I am in SQL report nirvana

I got taught quite a neat trick today by my senior dev man about writing reports that need to display multiple columns of values comprised of cherrypicked bits of information stored in the same column in a table. Yahoo! His query is about 1/3 the length that mine was shaping up to be, and MUCH easier to manage. He may be not so thrilled he helped me though as I picked it apart, asked him 20 questions about every line and made him make me understand his logic. I think he thought writing the report was going to be the quick and painless way to get me and my item off his plate. Haha, so sorry! You've given me more fodder and I will make you live to regret it methinks. I've never met a smart person I didn't pester, but I like to think it's flattering that I recognize one's expertise at a subject, no?

I do however think I've finally wrapped my head about the concept of a join, hallelujah. I always knew how to employ them to a degree, but I never understood the left/right/theta/outer/natural bits. Now I pretty much know I never have and likely never will ever use a kind other than the natural or outer joins, but should I want to I will know how to refer to it when looking up syntax for execution. This knowledge was gained during my daily hour of knowledge increasing. Did I tell you about that? Since my mentor dude got chucked, and seemingly my approval to go for my MS cert bits went with him, I decided I have all the resources to learn this shit myself and that I would spend one hour a day just messing with stuff and learning. However, when I sat down to begin this learning I realized it had been months since I logged into my test system and I have no idea what iteration of my standard password I was using when I set it up. So the actual "setting up of the SQL Server" has to wait until I have a day to rebuild the entire machine. Instead I've gone back to the basics and have been reading a SQL book, thinking I should solidify my hacky pattern matching based foundation so that when the time comes and I do have this server up and going, I'm not wasting time trying to understand the SQL part of the instruct and can concentrate instead on the "server" and "management" parts. Bored yet?

I'm all work and no play this week, so I have nothing fun to report. Except ooooh! Did I show you this ? Check it out! New toy!

That is a picture of my eye. The dinosaur skin looking bits are the endothelial cells of my cornea, and the little charts below are automatic analyses of the counts of my cells. AWESOME. The old way they did this was to take a picture, print it, lay a graph over it, take counts from 10 areas of the graph and average it out. The new way? "Stick your head in this tube thing and push a button" Out comes the above image and Bob's your uncle! Oh the humanity!

Also in work related news, in 2 weeks the dudes from NSI are going to be going into the OR to do a tableside FA, which I find pretty exciting. We walked through some of the setup yesterday, and we're going to have a dry run next week so I can make sure everyone knows what their part will be and how many f*cking wires are going to be involved. Other than that, it's going to be awesome. If I wasn't such a pansy/fainter with all the blood I think I could score myself an invite but as it is I don't want to steal the show by passing out and landing on the patient. How embarrassing!

and with that, I'm back to my normal operations. "WFH" today, so the potential for nattering updates/time wasters is prime. Expect great things!

I'll leave you with another picture from another new toy we got at NSI. This little dude is a bit jacked up on the inside, but has normal vision and an incredible disposition. This picture is from the Canon wide angle camera, which is just the most beautiful thing I've seen in weeks. I love this camera! (note: I may have already uploaded this, but I didn't see it at a quick scan. If I did, deal)
You have to see this picture at full size to appreciate it. Dear lord, that's a nice picture.