i know it's a big no-no, but i have a few tables for logging/admin duties and i just created the clustered index on the date column on those. most of the toughest queries on those tables select the last few days of data or data between 2 days. in the case where this is not the case, putting the clustered index on the date columns also causes other records that are joined between 2 tables to be on the same pages making the join faster as well.

why not just cluster the date column instead of creating a date table? doesn't work in all cases like when you need to calculate specific weeks and days, but if you need to select a few days of data it's a pretty good solution