force uppercase characters in textbox as user types

you can take the string you're searching with .tostring.toupper

implement the toupper on the KeyUp event of the textbox

<tr>
  <td colspan="2">
    <span style="font-weight:bold">Enter Last Name, First Name:</span>&nbsp;
    <asp:TextBox ID="txtFindName" runat="server" Width="250px" />&nbsp;
    <asp:AutoCompleteExtender ID="AutoCompleteExtender1" runat="server" 
	TargetControlID="txtFindName" ServiceMethod="FindNameSID" 
        MinimumPrefixLength="3" ServicePath="~/User/AutoComplete.asmx" />
    <asp:TextBoxWatermarkExtender ID="TextBoxWatermarkExtender1" 
	runat="server" TargetControlID="txtFindName" 
        WatermarkCssClass="WtrMrk" WatermarkText="SNUFFY JOE" />
    <asp:LinkButton ID="btnFindNameAdd" runat="server" Text="Add to Roster" ToolTip="Click to Add Member to Roster" />
  </td>
</tr>

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<WebMethod()> _
    Public Function FindNameSID(ByVal prefixText As String, ByVal count As String) As String()
        Dim items As New List(Of String)

        sql = "SELECT name_ind FROM OPENQUERY(SIDPERS, 'Select name_ind from pers_person_tbl where name_ind like ''%" & prefixText & "%''')"

        myDataTable = New DataTable
        myDataTable = getData(sql)

        If myDataTable.Rows.Count > 0 Then
            For Each dRow As DataRow In myDataTable.Rows
                items.Add(dRow(0).ToString)
            Next
        End If
        Return items.ToArray

    End Function

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That does work.  There is a longer delay then normal for the response from the database, which is expect.  Is there any other methods that would work?

Um, I'm sure there are several various ways you could dream up to achieve this.  However, this is the fastest and most correct way to do it.  Using JavaScript, allows the code to execute right there on the clients machine.  If you do a postback, even if you don't go to the database, you sill have to take the time to do a postback which is un-needed and typically MUCH slower than JavaScript, especially once the website is live and not in your local test environment.

I do understand that.  Next question then, is there a quicker way of doing an autocomplete on a textbox then?  The ajax extender it self is already sluggish.

Works great, was hoping for a different method but this will have to do.