thighmister, You really should start your own thread. Reviving a 9 month old one will confuse the people that read the first post and try to answer that persons question, skipping yours.
Most of the time (very close to all the time but I just know someone has an exception to that, they always do) The return (data via jquery, that's what the top post is using) of an ajax call is a php script to write information to the screen, not to send variables to javascript. The return can be written to a <div> that was created to show the data or it can create it's own div. Or it can replace or add to the contents of something already on the page.
Changing the page without refreshing the page is what ajax is all about.