Ah, the holidays. 

For people in most operations organizations, there is a collective sigh of relief around this time of year.  Not only are many of the people who are responsible for releasing changes out into the production environment on vacation (or getting ready for vacation), but the holidays are the joyful time of year that dances in the dreams of every operations person...the time of Data Center lockdowns.  If vacations are not enough to sway the throng of projects coming down the pipe with the frequency of a firehose, Saint Nick and his elves (read data center staff) give us all the gift of peace for 3 weeks.  This is not to say that code releases don't still happen, they do to be sure.  However, with no new server deployments, server rebuilds, or really data center staff available, we in operations get a nice reprieve.  Interestingly, many ops folks end up working through the holidays just because it's quiet!  So to all the data centers who require holiday lockdowns, from all of us to all of you, a collective thank you!   

Scott