Colorado GiveCamp

One of the cool things about being a developer is getting the opportunity to give back and donate your time to help charities and nonprofits. The Colorado GiveCamp is an event where you can do just that. This was my first time taking part in a GiveCamp and I am so glad I was able to participate.

GiveCamp is a weekend long event that starts on a Friday evening and finishes up in the early afternoon on Sunday. There is a good mix of designers, developers, DBA’s, and project managers who offer their expertise. Usually there are about a half-dozen charities and nonprofits that need help and the IT professionals get broken up into groups for each organization. I was placed in the group doing work for Get Smart Schools, a nonprofit whose mission is to improve schools in Colorado’s urban communities.

PASS Summit 2012 – Recap

One of the biggest, if not the biggest database event happens only once a year and this time it took place in Seattle, Washington. I am talking about the PASS Summit. The best way I can describe it is 5 straight days of SQL Saturday’s, but on overdrive. I was very fortunate that my company was able to send me to this year’s event, which was the best conference I have ever been to.

SQL Saturday #172 Oregon – Recap

SQL Saturday #172 in Portland, Oregon started off a full week of SQL Server for me. I flew out from Denver and arrived on Friday evening with enough time to make it to the speaker dinner. It was great seeing some familiar faces as well as getting introduced to SQL folk from the northwest region.

SQL Saturday #153 Salt Lake City – Recap

SQL Saturday #153 in Salt Lake City, UT finished up my crazy schedule for October and was another great SQL Saturday to be a part of. Just like the rest of the SQL Saturday’s I have attended in 2012, I decided to do another road trip out to Utah.

Sword of Fargoal 2

I have mentioned in a few places throughout this blog that the main reason why I became a computer programmer was to design and develop video games. One of the most influential games that put me down this path was Sword of Fargoal for the Commodore 64. It was released in 1982 and I started playing the game before going into kindergarten in 1985.

I’ll delve more into Sword of Fargoal in a bit, but this post’s focus is on the Kickstarter campaign for Sword of Fargoal 2, which at the time of writing this has only 25 hours left and roughly $16,000 to go. You can check out the Kickstarter page for the game by clicking here.

Your Presentation Doesn’t Work, Now What?

If only it was this easy

I mentioned yesterday that I had a presentation malfunction prior to the start of my SQL Saturday session. Up until this point I never had an issue when presenting. My laptop worked, the demos did not crash, presentation remote’s batteries had enough power, etc… I knew in the back of my head that something can and will eventually go wrong with a presentation, and it finally happened. The issue I ended up experiencing was that my MacBook Air laptop running Boot Camp did not recognize the VGA projector and I had to figure out what to do quickly.

SQL Saturday #165 Lincoln – Recap

The month of October is the start of six crazy weeks. It started out with speaking at the Lincoln, Nebraska SQL Saturday #165 on October 6th and ends when I return home from the 2012 SQL PASS Summit. Just like SQL Saturday #159 Kansas City, I decided to road trip out to Lincoln.