1. A CRAZY DBA'S FIRST DAY

       It was my first day as the newly hired database administrator. My name is Sam, and I was ready for a gentle start — maybe some HR orientation, a fresh coffee, and a peek at the shiny new monitoring dashboards. But databases have a way of laughing at your plans.
Just as I found my seat, Manager Mike popped up with a worried look. “Sam, I know it’s your first day, but our production DBA is out on emergency leave. The customer’s app is down — can you take a quick look?”
So much for easing into the role. 

   I logged into the server, half-expecting it to be something small. But the error log told a different story. It was full of “could not allocate space” errors. TempDB had filled up overnight, and the system was practically choking.
   I opened SSMS and checked the tempdb settings — someone had set the autogrowth to 1MB increments, with a maximum file size of 100 GB. Meanwhile, the TempDrive still had 70% free space! 

         It wasn’t that the disk was full. TempDB just couldn’t grow fast enough because of that tiny growth increment and the imposed cap. I ran an ALTER DATABASE MODIFY FILE command, gave it a more sensible growth size, and removed the artificial limit.

Before I could take a breath, Mike mentioned that the AG dashboard was showing red. I connected to the AG replica states and saw someone had paused data movement during the overnight patch — and forgot to resume it. A quick ALTER DATABASE … HADR RESUME later, everything turned green.

By the time HR finally tracked me down for the actual orientation, it was nearly 3:00 PM. They handed me a welcome kit and asked if I was settling in okay.

“Settling in? I think I’ve already saved the day,” I said with a grin. 

Manager Mike gave me a friendly pat on the back. “You know what, Sam? You’re not just a DBA. You’re The Crazy DBA now.”

And that’s how I earned my new nickname on my very first day. No warm-ups. No gentle introductions. Just the real world of databases, in all its messy, hilarious glory. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.