I don’t know what it’s like in your offices right now, but at the Simple-talk HQ, it’s that time of year when things start to wind down for a week or so. There is often a final flurry of blogging activity before all goes quiet until the New Year.

O come, all on Facebook

‘Like’ the blog I’ve written!

O come ye, O come ye and re-tweet the link;

Come and behold it Work of five strained minutes

[Chorus by twitterati] O come, let us go read it,

Link to it and tweet it,

For the authors need it,

Though we’ll soon be bored!

The developers frantically fix the last few urgent bugs, before disappearing for a well-earned rest.

Rudolph the red-nosed tester

Had a rather vicious streak

Liked keying into JIRA

Fifty of my bugs a week!

All the other devs are laughing

Laughing silently at me

Saying that my current bug count

Will go down in history!

The building gradually empties, becoming restful, silent, and even somewhat eerie, in the cold and failing winter light. Left behind is the lonely DBA, tapping away at his keyboard, stoically keeping the wheels turning, as others make merry.

In the deep mid-winter frosty devs made moan

All the work is winding down, Leaving me alone

No more meetings, no sir no, Just a week to go

Monitoring the systems, those running slow

Tables lacking indexes, script them in again;

Long-running process, deadlocks give me pain

Cursors running slowly, row by painful row,

Grinding through the tables, blocking as they go

In the deep mid winter frosty servers made moan

All the work is winding down, Leaving me alone

We challenge you to submit your own festive carols (keep them clean!); the best one will receive an iPod Nano and two runners-up will receive $25 Amazon gift vouchers.

Thank you to everyone who read, wrote for, and commented on Simple-Talk in 2012. We really do appreciate your support. We wish you a fun festive season, and invite you to boot up SSMS one last time, open the HappyNewYear2013.sql attachment (a gift from Simple-Talk reader, Tomaz Kastrun), set output to text and hit execute a few times… Happy New Year!

Cheers!

The Simple-Talk Team