SQL Saturday #286 will be held on June 21st, 2014 at the Indiana Wesleyan University in Louisville, KY. It looks like it will be a great chance to learn about SQL Server. There is a list of the submitted talks they have received so far on their schedule page (not all will be selected). Once the full schedule is decided they will post it. Grant Fritchey (also known as the Scary DBA) will be in town as well giving a Query Performance Tuning class the day before.

In the Introduction to Windows Azure workshop we will do some hands on work with the core features of Windows Azure: Storage, Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines. To participate in these hands on labs you’ll need to have a Windows Azure Account. You can get a free trial account ( http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial-b/ ) or, if you have a MSDN subscription, you can sign up for your Windows Azure benefits ( http://www.

Ever wrap up a demo or end a day of development work and wonder if you left a VM running in Azure? Yep, I’ve done that. I’ve also NOT wondered about it, completely forget even, and ended up running a VM for some time without thinking about it. I have two subscriptions I routinely use for demos and development and for the most part have no reason to have cores running in those subscriptions if I’m not actively doing something.