I have to deal with French people?
I think I'll stay in the US.
I do not expect to get laid off with zero notice.
I'm sure this is company and industry-specific, but it is very common companies to lay off workers without any notice. If you think about it, it makes sense. What effort do you expect to receive from a worker who knows he's being laid off? And don't you think the employer would be at risk of sabotage from someone who isn't happy about being laid off?
Typically the employer will pay the laid-off employees some type of severance package to avoid placing them in a financial bind while they are looking for work, so it's not a complete fuckover. But, yeah, there is no reason to think that you would get any notice. At my only employer since college (it's been a long time since I've been anybody's employee), no notice was given. For what it's worth, my wife's employer places employees whose positions were eliminated in a bit of a No Man's Land where they have x number of weeks to find a new position in the company (or outside of the company). If they don't find it in that time, they're gone.
And I don't know about you, but I could certainly get by on a take-home income of $85k/year - Hell, I make somewhat less than that gross, and live pretty damned well for my area.
Depends on the area, and depends on if you have kids.
If you're in a major city and have a couple of kids, $85k doesn't stretch very far. Don't forget he'd need to buy private health insurance, too.
My family is at a serious risk of being reduced to 1 income for the foreseeable future, and I can't bring myself to look at what that's going to mean financially. Will have to face it eventually, but why do something today that can easily be put off 'till tomorrow?
Simple Storage Service. S3. There is no S2.
...what does this have to do with the fact that there's a considerable amount of people that make too much to qualify for government-assisted medical care, but not enough to afford their own insurance?
Two things: 1. I think that you'll find that the number of people who can't afford insurance, as opposed to those who can afford but don't want to pay for it because they are young and healthy, is very small. 2. Anyone who shows up at a hospital with an emergency must be treated, irrespective of ability to pay.
And yet, the blue collar worker who works two part time jobs to make ends meet, because neither boss will let him work full-time (too scared of having to shell out for insurance) won't get the care you're receiving. They'll die, leaving major, expensive medical bills in their wake that will bankrupt their spouse.
It is true that having access to more resources will provide better medical care, but only to a point. To use a car analogy, consider a rich person's car vs. a poor person's car. The rich person's car may have more safety features and may be more comfortable and may be more reliable (or not. Some luxury cars have notoriously poor repair records), but in the end, both cars transport the occupants from point A to point B.
It may sound callous, but as long as everyone has access to a certain, acceptable level of medical care, what difference does it make if a rich person can buy more of it? I think that there is a basic misconception that health insurance = medical care. My wife receives treatment right alongside people who aren't able to pay for it. It's not like blue collar workers are getting kicked to the curb right and left.
Also, dirty little secret here: more medical care is not always better care. Oftentimes, it's worse. Every procedure has risks and side effects. Many provide longevity at the expense of quality of life.
Lastly, bankruptcy sounds a lot worse than it really is. Personal bankruptcy is more of a reset button so people don't remain in debt for life. Many of my tenants have previous bankruptcy filings, and they just go on living their lives, I promise.
I was kind of interested in an absolute dollar figure for your wifes total care, including medico co-payments, insurance rates and out-of-pocket expenses. Percentages are less than useless when neither you nor I know what the other earns or our respective tax threshholds.
I don't have a good answer for you. I do the business finances, and my wife does the personal. I could ask her, but I'm not going to burden her with this for you. :P Hopefully you understand.
Here's a rough estimate of her cancer cost:
3 years of hitting out of pocket max on deductibles/coinsurance (she was unlucky enough to get sick at the end of 2010, so we managed to hit 3 calendar years despite being sick for only 1.25 years): $7500
1.25 years of specialist visits. I'm going to make a rough estimate here at 2 out of every 3 weeks @$40 each: $1733. Let's round up to $2000 since I could be forgetting something
She received most of her drugs in the hospital, so those cost us nothing out of pocket. She received about 10 months of neupogen and maybe 4 rounds of emend (nausea control. works wonders!), which are specialty drugs at $50 each, so chuck in $700. The rest were generics at $5-20 each. Let's just round to $1000 to include those.
So that gets us to about $10,500 in out of pocket medical costs. We did some travel to out of town docs that was probably not strictly necessary, but we felt it would be valuable. Bump it to $15,000. This overstates the travel cost, but anyway, I probably missed some medical costs in there, so it probably evens out in the wash.
Also, there may be some confusion with semantics - where I'm from if you are injured you go to the hospital/GP and THEY will asses what level of care you need. Whats the difference between emergency care, urgent care or other beside price bracket? (BTW, I'm glad your Missus is on the mend)
It's a little late now, and hopefully you won't need this again, but just in case, here in the US, you basically have the following:
Emergency Room: This is for acute problems (need immediate care) or serious problems (going to be admitted to the hospital). Think car accident, difficulty breathing, uncontrolled bleeding, etc. With insurance, they will ding you for $300+ if you show up at the ER and aren't admitted, unless you can show that you had no other choice. You might be treated with a certain amount of contempt if you clog up the ER with a non-emergent condition, and you will certainly be triaged behind everyone who comes in with something acute, so you will wait a long, long time if you show up with a sniffle or a sprain or something.
Urgent Care: Non-acute problems that require a doctor that happen when your primary doc is closed or when you don't have a primary doc in the area. Cost: depends on insurance. Mine is billed as a regular office visit at $20. Some bill as a specialist visit: $40-50. Without insurance, expect to pay about $125.
Primary Doctor: This is who basically sees you for annual physicals and non-completely-minor ailments. (or minor ailments, if there are no convenient care clinics in your area). Cost $20+meds with insurance. Without, expect to pay about $125.
Convenient Care Clinics: For minor, routine issues. Strep throat, ear infections, etc. Located in drug stores and staffed by Nurse Practitioners, not doctors. So it's really more for if you already suspect what's wrong and just need someone to handle it cheaply and efficiently. For instance, when my kids were little, we'd take them there for ear infections. We'd be in and out the door in under 20 minutes with medicine in-hand, if antibiotics were required. Cost, including meds: $25.
Regarding my wife, I appreciate the sentiment. I wish I could report that she is on the mend, but the truth is we just don't know yet. Her cancer is almost gone, which is good, but the last little bit isn't responding to chemo, which is bad since it's aggressive. There are essentially 3 more options to try fo
For what it's worth, after hearing enough stories of sick people, I am completely uncomfortable with the idea of an unaccountable board of "medical experts" deciding who gets what without even examining the patient. This assumes a level of understanding of the human body that science simply does not posses. If it was simply a matter of Evil Drug Companies vs. Common Sense, then that would be another matter entirely. (I'm sure that the article that you linked to was great, but I'm not going to pay in order to read it.)
Perhaps these panels are great and all, but when they come up with guidelines based on X number of weeks, what happens if you kid is born just a few days too early? This. Note, I realize that a kid born at 22 weeks is probably not going to survive, but it should be the individual medical staff evaluating the individual kid who determines viability. Not some panel in London.
Had my wife shown up to a UK hospital with such a low chance of survival, would they have gone to heroic measures to attempt to save her? Or would they have made her comfortable?
If you don't want an unfavorable ruling from NICE, don't get old.
Based on the details you give, however, it doesn't sound like someone in the condition she was in would have had trouble being admitted into the hospital and getting treatment in a country with a socialized medical system either.
I didn't really intend for my personal anecdote to serve as an indictment of socialized medicine, but I can see where it came across that way. The idea was to provide a story for the GP of the US system functioning well.
I guess my point with bringing up the Canada story is that if you look closely, every system has its warts. I'm sure you're right that for a minor broken toe, the best course of action is to allow it to heal on its own. If that's the answer, I'm willing to accept that. What I'm not willing to accept is waiting 8-10 hours in some god-forsaken ER to have a doctor tell me that if they tried to treat it, the recovery from that would be worse than just letting the toe heal (or whatever the reason is that a broken toe doesn't need a splint or any other help like a finger might).
The other difference is that he made me feel like he actually cared about the fact that my toe hurt. I know it sounds silly, but this is important. Clearly, he knew that I'd feel better after a few weeks of going easy on it, and that's fine. But the way that he treated me was different. He didn't make we wait to discourage me from seeking treatment. He didn't just tell me to go pound sand ("We don't treat these. Go away.") He told me that I'd feel better in a few weeks, but if not, to go in and get an X-Ray and we'd take it from there. That's a plan of action. You're right that there is no practical medical difference between what the treatment would have been had I been Canadian. It's more that my doc gave (or pretended convincingly to give) a hoot about me.
What I do find surprising is that your doctor told you to stop by at a time of your choosing rather than setting an appointment. That's frankly amazing. I don't know of any doctor that operates that way, so I'm assuming you have some sort of relationship with this doctor beyond just doctor/patient.
As it turns out, I do not have any type of special relationship with my doctor, other than I think that he's great. The reason that he was able to see me on a drop-in basis is that he does not fill all available appointment slots--that way, he can accommodate those whose schedules really require appointments and those whose schedules are too erratic for appointments. You just call ahead to see if he is busy. This is not just for "sick" visits, either. He handles annual physicals this way, too.
This is not unique to this particular doctor, either. Slowly but surely, some US medical practices are moving in this direction. Some don't schedule appointments at all. I will come right out and say that this was one of the main selection criteria I had when choosing an internist. I hate, absolutely positively hate, being made to sit in a waiting room. I recognize that it antagonizes me beyond all reasonable proportion, but at least I recognize it and chose a doctor who fit with my little personality defect.
Anyway, hopefully that explains my position that US medicine doesn't completely stink, or at least stink much more than any other country's system.
She was pulling your leg.
I have already acknowledged this possibility. As I stated before, she looked serious enough to me, but I didn't stalk her back to the UK and hang out in her waiting room to verify.
Anyway, does it even matter if it's true? The fact that she would even think to make such a joke indicates a problem. I've never heard an American Vet make jokes about human patients pleading for care from them.
About the only issue to deal with when using NHS is a wait.
This is false. You simply haven't yet received an unfavorable ruling from NICE.
I suffered a small injury while working there, and my boss thought it might be prudent to go to the hospital. After being told how much it was going to cost simply for an x-ray and 10 minutes with a doctor I balked and waited a week until I got home. The price the US hospital was going to charge me with my traveller's insurance? $2000. Cost at home? You guessed it. Nada.
I'm surprised that your boss, assuming that he was American, would have suggested that you go to a hospital. Hospitals are for emergencies. If you could fly all the way back to Australia with whatever happened to you, then it was not an emergency. What you wanted was urgent care.
Urgent care would have run you about $125 without insurance. With insurance, I pay a $20 copay. Same as my regular doctor.
By the way, I see that you pay 1.5-2.5% of your income for your health insurance. That is not the same as "free", but it is less that what we pay here, I suppose. My family probably pays about 4% or so, but most of that is because my wife is so sick and blows through all of the deductibles in about 12 minutes.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up, because that's a very succinct way of putting it.
I've lived both inside and outside of the US, and in my experience nearly every medical story that takes places in the US is a horror story that ends in pain, bankruptcy, disability, or death, while most stories coming from elsewhere are merely horror stories about inconvenience, delays, or the occasional mistake.
As though people don't die outside the US. Talk about confirmation bias at work.
Approximately 1.25 years ago, my wife was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive cancer. It was at stage IV, having spread to 5 of her internal organs, including her brain. When she was admitted at the hospital, she was too unstable to transport anywhere. Indeed, her chances for surviving into the following week were bleak.
Any "inconvenience, delays, or the occasional mistake" would have certainly been the end of her. Who knows? Maybe in some other country, they would have decided that she wasn't worth saving. All I know is that the hospital moved mountains to get her the diagnostic imaging needed to get her patched up enough to start chemo without bleeding to death or on her brain. She has seen the best doctors that treat her cancer (she saw the doctor who treated Lance Armstrong, and three of the world's top specialists who treat this disease), and it has all been covered by insurance.
I wish I could say that she is out of the woods now, but she is not. There is still some active cancer. But her chances of making it this long were <25% at diagnosis, so we are thankful for the last year or so. And for all of the horror stories that you hear about insurance, bankruptcies, etc., our insurance carrier has not given us any troubles. In fact, they follow up with us so often to ensure that she is getting everything that she needs and taking her meds, etc., that it has become a source of mild aggravation. But I'm sure it's helpful for patients who are in worse shape than she is.
So there. Now you have a story in the US of someone with a serious medical condition who is getting exceptional care.
Here is another example. Thanks to Facebook, I learned that a Canadian friend of mine injured her toe, and she suspected that she broke it, based on the swelling. Her Canadian friends were chiming in with how she might treat it when I commented, asking why she did not seek medical attention for, oh, I dunno, the fact that she thinks she fractured a bone! She said that they don't treat broken pinky toes, and if she tried to see a doctor, that would mean taking a day off of work to wait 8-10 hours in the emergency room for them to tell her what she already knew, that there was nothing that they could do for her.
As luck would have it, approximately 1 month later, I stubbed my pinky toe. But this was no ordinary stub. This hurt something fierce. I iced it and tried not to worry too much about it since it wasn't swelling up, and I've always thought that if there's no swelling, that it's unlikely to be broken. Yet the pain continued. So after a few days, I called my doc. He said to come in whenever it was convenient for me and he'd have a quick look at it, so I did. He saw me right away, did some basic physical testing of it ("does this hurt? How about this?") and he confirmed that it was probably not broken, but if it still hurts after two weeks to go get it x-rayed and he'd see to it that it got fixed.
Well, the pain subsided enough after 2 weeks that I didn't bother getting it x-rayed, but you tell me whose medical system was more user-friendly? The US? Or the Canadian? Nobody made me wait 8 hours, just to tell me to go piss off. Nobody made me take a day off of work. And anyway, my doctor led me to believe that had my toe been broken, that there *was* something that could be done. Maybe Canada just doesn't want to pay for broken toes, which is their prerogative, but when I'm broken, I expect my doctor to a) not treat me like hell, and b) at least try to fix me.
So great that Canada has "free" health care, but I guess the old adage of getting what you pay for still holds.
But even a not-great one routinely outperforms the US system. There are horror stories to be found in both, but they're a lot easier to find in the US.
At a friend's wedding, I was seated next to a doctor from the UK. She made one comment or another about the healthcare system in the US, and since it was during the huge fight trying to get ObamaCare passed, I mentioned that we were probably going to have a system more like NHS soon. As though I had any control over the matter, she advised us not to do this based on the her experience with her practice.
She told me that every few months, she'll have someone show up begging for one random service or another for cash, outside of NHS. One time it was getting an MRI read. Other times it's some diagnostic or another. I don't remember other examples. Anyway, she invariably turns them down. They plead that they can't get the care that they need through NHS. That they are desperate, but she has to turn them down because it would be illegal for her to provide service to people. After all, she is a Veterinarian.
Now I know that Brits have their sense of humor, and I'll be the first to admit that she may have been having a little fun with me, but she looked serious to my eyes. It sounds ridiculous, obviously, but is it much more ridiculous than wealthy Canadians seeking treatment at Mayo in Rochester, MN because they can't get the health care that they need under the Canadian system? That I know is true, as I grew up in the area.
I guess these are examples of systems that supposedly work, but I've never felt the need to seek treatment for any condition in Canada or, for that matter, at my dog's Vet.
I'm in the middle of breaking up with my husband (6.5 years) and he knows some of my passwords ... I've decided to go through and change all of them, just to be on the safe side.
"To be on the safe side"? That's an understatement. I would seriously hope that your attorney advised you to do this. In addition, deactivate your facebook profile and all other social networking profiles, too. Do not reactivate them again until the ink is dry on your divorce degree.
Also, what is your level of concern that your husband might mess with your email or other accounts? Do you use a shared computer? If you are concerned, you should not use a shared computer for anything he might mess with. Do your email on your phone and work computer. Password-protect your phone.
To answer your question on passwords: I really think that a password manager would be a good idea. I use one, and it's pretty straightforward if you use some common sense.
If you still don't like the idea, that's OK too. Here's the system that I used before I got KeePass: Have 3 strong passwords that I memorized. Use 1 for most secure sites (banking, brokerage, etc.) Use 1 for webmail accounts. Use 1 for low-security accounts (forums, slashdot, etc.) For the actual passwords, use some text that you have memorized (for me, it's movie quotes, for you it might be something else) and use the first character from each word in the text. Throw a few numbers at the end because many websites make you use numbers.
By way of example, one of my old passwords was a quote from the movie Casablanca: "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine." which turned into "Oatgj,iatt12" (if I used the entire quote, it would have been too long for most websites). Strong password. Easy to remember. Difficult to guess--even for people who know me. They'd know that I'm a movie-quoting machine, but they wouldn't know that I generate my passwords that way, and even if they did, I tend to quote 80s movies, so they wouldn't start guessing quotes from old movies.
Anyhow, good luck with everything. Hope it goes as smoothly and painlessly as possible.
But 10-12 years for a kidney? Tell that to a kid with kidney problems. Cripes, tell it to a 40 year old man.
Pacemakers is a better surgery, but still - 7 years is not enough. Short term fixes.
My wife is in her 30s and has stage IV cancer. 1.25 years ago, she showed up at the hospital within an inch of her life. The doctors got her patched up well enough to start chemo without her bleeding out of several of her internal organs simultaneously, and then started.
The first month or so was hell, but things improved significantly from there. She handled all her chemo, radiation, and surgery like a champ. She is able to lead a relatively normal life now, except for the fact that she isn't very likely to see 2013, and she sure gets tired easily.
Anyway, we'd be happy for another 10-12, even 7 years. And yes, even at her current comfort level (which admittedly is pretty high, considering). 10-12 years would be a blessing. I know it wouldn't get her anywhere near 90, but, well, we already know she ain't makin' it to 90.
I've always wondered why they think God needs the intervention of all that medical technology to work a miracle.
Well, I don't think anybody knows for certain how or if God works miracles on earth, or even if there is a God at all. But among many who believe, there exists a parable:
A elderly religious fellow lived alone in a small house. He was listening to the radio one day when an evacuation order came in for his area due to an impending flood. The man said to himself, "I've been a pious man for all my life. I have nothing to worry about. God will save me if anything bad happens."
An hour later, his neighbor rings the man's doorbell and says to the man, "This area is going to flood. We've been ordered to evacuate. Here, hop into my car. I'll take you to safety." The religious man considered this, and considered that the rains had already started, but replied, "I've been a pious man for all my life. I have nothing to worry about. God will save me if anything bad happens."
Several hours later, it was really raining hard and his street had flooded. A rescue worker went past his house in a boat and ordered him to board to be taken to safety. The religious man considered this, but again replied, "I've been a pious man for all my life. I have nothing to worry about. God will save me if anything bad happens." The worker could not convince the man to come with him, so he went off looking for others.
Several hours later, the flood waters and really risen. They had risen so high that the man had to climb onto his roof to avoid being swept away. Just then, a helicopter flew by, and the workers ordered him into the helicopter, but I'm sure you can guess where this is going. "I've been a pious man for all my life. I have nothing to worry about. God will save me if anything bad happens."
After another hour, the man and his house are swept away, and the man drowns and ascends to the heavens. Upon meeting God, he says, "God, I've been a pious man all of my life. I've done everything that you told me to do. How come you didn't save me?" God replies, "I sent you a radio broadcast. I sent you a car. I sent you a boat and even a helicopter. What more were you expecting?"
What do you guys do in these situations? I'd especially like to hear the prefences of anyone who is dying or at one point believed that they were going to die.
My wife is currently battling stage IV cancer, so I can answer this as best I can.
The hardest conversations for her to have with people who mean well (it's not like someone is going to bring up the really difficult topics like not being there for our kids, etc.) are the ones that keep probing her for some shred of good news. The cold fact is her chances of surviving this are low, and it's been a long while since we've heard any news that could reasonably be interpreted as "good". I understand where these people are coming from, and I know that they mean well, but it just doesn't work.
"How are you doing/feeling?" is fine. It's not like you're somehow reminding her that she feels like shit. She already knows. And I think you're right, that speaking about the distant future is best avoided, but I also wouldn't worry so much about slipping up and accidentally "reminding" her that she is going to die. Believe me, it's most of she's thinking about. Hopefully, she's reached some stage of acceptance.
Good topics are any current events, movies, books, TV shows, stuff in the news. Things that you know interest her. If that is even too hard for her, then she is probably depressed, anyway. Understandable, but hopefully her onc would treat that a bit, if possible.
You're right about respecting that she is probably too tired for long conversations. Texting a caregiver first to see if she's up for a phone call would be appreciated. Invitations to do stuff, if her health permits, could be nice. Letting her know that she's in your throughts/prayers, as appropriate, would be nice. I guess it all depends on how close of a relationship you have with your aunt.
Anyway, I wish you and your family the best of luck. Cancer sucks, and that's about all there is to say about that.
Fun anecdote. In college, I broke my leg and was in a wheelchair for three months. The officer (state school, so the campus cops were state troopers with all of the training and abilities that go with it) still wouldn't let me have a handicap sticker. He was fired less than a year later for stealing donuts from the local gas station.
He could not have issued you handicapped tags even if he wanted to, because police officers/rent-a-cops do not issue handicap tags. The DMV does, on advice from your doctor.
Perhaps this officer could have been more helpful and pointed you in the right direction, but by your account, it sounds like he wasn't interested in doing much protecting and serving.
With all due respect for your wife, is she unable to walk?
There's a difference between being unable to walk and unable to navigate a large parking lot safely. My wife has Multiple Sclerosis and now Cancer as well (come to think of it, I'm going to make her start buying lottery tickets). On good days, she can get around pretty well. You'd never even know she was sick. But on bad days, she can't get very far without having to take a rest. And it's not like there's a safe place for her to just sit down and take a rest in a parking lot. Also, it's not always clear what type of day she's going to have until it gets bad.
Every time I see the said person with fibromyalgia she is out partying and getting drunk. The main point I was trying to make is that fibromyaligia is a disease which is an easy target for con artists looking for a government paycheck and a disabled sticker on their car.
I'm not arguing that some people don't suffer horribly from it, just that we lump everyone who has anything worse than a cough these days as disabled and give them benefits which they don't at all need.
Your neighbor is malingering; we get that. Doesn't mean that everyone with a Fibro diagnosis has it for the purpose of scamming Uncle Sam. I believe that they legitimately "hurt", but there is no diagnostic for it yet.
FWIW, it's not like the diagnostics for other diseases are so cut and dried. For example, healthy individuals with no clinical Multiple Sclerosis symptoms (and who will never experience clinical MS symptoms) can have brain lesions show up on MRI that look exactly like MS lesions. My wife had her spleen removed because active cancer showed up there on a CT scan, but once pathology had a look at it, it was just a clump of blood vessels (I forget the exact name for it, but anyway, it was normal and harmless). Life isn't so simple as "if it shows up on imaging then it's there, otherwise you're a faker".
yeah, there was a libertarian streak, and the argument that you can't mandate compassion (two things that your post addresses, so you seem to remember it fairly well)
I don't think anybody is trying to mandate compassion. The idea is to mandate a place for handicapped people to park their cars so they can use the same stores that we use.
As far as businesses making themselves accessible because they want the business of handicapped people, good luck with that. It's usually much cheaper to just write off that small percentage of the population. Building ramps, widening doors, remodeling bathrooms, etc., all cost a lot of money. Many businesses would simply tell the handicapped people of the world to take their crutches and shove 'em.
Also, I agree that people shouldn't abuse the handicapped spots, and I think for the most part they don't. But then, why rant about enforcement? If people did behave correctly, no enforcement would be needed.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one, then. I completely agree with all of your points on Java and J2EE being a great platform and community, and I share your concerns about Oracle. But think about the sheer quantity of learning you're asking this PHP guy to bite off, recognizing that his project is probably, at most, something he could hack together in about 20 hours, tops, if he used PHP.
If you look closely, I think you'll see that you're making my point for me. You say that an inexperienced developer could mess things up quite righteously using JSF/Hibernate, and I agree with you. But then you suggest that he use JSP/JDBC? And this is an improvement over Pear/PHP, how? I vomited enough vomit over JSP/JDBC code between 1999-2001 to know that JSP/JDBC is not the correct solution to any problem. In order for the OP to be effective in any Java-based web framework (J2EE, Spring, whateverYourFavoriteMightBeThisWeek), he's in for hundreds of hours of work, assuming he doesn't first give up in frustration.
After considering the matter, I'd advise OP to do his web app in one of the many PHP MVC frameworks. Cake or Symfony would be great choices. That way, he can begin to educate himself on good web design principles using a language that he's already familiar with. Good design principles are always more important than choice of language, anyway.
I've done a lot of work with J2EE, and I disagree with your suggestion. With a background in only PHP, this guy is going to have a huge learning curve. He'll have to learn Java, Object Oriented principles, the JDK, various Apache libraries, and that's before even getting started with the J2EE framework. Sooooo not worth it.
All he wants to do is make a frickin' website. He could probably hack something together in PHP in a few hours or a few days at most.