Once again another great CodeStock conference has come and gone.
Day 0
I managed to drop the cat off at the pet boarder Pet Palace and after a relatively average drive I was in Knoxville, TN by 4pm.
Well I finally got around to taking my Scrum.Org PSM I (Professional Scrum Master I) assessment today and passed. I am now certified to be a Scrum Master and facilitate teams that use the scrum based agile development framework to manage projects.
This weekend I participated in the 2011 Columbus Give Camp. Give Camps are weekend long events where developers and designers donate their time to help out worth charities. A good majority of the time projects are to create or update charity websites but it is by no means limited to that.
Another CodeStock has gone and passed and what an event it was! They finally moved from The Pellissippi State Community College out in the boonies of Knoxville, TN to The University of Tennessee Conference Center in downtown Knoxville.
Here is some sample code that can be used in a c# application to make sure that only one instance of the program can run at a time. In order to do this you will use a Mutex (Mutual Exclusion) which is a type of system wide lock.
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt
This is another book from Andy Hunt and the Pragmatic series. I can’t emphasize enough how great these books are.
Where as in Pragmatic Programming they discussed patterns and practices to improve your developer skills this book takes a step back and is looks at how your brain works.
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas
This is one of my new top developer books. Far be it for me to tell you want to read or not read but I feel this is a must read requirment for any developer.
Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine by Kalen Delaney
I read this book to gain some deep knowledge about how SQL Server 2005 works on the inside. My goal was to better understand how to install, configure and manage a SQL Server 2005 database.
The Enterprise and Scrum by Ken Schwaber
On of my coworkers won this as a prize at the IndyTechFest. We were all very intrigued by the Kanban talk that was given there and so I wanted to learn more about using lean development techniques in business.
Codestock was a rocking fun time this year. Major props have to go out to Michael C. Neel (@vinull) for once again busting his ass and putting together an impressive conference.