I finally finished writing the labs for my SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services class on Monday (Sept 18th). And then I spent the last three-ish nights turning chapter edits back to my wonderful editor at AppDev, Lisa. Tonight a little after midnight I submitted the last of the chapter edits, the course intro section, all of the student files, and ...

Okay, I submitted the labs for chapter 7 yesterday for my SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services course I am writing. Only 5 more labs to complete (plus a little writing for the non-lab portion of chapter 12). AppDev is already marketing the class which should be shipping at the end of the month. It should be an excellent class, if I don't ...

I've  been back a week now since the videotaping and to be honest it's hard to keep up the feverish pace. But I only have two chapters worth of labs done. So now it's time to kick it up a notch and get those labs done so I can put the courseware to bed soon.  2 down, 10 to go. Plus finishing the base writing for chapter ...

Saturday (day 6) of the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services courseware taping went slower than planned. We were supposed to spend the morning taping the last 1.5 chapters and then the afternoon doing "head" shots where we tape all of the on-camera spots in front of a camera. Saturday was brutal: I was there from 7 AM until 7 PM and was ...

Day 5 (Friday) of the taping of my SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Class went pretty well. We were able to slog though 2.5 chapters of material. The plan is to start again early on Saturday at 7 AM, finishing the Snapshots and Subscriptions chapter and then tackle the last chapter on Ad-hoc Reporting. Then, during the afternoon we will ...

Today was ripe with small disasters and a looming but avoided large disaster. The little disasters:We had to demo installing an SSL certificate on a Windows Server 2003 box that took forever to setup and configure properlyWe had to get from the VMWare desktop machine to the VMWare server machine and that took some tinkering. Again, we needed ...

Day 3 went pretty well. We were able to make it through 3 chapters. So we are officially half way through the material. If we can continue at the 3 chapter per day pace we should be okay. Nothing too exciting to report other than this is hard work. Today we recorded the Grouping, Parameters, and Matrix and Chart Reports chapters. Tomorrow we shift ...

Many years ago, Ken Getz, Mike Gilbert, Mike Gunderloy, Greg Reddick, John Viescas and I (and a few others) came together at work on a development project in a converted farm house somewhere in Virginia (in fact, today, I have no recollection where it was except I believe we flew in and out of Richmond). Anyway, this was a harebrained scheme to ...

We were able to record 2 chapters worth of material today   I spent about 9 hours of time in the studio. It's tough to go much faster but I am going to have to get into a groove if we are going to get this all done this week. I got a huge headache when it was over a little after 6 PM today. Just getting back to the ...

Today we started the videotaping of my SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services courseware that I am writing under contract for AppDev. The recording is being done at AppDev's offices in Eden Prairie, MN. In general, I thought things went very well. My last encounter with this sort of thing was to record an Active Server Pages (ASP) course for ...