[TriLUG] Recommendation for SQL Training

[Matt Flyer via TriLUG]

Good Afternoon Everyone,

I am looking for some suggestions, hopefully based upon experience of
some of our resident developers.  There are a couple of us here at work
that have a performance goal of becoming proficient with SQL and (as
much as it pains me to say it) M$ SQL Server in particular (because
that is the platform that one of our key systems uses).

It has been suggested that we take some training classes and this is
what I would like to ask for recommendations on.  Does anyone know of a
good class held in this area that they would recommend?  A quick Google
searching on the subject seems to indicate a lot of options, but I have
no idea if any of them are reputable or even any good; hence I would
like some input from someone who has experience.

I would consider myself a novice+ as I am able to basic operations
(select, insert, update), etc and simple joins.  The other person who
would attend the training is a complete novice. The goal would be to
get us somewhere to what I imagine the intermediate level to be.  As an
example of what I say by intermediate: we occasionally need to perform
"surgery" on our production SQL tables and the application framework
we're using is heavily based upon stored procedures that we would like
to us.   

Does anyone have a recommendation?