Thanks to everyone for the replies.

Jeff - You may not have time to do this but would you mind giving your recommendations for both of these areas? Lately I've really become interested in performance tuning and troubleshooting. However, I'm still such a newbie I had real trouble keeping up with the Accidental DBA book when I tried working through it a few weeks ago. I thought my issue was that I was probably trying to jump ahead too far in the conversation (i.e. I don't understand the basics). Any help is really appreciated.