Those of you who have anxiously been awaiting the next installments in my "What is there to do in Cary?" series may have noticed a distinct lack of output over the last month or so. This is due to the fact that I have been forced to spend my time actually teaching courses, rather than sampling local restaurants for your benefit!

The schedule of an instructor not only makes it hard to research restaurants and update blogs, it also makes it hard to keep up with the technical stuff. For example, although I don't teach any of the SQL courses, it's useful for me to know a fairly good amount about SQL so that I can answer SQL-related questions from my students. So, I figured it would be a good idea to take the SQL 1: Essentials class to brush up on things. Unfortunately, I ran into the same dilemma that a lot of you have: (1) the classes in Cary were on dates when I couldn't attend, and (2) the courses on dates that I could attend were in locations I couldn't get to. My next option was Live Web, but that required 4 half-day sessions. Well, the first four available days I had that matched the Live Web offerings were in December! (We instructors keep very busy)

With the prospect of being innundated with SQL questions from my students that I couldn't answer, I searched for any alternative, and I found the perfect one--e-Learning! If you're not familiar with it, SAS e-Learning is a series of pre-recorded courses that cover the same topics as many instructor-based and Live Web courses. The advantage is that you can view them (and do the excercises) as your own pace. For someone who is in his office an average of 3 days every two weeks, this is a great alternative. So, I checked out the SQL 1: Essentials course at http://support.sas.com/training/elearn/, and became an SQL expert over the course of 2 weeks! If you need to learn some aspect of SAS, but you don't have a block of time available, I highly recommend the e-Learning courses (and I am not being paid to say this; I'm just a satisfied customer).

BTW, another aspect of e-Learning that you may find useful is e-Lectures. This is a series of recorded lectures that run 20-80 minutes and cover topics that are not included in regular courses. Check them out at https://support.sas.com/edu/elearning.html?ctry=us&productType=electure