Ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek

Yesterday I was asked to give a lecture at the University of Arkansas. No, it’s not going to be on SQL. It’s not even remotely related to technology. It’s on issues translating ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek into modern English. I’m speaking to undergrads in a World Literature class taught by Keely Kotnik, the wife of friend and coworker, Alex Brice. She is a writer and teaches while pursuing an MFA in fiction writing at the University of Arkansas. I don’t often get the opportunity to discuss my hobby with others, so needless to say I’m very excited. Perhaps it was my love of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin that lured me down the SQL path. Or perhaps it’s further proof that I’m just an inveterate geek.

Tulsa SQL Server user group

I had a great time at the Tulsa SQL Server user group last week. I gave a presentation on partitioned tables. Although no one there was using partitioned tables, many were interested and several asked good questions regarding when to consider using partitioned tables and how to implement them in a production environment. Thanks goes to David Walker for inviting me to speak (although he was visiting another professional group, the one in Orlando whose members wear hats with big mouse ears ;-) and Patrick Kurz for doing an excellent job running the show in David’s absence.

I’m looking forward to IndyTechFest 2008 on Oct 4th. I’m particularly interested in hearing Jimmy May’s presentation “Disk Partition Alignment” and Dave Leininger’s “Lessons on Event and Error Logging.”

At Tulsa TechFest (Oct 9th and 10th) I’ll be presenting a session in the eMarketing and Business track entitled “Learning from the Giants: How Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot create, consume and leverage data.”

We’re now an official chapter of PASS!

Just last week Northwest Arkansas SQL Users Group became an official chapter of PASS. We've had four meetings so far and the turnout has been great with between 15-20 people each week. All the major corporations in the area are represented: Wal-Mart, JB Hunt, Tyson, and US Truck. We meet on the second Wednesday of every month from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM.

As one of the founding members, I've had the opportunity to present at the first two meetings: an overview of SQL 2008, and overview of partitioned tables. Last month Chris Koenig, Microsoft Developer Evangelist, presented an overview of LINQ. Last week Jason Pluenneke presented an overview of SSIS.