I am not a dialysis patient but a good friend of mine is and I really got a lot out of this book. David keeps his story on a light and informative note. His endurance and strength are an inspiration to many people who have to deal with illnesses or even with everyday life challenges. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will recommend it to anyone who needs a boost and a few hours of quiet time and reflection. Thank you for sharing your story, David.

This book will be an inspiration to all who read it. I picked it up and didn't put it down until I was finished. Be sure you have a box of kleenix by your side. The ups and downs of the auther and the love and concern shown by his family and friends will keep you reading and inspired to the end.

I found this book to be motivational! David showed my family how to be optimistic when everything seems to be slipping away. The book was well written and easy to read. I have referred it to people I work with as well.

When I first heard of this movie, I had no clue what it was about. My friend and I saw a teaser poster with Al Pacino and Gabrielle Anwar dancing the tango labeled "Scent of a Woman". Putting two and two together, we went into the theater thinking we were watching a love story until the movie started. Whoops. Despite my misgivings in the beginning, I was pleasantly surprised. What I found was a riveting story of mentor-mentee relationship. I love movies that involve the master taking young grasshopper under his wing. Except master is not Mr. Perfect himself. Both the student and the teacher learn from each other's weaknesses. And despite Lt Col Slade's struggle with his misfortunate blinding accident, his Army core values were still in tact. Hard-working and willing to give up a Thanksgiving weekend to look after an embittered retiree, Slade sees an underlying goodness in Chris O'Donnell's fragile, fence-sitting character, Charlie. Like most young men his age, he was susceptible to peer pressure and could easily choose the wrong path as his friends had. Slade is blind but easily sees the temptation to compromise the boy's integrity and future. "This old bat has sharper radar than the Nautilus" Slade tells his young league. He lays all the cards out for Charlie to see, but knew instinctively it was up to the boy to make his own decision. Charlie eventually shows his true colors in the face of adversity. Like a good soldier, he never leaves his commander's side even when the danger is self-inflicting. Character like that is a rarity in anyone and must be preserved! This prompts Slade to reciprocate his support for Charlie who is enrolled in a prestigious school reknowned for producing some of the most important figure heads in America. "Be careful what type of leaders you're making," he warns the school staff. Charlie learns lessons in life that no school could teach him.

Underneath the tough exterior, there was a softer side to Slade. He definitely had a thing for the ladies. Instead of playing up a macho cassanova, "Mac-Daddy" persona predominate in a lot of films today, Slade is quite the charmer and gentlemen. He's cultured, sophisticated, genteel and surprisingly knowledgeable about women's perfume. Hence the film's title. I find that warrior-poet quality incredibly sexy and appealing. You can't resist a man who makes the tango look so easy and doesn't mind getting "all tangled up" with you. A beautiful role played by Pacino earning him a well-deserved oscar which probably was most credited for by his empowering monologue in the end. This is by far his best role in a movie.

Lovely film. Sweet, sad, romantic yet uplifting. This is truly a classic for the ages.

Leonard Maltin is ludicrously off the mark with his assertion that this movie borrowed "leftover material" from the movie Dead Poets' Society. There is only the most fleeting of similarities between the two movies, and far from being tacked on, the subplot that Maltin refers to is essential to the lessons that Chris O'Donnell's character learns during the course of one extraordinary weekend.

His mentor (and pupil - in equal portions) is one Lt Col Frank Slade, brilliantly portrayed by Al Pacino in a glorious, scenery-chewing, larger-than-life performance. But don't infer from this that Pacino is over-acting, as some critics have suggested. (My God - where have these people been living? There ARE people out there like Frank Slade - too few, it's true, but they do exist.) Pacino's Frank Slade is a living, breathing creation, full-blooded and utterly three-dimensional, with flaws as great as his virtues. It's Pacino's genius that makes him so believable, and it's hard to think of a single other actor in Hollywood with the talent to have achieved this. Bravo Pacino!

Too long? I didn't want this movie to end! I felt a genuine sense of sadness in the final scene, having spent two and a half hours in the company of one of the cinema's most engaging characters. This movie ranks right up there with the very best of cinematic achievements.

I have probably watched "Scent of A Woman" thirty times. I find it one of those movies that becomes hypnotic a few minutes into it. Al Pacino is absolutely outstanding in the role of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, retired from the U.S. Army. Slade, blinded by a drinking/grenade game he was playing with one of his drinking buddies, is now living as an embittered alcoholic with an adult niece, her husband and two little children. He is an arrogant, angry man used to issuing orders and not displaying very much gratitude or affection.

Charlie Simms, played well by Chris O'Donnell, is a scholarship at a nearby prep school in the same town in New Hampshire where Slade lives. Charlie's trying to earn some money over the Thanksgiving weekend so that he can travel home to his parents in Oregon at the Christmas break.He discovers an ad placed by Slade's niece to care for her blind uncle over the Thanksgiving break so that she can travel with her husband and kids to Albany, New York for Thanksgiving with her in-laws.Charlie answers the ad and the adventure quickly develops.

Slade has his own plans for Thanksgiving. A last big blowout in New York City before killing himself.

He is abusive to Charlie at first and acts as if he is one of his military aides. He doesn't let him in on his plans until it's practically time to leave for New York -- while Charlie had been told by Slade's niece that the weekend would be at her home looking after her uncle.

A beautiful bonding begins as Slade and Simms interact and except for his anger and bitterness, it is obvious that Slade is not particularly handicapped by his blindness as he has developed an extra few "senses" which make him seem remarkable.

The journey to New York is a roller coaster of emotion from comic to touching to almost tragic. When Slade finally decides to kill himself, Charlie manages to save the day -- although it's pretty touch and go keeping you on the edge of your seat throughout.

Charlie has problems of his own. He's not particularly self confident and Slade is tremendously intimidating. Charlie's other problems center around an incident at school which places him at a crossroads -- whether he should rat on some kids at school at the headmaster's own brand of intimidation, or face expulsion.

The movie concludes with an impassioned speech by Colonel Slade on Charlie' behalf before a school-wide assembly being held for a disciplinary committee hearing on the incident Charlie has knowledge of.

Simms remains true to himself and proves himself to show new confidence and an outstanding sense of personal integrity.

Slade has also benefited by his own plans gone awry and his opening a window of care for Charlie as another human being. He emerges as a sign of hope to overcome his bitterness, anger and alcoholism.

An absolutely remarkable film!!!

I purchased this book after having carefully studdied many books about the subject. I fell for this book, simply because it got the best rating and when I went to my local book store and scanned it, I had to own it. It starts out with a PHP crach course (syntax and semantics), moves over to cover string manipulation, expressions, function calls etc. All in all, very simple stuff that you should be able to grasp easily, are you known to other high level programming or scripting languages. Then you get introduced to basic database design, dynamic image generation etc. What makes the book special however, is that the whole second half of the book, shows you real world examples of things like session control, user authentication, shopping cart management, a mailing list manager, an email web-interface, web-forums and more. This second part is what you really will learn from! The book should be called "Real World PHP and MySQL development." The only little thing that I miss in the book, is a reference list of all common functions for PHP. I am not complaining though, the book does not state to be a reference book!

You never know what your really going to get when you buy a book online but I am totally happy with this purchase. This book offers real world examples and full source code for many of the PHP/MySQL projects developers tackle on a day to day basis. Details can be found on: Image generation, cookies, user authentication, shopping carts, content management, mailing-lists, PDF document generation and a lot of detail on how to set up and install both PHP and MySQL on your server. The authors do not only show you the code but explain what's happening so that you can customize the scripts for your own use and they do this very well. This book is aimed at intermediate web developers who are familiar with HTML, some type of programming (ASP, Perl), but you certainly do not have to be an expert programmer to understand what's going on. All and all-the best web programming book I've bought, period.

I don't write alot of reviews, and hardly ever give 5 stars, but this one is worth it. This massive text (800+ pages) includes all of the basic elements that either a beginner or an advanced user may look to a text for assistance with (note: these subjects, PHP and web databases, are traditionally self-taught at this time, a good text is ESSENTIAL!). The CD includes open source licensed Apache, PHP and MySQL (Linux and WIN), and all code from the book.

The book format is logical and good for self-pacing; early sections teach PHP language features (including arrays, regular expressions, objects/classes), then MySQL language and calling constructs (RDMS design theory, SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, and advanced SQL). Later chapters discuss implementing user authentication and security, session mgmt and other advanced concepts. Final chapters (over 250 pages) provide ample example web database applications that probably cover about any project you would use these languages for (including shopping cart, content mgmt, web-based e-mail, mailing list mgr and a web-based forum). The final chapter describes using PDF to format text documents (my ISP does not provide this module therefore I skipped that section).

I recently began a private web database project and made the decision to proceed open source (PHP, MySQL) versus going the Microsoft way (ASP, SQL Server). This meant I had to learn PHP and MySQL. I purchased 4 books and the Welling & Thomson text was most utilized of all. My only gripe is they don't provide summary reference sections on PHP and MySQL functions / commands. You will probably just download the official user manuals for these anyway.

This book is well worth the price, IMHO.

I just want to said I had my first exprenice with using the materials from the Pass The G.E.D Book. I am using it to help assist others study for their G.E.D. The reason I am give this a rating of 3 stars is because the colors in the book to do copy good when you want to copy pages from it. The picture draft do not show clear after you make a copy.