They were standard backups and standard restores.  Have done this many, many times in the past and never have I seen this behavior.  Going to take some time tomorrow in...

Would love a copy of the book.

Here is a rather kludgy way of getting backup counts for today, using OVER

select

database_name,

server_name,

CASE type

WHEN 'D' THEN 'Full'

WHEN 'I' THEN...

I fully agree with you, but due to politics we can't lock it down. Believe me when I say that I don't agree with that either, but it is...

Note that Instant File Initialization does not work when you are using TDE. See msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb934049.aspx for more info.