It’s Monday time for this week’s weekly link round-up.  If you want to catch these links “live” (so exciting), follow me on twitter (@StrateSQL).  And see these throughout the day as I tweet out links of things I find interesting.  While these links aren’t the answer to life, the universe, and everything, they often share a few things about SQL Server and related technology topics that others may find useful.

The links included in this summary are those prefixed with “Reading” and are items I’ve read over the past few days, usually after hours when sharing would be less than useful, and spaced out to avoid spamming.  The content of the links usually pertain to SQL Server, technology, and career topics; which I think others would find useful.

The Most Popular “Reading” Link

Last weeks most popular link was written by Kendra_Little (Blog | twitter).  It’s a great piece on performance tuning Change Tracking.  Take a look at it, if you haven’t already.  And, as a side note, pretty much everything that Kendra writes is stellar.

Reading: "Performance Tuning SQL Server Change Tracking" http://t.co/2v5HdAu3ZZ #sqlserver

— Jason Strate (@StrateSQL) October 21, 2014

Last week’s top 20 “Reading” Links

Along with the top link, here are the top twenty items relating to SQL Server, technology and careers that were shared last week.  If you missed them throughout the week, here’s the opportunity to get caught up on some items that other’s read after I linked them out.

1. Performance Tuning SQL Server Change Tracking [42 clicks]
2. Pragmatic Works Opens Satellite Office in Minneapolis [39 clicks]
3. SQL Server 2014: TEMPDB Hidden Performance Gem [38 clicks]
4. Networking at the PASS Summit [34 clicks]
5. The Curse of Working With A DBA [28 clicks]
6. Why I Support The PASS Name Change And Its Efforts To Expand Into The BA Community [25 clicks]
7. Microsoft announces new Azure G family virtual machines and premium storage feature [24 clicks]
8. Big Data: 20 Free Big Data Sources Everyone Should Know [21 clicks]
9. An Open Letter to Brogrammers [21 clicks]
10. Heroes of SQL [21 clicks]
11. Google Makes Us Dumb. You Won’t Believe What Happens Next : SQLRockstar : Thomas LaRock [19 clicks]
12. 10 commandments of Database Management [19 clicks]
13. Your SQL PASS 2014 Speaker Idol Contestants Are… [19 clicks]
14. On the Death of Big Data [14 clicks]
15. How It Works: Behavior of a 1 Trillion Row Index Build (Gather Streams from SORT) [12 clicks]
16. How Vertica Met Facebook’s 35 TB/hour Ingest SLA [11 clicks]
17. Running SQL Server on a Big Box–Introduction [10 clicks]
18. Microsoft brings real-time analytics to Hadoop with Storm preview [9 clicks]
19. T-SQL Tuesday #59–My Hero [8 clicks]
20. Microsoft readies new Azure Data Factory service [6 clicks]

Other Stuff Shared

Of course, no week would be complete without a few off-topic links.  These have nothing to do with technology or your career, but they are interesting and worth a second look.

1. Ridiculous Playground Fails [26 clicks]
2. When They Brought These Wolves Into The Park, They Had No Idea This Would Happen [20 clicks]
3. Here’s Why McDonald’s Burgers Don’t Rot [20 clicks]
4. MERICA: Man Plays Star Spangled Banner Using Steel Targets and Ruger 10/22 [15 clicks]
5. Avengers: Age of Ultron [14 clicks]
6. Five myths about the chemicals you breathe, eat and drink [8 clicks]
7. Major California Faults Ready To Rupture [4 clicks]

Got something you think I should read and share, leave a comment below.  Also, if you want to see all of the links that were tweeted out last week?