Dave, sent you a PM.

Jim, I hear you. We got in a fight with our server guys over here way too many times over stuff. You come to work Monday and find that sh@#$ hit the fan. We know we didn't touch the code so call the server guys "Did you do anything over the weekend?".
"Who, us? No way!"

...hours pass by, and from experience we know they didn't hit the beach this past weekend (whish they did)...

Then, a call comes "Try it now" ... and voila!

But it always starts with "Your code sucks, fix it!".

I agree with you on the performance stuff too. As far as SQL server goes from version 2k on it does a heck of a job on it's own and unless you're massaging data at a scale of Google, you'd better leave it alone anyways.