Welcome

You have reached the blog of Keith Elder. Thank you for visiting! Feel free to click the twitter icon to the right and follow me on twitter.

Hub City NUG Tonight with Robert Cain – Data Dude for Dev Guys

Posted by Keith Elder | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 20-01-2011

0

The Hub City .Net User Group will hold it’s January meeting on Jan. 20th from 6:30-9 pm at Joseph Cook Library (Room 305) on the Campus of the University of Southern Mississippi.

Free Registration (help us with food)
Register here: http://hubcitynugjan2011.eventbrite.com/ 

We are privileged to to have Robert C. Cain from Birmingham, Al presenting the following topic:

Data Dude for Dev Guys – Making Database Development Painless and Productive

Abstract
Whether you are a .Net Developer, accidental DBA, or full time database developer, Visual Studio Database Projects, aka “Data Dude” can be a boon to you. In this session we’ll start by reverse engineering an existing database into complete scripts to create the tables, indexes, stored procedures, and more. Deployment strategies will be covered, as well as refactoring and unit testing. Finally we’ll look at the powerful data generation capabilities built into “Data Dude”.

Robert C. Cain is a Microsoft MVP in SQL Development, MCTS certified in BI, and works as a Senior Business Intelligence Architect for ComFrame. He is also a technical contributor to Plurasight Training, and co-author of the book “SQL Server MVP Deep Dives”. Robert has over 20 years experience in the IT field, working in a variety of fields ranging from manufacturing to telecommunications to nuclear power. He maintains the popular blog http://arcanecode.com.

This Month’s Sponsor

A big thanks to Telerik for sponsoring this month’s meeting.  Telerik has graciously offered to purchase food for the meeting.  This month we are going to have BBQ!  Get there early to enjoy fellowship and food.

Two Surgeries In One Week

Posted by Keith Elder | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 18-08-2009

31

A few weeks ago I was shopping with my lovely wife and her Mother in Jackson, Ms.  I bumped into a rack of clothes with my chest and it was painful, very sore.  I got to feeling around why I was sore and discovered a lump on my right breast. 

Surgery #1

A few days later I saw a doctor and then another and got scheduled to have surgery.  Tomorrow morning, (Wednesday August 19th 2009), I will be having a procedure called “Subcutaneous Mastectomy”.  Basically the tissue or whatever alien object that is in my breast is going to be removed.  At first I thought cancer, but the doctor gave me the odds that men get breast cancer is 1 in 10,000.  It happens, but apparently men get these lumps more often than most people think.

Surgery #2

Sunday morning I awoke from Devlink 2009 at the hotel in Nashville, TN and it felt like my eye had something on it.  I thought it was a dirty contact lens or something like that but it didn’t go away.  Monday it was worse and my eyes watered all day.  By today (Tuesday) I had had enough, it wasn’t getting better.  Eyes are something I don’t mess with.  I went to the eye doctor and got an immediate referral into a specialist to look at my eye.  It was fast too.  At 4:15 EST I was in the office and by 4:30 I had already seen the doctor and was on my way to the specialist.  Turns out I have a detached retina.  What the…..!  The doctor said he wanted to operate on my eye right then and there or the next day (Wednesday). I explained I was already going in for surgery the next morning so we scheduled it for Thursday.

That is TWO major surgeries in one week.  What in the wide wide world of sports is going on!?  At first I wasn’t going to say anything about my mastectomy but now that I have to have two surgeries, blogging is the only way I can peacefully cope with all of this.  Too much for one person for one week.

Keep me in your prayers the next several days.

Back to the Basics: Montgomery Alabama Code Camp Jan 31st 2009

Posted by Keith Elder | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 21-01-2009

1

The Alabama Code Camp in Montgomery, AL will be held on January 31st, 2009.  I’ll be speaking at the code camp running a full track that is called “Back to the Basics”.  Here is the purpose of the track:

The Back to the Basics series is a primer for anyone that is starting at ground zero with .NET. Each one progressively builds on the previous. The sessions start at the beginning with what .NET is and work all the way up to programming in C# and building various applications. This track is great for Code Camps, Technical Conferences and other venues whereby attendees want to get exposure to .NET and building applications on the platform.

imageThere will be 5 sessions in the Back to the Basics track, and tentatively a discussion panel to close out the day. 

Thus, if you have been looking for a way to get started in .NET and learn about the platform, this is a perfect way to learn about the latest version of .NET along with the C# language and Visual Studio.  Best of all, it will cost you $0.00 to attend (well, not zero, gas and food, but hey, that’s easy).

Putting this together wouldn’t have been possible without the help of INETA, so I and the organizers of the Alabama Code Camp thank them for their continued support in the community. 

Code Camp Info

Directions and Other Info:  http://www.alabamacodecamp.com
Register for Event:  http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=134437
Date:  January 31st, 2009
Where: Montgomery, AL

Back To The Basics Sessions

Back to the Basics: What is .Net?

No other name in history has confused more people on the planet than when Microsoft named their development platform .NET. For a lot of developers .NET remains a mystery and it is often confused with many things. The Back to the Basics series is a primer for anyone that is starting at ground zero with .Net. Each one progressively builds on the previous. This is the first session in the Back to the Basics series. In this session we’ll look at what .Net really is, the benefits of the platform, bust a few myths and show some sound reasons why you should consider it as a platform. At the end of the session, hopefully we’ll answer one of life’s most puzzling questions: What is .NET?

Back to the Basics: How to Use Your Hammer – Visual Studio

Imagine if you were a carpenter that didn’t know how to use a hammer, skill saw, drill, level, or nail gun. Would you be a great carpenter? Probably not! The Back to the Basics series is a primer for anyone that is learning the .NET platform. Each one progressively builds on the previous. This is the second session in the Back to the Basics series. In this session we’ll look at the biggest single tool you’ll use when building applications on the .NET platform, Visual Studio. Visual Studio is a world class IDE with full blown intellisense, debugging, source control, and much more. When the session is over you’ll know the difference between a solution and a project, how to structure your applications and tons of shortcuts to make you more productive with your new jack of all trades tool.

Back to the Basics: A Programmer’s Primer Programming in C#

The C# programming language is the flagship language available to .NET developers. It is fully supported within the toolset and is even the programming language the majority of the .NET platform is built with. The Back to the Basics series is a primer for anyone that is starting at ground zero with .NET. Each one progressively builds on the previous. This is the third session in the Back to the Basics series. In this session we’ll cover as much about the C# language as time will allow starting with the basics of the language, Object Oriented Programming principles all the way to generics, collections, and LINQ. This is a programmer’s primer, which means you should already know at least one language and have some experience programming.

Back to the Basics: The Swiss Army Knife, Part 1 (Winforms/WPF/Mobile)

.NET is a “Swiss Army Knife” because no matter which type of application you want to write (client, web, mobile) you can use one tool (.NET) to do it with. The Back to the Basics series is a primer for anyone that is starting at ground zero with .NET. Each one progressively builds on the previous. This is the fourth session in the Back to the Basics series. In this session we’ll cover how Windows Client applications are built. First we’ll look at classic Winforms and then we’ll look at the newest technology called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which provides richer user experiences. Lastly we’ll look at how to write Windows Mobile applications for Smart Phones and Pocket PC.

Back to the Basics: The Swiss Army Knife, Part 2 (Web/Services/Workflow)

.NET is a “Swiss Army Knife” because no matter which type of application you want to write (client, web, mobile) you can use one tool (.NET) to do it with. The Back to the Basics series is a primer for anyone that is starting at ground zero with .NET. Each one progressively builds on the previous. This is the fifth session in the Back to the Basics series. In this session we’ll cover how web applications and web services are built. First we’ll look at WebForms. If you stayed awake in session four you’ll feel right at home with WebForms since the same programming model is applied, the only difference is we are building a web application. Then we’ll look at how to build web services to expose business logic to a multitude of clients (web, windows, mobile) using Windows Communication Foundation. Lastly we’ll touch on Workflow Foundation which helps us to easily build out the complex business logic in a declarative manner.

MVP Geek Lager Pictures

Posted by Keith Elder | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 19-04-2008

2

Thursday night we gathered at Kell’s Irish Pub and Restaurant one last time before heading home from Seattle.  There was an unofficial count of about 75 of us that gathered for food and chatter.  It was certainly a lot more than last year and we had a blast.  Thanks to everyone that came out and we’ll try to do it again next year!

Pictures from the Geek Lager are here:

http://flickr.com/photos/keithelder/sets/72157604621823612/

MVP Summit 2008 Pictures

Posted by Keith Elder | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 19-04-2008

0

At the MVP Summit 2008 I didn’t take a large amount of pictures but I did take a few.  You can view them here.

http://flickr.com/photos/keithelder/sets/72157604626519285/