Monday morning and it’s time for weekly round-up.  If you follow me on twitter (@StrateSQL), you’ll know that throughout the day I tweet out some links of things I find interesting.  While these links aren’t the answer to life, the universe, and everything, they do share a few things about SQL Server and other topics that people that follow me 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.  This post is a summary of all of those links and a few others.

Third Most Popular Link

The most popular link last week is Adam Machanic’s (Blog | @AdamMachanic) parallelism session from last year’s PASS Summit.  If you haven’t seen this sessions and have a SQL Server with more than one CPU/core, you really need to take a look at this.  Even if you’ve been working with SQL Server for years, you are likely to pick up a few great tips.

Watching: "Query Tuning Mastery: The Art and Science of Manhandling Paralellism" http://t.co/cZzWgAHZwq #sqlpass #sqlserver

— Jason Strate (@StrateSQL) September 9, 2013

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 sent out 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. Query Tuning Mastery: The Art and Science of Manhandling Paralellism [54 clicks]
2. SELECT * vs SELECT 1 with EXISTS [37 clicks]
3. Shrink Your Databases Regularly [29 clicks]
4. Microsoft Certified Masters: What Problem Were They Trying To Solve? [27 clicks]
5. Don’t Use MD5 [26 clicks]
6. Nested Loops Join [24 clicks]
7. The Salary Value of Tech Skills [23 clicks]
8. SQL Server Health Check [17 clicks]
9. What to Do When You Fail: 4 Simple Steps [17 clicks]
10. Finding Key Lookups inside the Plan Cache [17 clicks]
11. Researchers Have Found a Way To Cram 1,000 Terabytes Onto a Single DVD [16 clicks]
12. How do you solve T-SQL problems? [14 clicks]
13. Simpler Daily Work: 13 Smart Habits That Will Help You [12 clicks]
14. SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups setup scripts – Part 2 [11 clicks]
15. Who Needs LinkedIn? 15 Offline Networking Strategies That Work [10 clicks]
16. The Read Ahead that doesn’t count as Read Ahead [8 clicks]
17. Building Flat File Connectors Dynamically For SSIS [8 clicks]
18. Troubleshooting SQL Server RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE Waittype Memory Issues [7 clicks]
19. SQLIOSim Checksum Validations [7 clicks]
20. SQL Server Login Errors [7 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. How to refurbish a pop star – The Oatmeal [20 clicks]
2. 17 Times Justin Bieber Sharted In The Middle Of Taking A Picture [19 clicks]
3. Top 10 Reasons Bacon Is Actually HEALTHY For You! [8 clicks]
4. 6 Steps To Being More Creative [6 clicks]
5. Doritos Crusted Pork Sandwich – Latechow: Episode 29 [6 clicks]
6. General Public – Tenderness [5 clicks]
7. Simple Minds: Dont You Forget About Me [3 clicks]
8. One Night in Bangkok – Murray Head [2 clicks]
9. Modern English – I Melt With You [2 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?  Then follow the links on my tumblr blog or subscribe to it’s RSS feed. https://twitter.com/StrateSQL/status/369250373820637185