Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • The First Tesla Ski Trips

    This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

    After a bit over 4 months, we finally had a long road trip in the Tesla Model Y. As I live in Colorado, we went to the mountains to ski. This post covers two trips, a day trip and a multi-day trip.

    Day Trip

    My wife and I took a day off and drove to the Keystone on a Thursday for a day ski trip. I charged the Tesla up to 93% overnight and we headed up on a snowy day. A fairly heavy snow was falling as we left the house and kept falling until we were well into the Colorado mountains on I-70.

    The snow tires worked well, and I felt the car was gripping well on the road. Traffic wasn’t too bad, and the drive went as smoothly as it had gone in other cars.

    The one place where I was careful was driving through Dillon, CO, where the roads were snow-packed, and there are some substantial curves. I was careful here, as the Model Y is a heavy car and slips a bit more near the bottom

    A few stats from the drive up (109 miles)

    • Power: 48% of the charge (93%->45%)
    • Cost: $4.81 (37kWh * $0.13)

    The drive down:

    • Power: 38%
    • Cost: $3.64 (28kWh)

    As a comparison, 110 miles in the X5 costs about $20 (at $3.50/gal). The Prius would have been about $9.20 or so.

    We skied most of the morning in about 20-25F weather. We then left and headed home, having lots about 2% of charge while the car was sitting in the parking lot. We drove down to Idaho Springs, and at around 28%, we stopped at the Supercharger to add some power.

    We spent about 10-15 minutes adding power (about 25%). We sat in the car, checked some email and chatted, though this location is walking distance from a number of restaurants in Idaho Springs. On another day we might have walked over to have a quick lunch and left the car, as many others did.

    It was an easy trip and a pleasant experience for our first trip into the mountains.

    A (Cold) Three Day Trip

    The next week we went back, staying up at Keystone for three days. I charged the car up to 87% and we drove to coach kids and then left from the gym for a late night drive up. It was cold, around 20F, and we again used about 50% of the power. In this case, 87->33% with a few stops  along the way.

    The next morning, we were down to 26% on a night that dropped to about 8F. That was a 7% drop overnight. An interesting data point.

    We drove over and skied, and then went to the Silverthorne Supercharger, arriving with 18% power left. Our plan was to get a cup of Starbucks while it charged, as the chargers are in the parking lot for Starbucks, but the store was closed. Not enough staff with a few out sick..

    Sad smile

    Not a problem. Rather than drive over to another place, we just charged and talked with our kids on the phone. Interesting, I pulled into charger 4B and plugged in. The car would say “starting to charge” and after 2-3 minutes it would say that something was wrong and I needed to unplug and plug it back in. I did that twice, and got the message.

    I switched to a different flow and things worked flawlessly. The charger immediately jumped to about 50Kwh, putting around 240miles/hour of charge into the car. We spent about 25 minutes there, getting up to 75% before I decided to stop. I was hungry, so we left.

    Overnight the temps were close to 0F, and we dropped about 15%of charge that night. The next night was –8F when I woke up, and we’d dropped about 18% of charge. Not insignificant, and I can see why people recommend waking up and charging in the am before a long trip.

    If we were planning on a long drive, I’d have gotten up, gotten coffee and then gone and parked at the supercharger to eat, work a bit, and fill up. Slightly more cumbersome than a gas station, but really, I’d be moving some work time into the car rather than sitting inside and then hitting a gas station.

    Overall, the car worked well under cold, winter conditions. We didn’t have any range issues, and easily charged up at the Superchargers along our route. I could pre-heat the car before driving, and I’m getting used to remembering to do this. Most of the time I think about this about 10 minutes before we pack up and go, which isn’t inconvenient. It certainly is nice to pre-heat the car as I’m paying a bill in a restaurant and have the heat going when we get in the car.

    Tires worked well and gripped in the snowy conditions. It was informative to see how the battery faired driving into the mountains, as well as overnight in some of the coldest conditions I’ve seen in years. Not a lot of battery/range anxiety and charging was smooth and easy. Taking 15-20 minutes with a cup of coffee and my wife wasn’t a big interruption to our lives, and we didn’t mind taking a few breaks during our short holiday.

  • Do You Still Use CHAR?

    I ran across an article, titled When to use CHAR, VARCHAR, or VARCHAR(MAX), which struck me as something I never do. I mean, I do use varchar (and nvarchar), but I can’t remember the last time I actually created a char column. The article is worth a read, and it sets the stage for you to think about your database design process and the choices you make.

    It’s Friday, and if you take a few minutes and think about the last few times you’ve added columns to a table have you used CHAR as a data type? Or do you default to varchar of any size as a general rule?

    I tend to do a lot of demo work, and I help customers with different situations. In many cases, we are storing text data, often not strongly typed data. As a result, I find most customers using varchar (or nvarchar), and I’ve built the habit of using the variable structures in proofs-of-concept and demos. I find it especially handy when someone asks me to enter some data they use and then show how it would be handled.

    Early in my career, I’d often tag a zipcode as a 5 character field, or a state as a 2 character abbreviation. However, these days a postal code can be a 5+4, which is 9 characters or even 10 with the plus. Many companies work overseas and may want to account for longer postal codes. States (or regions), can often be 3 characters, but sometimes more. Often we just leave 10 characters for region abbreviations (or longer) as the data might be spelled out or need to accommodate something unknown.

    For many business applications, it seems that there might be a definition for what the data should be, but since exceptions can abound, often using a variable-length data type just prevents issues in the future. Add that to the fact that often we are dealing with cheap storage, and it doesn’t seem worth the time to try and get the exact size correct. Even when knowing an invoice uses 10 characters, are you sure that you won’t exceed the ten-character width? What if you acquire a company that uses 12 character invoice numbers? Easier to set this to a variable 20 and move on.

    If you work in data warehousing, then you might know what your data sources contain and be more likely to choose fixed types, but is the space savings worth the work in the event that source systems change? I don’t know. I tend to plan for sources to change and allow a little padding in my schema. You might feel differently, but are the space savings worth the potential hassles in the future? I’d be curious what you think today.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 11 Feb 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to thank someone for cheering you up in the last month.

    Someone didn’t actually cheer me up. Well, certainly some people did, but it was more the memory of someone made me smile and brought a moment of joy. Actually, two people.

    I’ve been to Australia twice and New Zealand once. Recently my wife and I were talking about the trip we took together down there, how much we enjoyed it, and some of the people she met (I’d known them previously). The memory of standing next to this guy made me smile:

    20190608_090133_HDR

    Hamish’s joy and love for life is infectious, and I miss him. I am hoping New Zealand will allow visitors again and I can return.

    The same week, Martin Catherall reached out on another matter, and my wife and I enjoyed time with him in Australia. Martin also has an infectious, happy demeanor, and a wonderful accent, that I enjoy every time we talk. Hoping to get back to Australia again as well.

    Thanks to both of them for cheering my up this month.

  • Daily Coping 10 Feb 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to share what you are feeling with someone you really trust.

    This is tough for me. I tend to be a little closed off and private in many ways, but I’ve learned to open up a bit. Part of this is growth, part is being a good partner, part is modeling what I hope my kids to better than me.

    My wife is my partner. In many ways, she is the only person I “choose” in my life that is a constant. I didn’t choose my parents, I didn’t choose my kids, and I certainly don’t get to choose co-workers. I choose friends, but there often isn’t quite the same closeness.

    I won’t share my feelings here, but I have been working to let my wife know more often when I am feeling when I feel it. It’s that last part I can struggle with. I brood, I think, I over-analyze.

    I’m not a stream-of-consciousness talked, but I am learning to do that more often. It’s been a 2 decade plus long journey that I continue today.