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.

Most Popular Link

The most popular link last week comes from a blog post written by Joey D’Antoni (Blog | @jdanton) on Hadoop and Power Query.  It’s worth taking a look at.

Reading: "Power Query and Hadoop" http://t.co/PQC2S0fS3l #bigdata

— Jason Strate (@StrateSQL) October 15, 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. Power Query and Hadoop [39 clicks]
2. A Sysadmin’s Guide to Microsoft SQL Server Memory [24 clicks]
3. Microsoft releases SQL Server 2014 CTP2 [20 clicks]
4. Tempdb Contention That Can’t be Soothed [19 clicks]
5. Ultimate query tuning [19 clicks]
6. Query hint QUERYTRACEON is now documented publically [17 clicks]
7. How supermarkets get your data – and what they do with it [15 clicks]
8. Working With Extended Events [15 clicks]
9. Make the PASS Summit Work For Your Employer [14 clicks]
10. Nolock and your financial application [12 clicks]
11. Can You Compress a Temp Table? [11 clicks]
12. Diagnosing and Resolving Spinlock Contention on SQL Server [11 clicks]
13. SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP Hekaton Useful Links [10 clicks]
14. SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups setup scripts – Part 3 [9 clicks]
15. Developing a SQL Server Backup Strategy [9 clicks]
16. How to Find a Mentor to Help You Go Further, Faster [8 clicks]
17. A Trio of Table Variables [7 clicks]
18. The Accidental DBA (Day 25 of 30): Wait Statistics Analysis [7 clicks]
19. Natural Born Killers (The series) – Day 3 Scalar UDF’s [7 clicks]
20. Physical Security [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. 36 Things You Never Realized Everyone Else Does Too [19 clicks]
2. 8 secrets to writing faster blog posts (infographic and tips) [14 clicks]
3. When Words Aren’t Enough — Say It With Bacon [10 clicks]
4. Carol Frances Omeara Called Police Because She Was ‘Just Too Damn Drunk’ [10 clicks]
5. IBM researcher can decipher your personality from looking at 200 of your tweets [8 clicks]
6. China’s Bizarre Pet Craze – Puppies Painted with Toxic Varnish to Make Them Look Like Unique Breeds [7 clicks]
7. Kansas man is hit by train, gets up and walks away [7 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.