Often, I've found that I use some of the more well-known best practices, such as aliasing tables used in a query, fully qualifying the field scope even if you “think” there is no ambiguity, etc., when writing queries that I intend to SAVE (views, sprocs, whatever), but not when I'm running ad-hoc “on-demand” type things.

This post shows at least one example of why it's a good idea to use these practices even when doing your “ad-hoc” queries.

I feel your pain Scott!