Thanks again to everyone who submitted a holiday tale for our What the Fun Holiday special. Like all good holiday traditions, our winner indulges in a bit of nostalgia for a Christmas classic, by adapting the classic "A Visit From St. Nicolas", a trick we've done ourselves. But like a good WTF, Lee R also mixes in some frustration and anger, and maybe a few inside jokes that we're all on the outside of. Still, for holiday spirit, this tale can't be beat.

Now, our normal editorial standards avoid profanity, but in the interests of presenting the story as Lee submitted it, we're going to suspend that rule for today. It is, after all, the holidays, and we're all miserable.

In December 2018, our distributed Sports app team at FOX was to the wall. We needed to release a new version with pay-per-view streaming before an immovable sporting event date in Q1. I frequently explained away my bugs and other failures by blaming our cats, since they walk on the keyboard and "write the code."

I decided the team needed to loosen up and (again blaming the "codin' cats") posted the following on our main dev Slack channel right before Christmas break.

Has anyone seen this error? error CS1524: Expected catch - lame attempt at humor not wrapped in a try – nottolaugh block

with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore

T’was the night before boxing when all throughout FOX
All the VP’s were praying that someone would watch
The backlog was groomed, we had our ducks in a row
And visions of Team Pages meant app usage would grow
Then a bad feeling – oh no, not the plan?!
Zac’s calling from LA: the shit just hit the fan
Forget about Team Pages and all of that rot
The ‘wheels’ just bought boxing! (believe it or not)
I guess that’s ok .. is it really that new?
uh streaming on Delta and you guessed it: pay per view
Streaming without BAM? well now – that’s a great gift!
No, you don’t get it – you have to write it in Swift
But we use Xamarin – our shared code is like glue
We’re sorry, you know these guys don’t have a clue
But don’t worry – we’re talkin’ big bucks – I mean fees
This is straight from the top – the very biggest of cheese
Well the schedule – I heard that it’s end of Q2
We can probably get there with James, Greg and Sue
Guess again amigo: time to size – let’s throw darts
Forget about June – would you believe March?
Get crackin, get codin, so what if it’s ugly
Do it yourself or send it to Willow tree
On Battalions, On Regiments, On Squads (what a scheme)
How’s this for innovation: we just call it a “team”
Doesn’t have to be pretty, watch us rake in the cash
and no unit tests - just keep slingin’ hash
that’s close enough – stop - let’s call it a day
Our asses are covered with Ben and Sam on Q/A
We did it – we pulled together – that’s always the key
Now one last question – can we go to Disney?

papa: sorry we didn’t get the video code done. Slick got into the Christmas Catnip again – he didn’t just walk on the keyboard, he was flyin’. this looks like maybe .. Lisp? hopefully you can patch it up and do the PR for us.

-- Smokey, Twoface, Slick, and Benzira (the codin’ cats)

Really the main WTF was just the schedule. This post eventually found its way to management, and I learned that (thankfully) they do have a sense of humor.

"Management had a real sense of humor" is a true Christmas Miracle.

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