NoVa Code Camp 2008.2

Last Saturday, I attended the NoVa Code Camp 2008.2 (http://novacodecamp.org) at Microsoft office in Reston, VA. I attended sessions on ASP.NET/MVC and SQL Server CLR and SSIS.

During the keynote, Jeff Schoolcraft mentioned that if you join the Montgomery County Library in Maryland that you get access to Safari (on-line book website) for free. Well, I got home and check my local library in Loudoun County in Virginia and they also have the same service for free. If you click on the Database and Homework table and then find the link to Safari Tech Books Online under the Books, Literature and the Arts area . The regular cost for Safari is $472.89 Per Year. As someone said at the Code Camp, it was worth the price of admission.

The organizers did a great job putting the event together! I look forward to the next one...

SharePoint and InfoPath

This last Saturday I attended a SharePoint code camp in Baltimore put on by the Baltimore SharePoint User Group (http://www.baltimoresug.org/). It is a free 1 day conference that had two tracks. One for developers and the other for administrators. I stayed in the developer track, which consisted of Workflow, Content Types, and InfoPath presentations.

DBMan Blog begins

Starting the blog for the technical side of my life. I have been a DBMan for just over 20 years. I started with dBASE III just before dBASE III+ came out. Having continued to work in the xBASE language through the evolution of the tools, I have come to the end of rope. Microsoft has officially killed Visual FoxPro and will not release a version 10.

At the end of August, I was laid off from a FoxPro 'shop' and it is nearly impossible to find any companies looking for VFP developers. The closest I have found is a contract job to convert a VFP app to .NET/SQL Server.