Tuesday, August 28, 2007

New Baby Boy: Khaled

It is with great joy and happiness that I announce the birth of my new baby boy, Khaled Bashar Lulu. Weighing in at 2,960grams he is the smallest of my three children.

Wish you and your families a long and prosperous life.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A developer's best friend is...

Two years ago, my friend, mentor, manager and fellow MVP Omar Shraim and I were on a Whidbey (now Visual Studio 2005) and Yukon (now SQL Server 2005) 'Train-the-Trainer' course in Paris, France.

And I can remember our trainer for the Yukon course was 'Richard Hundhausen,' an MVP and an RD, who gave us a few tips from 'real life' so-to-speak about development in the 'real world'. And, according to him, 'a developer's best friend is Google'.

Well, not particularily Google, but back then your best choice for online searching was, in fact, Google. Things have changed since then.

The moral of this blog is not to try to debate which search engine is best, but to show developers out there the light of way. When developing applications and stuck on the best way (or any way) to write a particular piece of code, don't bang your head against the wall and attempt to read every book there is on the shelf (you can use that as a last resort).

Literally, almost everything, related to software development or otherwise, is available on the internet. All you have to do, is search. I say this from experience. Never underestimate the power of 'internet search'.

Now, the next time you face a problem, any problem, 'Google it!' or best still 'Live it!'

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Quickie: 10 hiddens gems in SQL 2k5

I know its been so long since I last blogged, but I've been extremely busy. I promise to come back, with a vengeance.

Meanwhile, enjoy this wonderful article Top 10 Hidden Gems in SQL Server 2005, courtesy of my MVP friends Moustafa Arafa and Alirez Aliabadi (who's now in Canada).

Enjoy!!

Links:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/gems-top-10.mspx

Monday, June 25, 2007

Quickie: MSDN Nuggets

Don't have the time to read a 10-page how-to article or watch a full length
webcast? Try an MSDN Nugget, a webcast that takes you step-by-step to
discovering new functionality or exploring a hot developer topic, all in 10-15
minutes. View them online now or download for later reference.


Links
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/nuggets/

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