Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Daily Coping 16 May 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 what values are important to you? Find ways to use them today.

    I value hard work, openness and honesty, service, and kindness. I used all of these recently in a few ways.

    Hard work – I had a few days off, and a slack day, but I needed to make up some work. Both because I believe in being a professional and because I have a lot to do lately before travel. I guess it also counts that I have a 2nd job as a youth sports coach, so I spend a lot of time over the winter doing that. Sometimes going from 7am to 10pm on practice days.

    Openness and Honesty – Not a fun job, but I’ve had to deal with some Code of Conduct issues with SQL Saturday. I decided to be an adult and inform a couple of people personally that they were not welcome at any events. That day sucked, but I think being open and honest is important.

    Service – I think we all ought to volunteer and help others where and when we can. I’ve been mentoring a few people in different ways to help with their careers. I continue to try and run SQL Saturday, which eats up some of my personal time, but I think it’s important to help the SQL Community move forward.

    Kindness – A couple people, family and friends, have had some tough times. Some they’ve brought on themselves. I am only here to listen and support them. I try to show kindness and not judgment more often than not. I wish I did this all the time, but I don’t know I’ve learned how to do that.

  • SQL Saturday Jacksonville Slide Decks

    Here are the slide decks for my sessions at SQL Saturday Jacksonville 2022

    Continuous Integration Using Local Agents

    Adopting a DevOps Process for Your Database

  • Traveling Away For Two Weeks

    I leave this morning for nearly two weeks. I head to Jacksonville for SQL Saturday Jacksonville 2022, then I’m off to the UK to visit Redgate’s offices for a week and then I spend part of the last week in Belgium for Technorama.

    It’s not all work as my wife will join me for the part of the trip and we’ll be together in Belgium.

    It’s a long trip, as I return on the 26th, so two weeks away from home. I’ll try to put up a post or two, but likely just the coping tips will continue for the next few weeks.

    Now to decide if we leave the Tesla at the airport for a week.

  • Turn off Tesla Sentry Mode at the Airport

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

    I wrote recently about the Tesla and the charge loss while sitting at the airport. While a little worrisome, I knew it was something I could live with, and even get around. A few of the parking places near the airport have long term charging, so it’s not the end of the world.

    But it felt strange.

    I don’t always plug in the car at home, and after a day or two, I might lose 1%, but nothing like the 8% we were losing each day. I decided to do a little investigating and see what other owners have experienced as I see plenty of Teslas parked at Wally Park, where I usually leave my car.

    I saw more than a few people note that there are two reasons you usually use significant charge. First, people keep checking on their car in the app, and this prevents it from going to sleep.

    Second: Sentry mode.

    Sentry mode is essentially a combination car alarm and constant dashcam. The car is always recording things, which means the car and computer are always active. While the car isn’t moving, there is still power being burned when it is online.

    Sentry Mode is especially active when it detects people near the car. In a busy parking lot at the airport, this means every 5-15 minutes, someone drives past. Certainly not longer than 30 minutes.

    When I checked my TeslaMate stats, I could see the problem easily. In the image below, my latest trip is 4/28 to 5/2. On the right side of the image, the car is almost always asleep. If you look towards the left, from 4/14 to 4/18 was my second trip. This was the one where I lost 25% in three days. I can go back and see the trip before that where I lost quite a bit as well.

    2022-05-03 12_08_06-States - Grafana — Mozilla Firefox

    I turned off sentry mode between the last two trips and it made all the difference. We were gone 4 days this time and we lost around 1% of charge. I no longer worry about a two week trip out of the country with this car. I might be concerned for 30 days, but maybe not.

    The vampire drain is shown below. You can see the difference in trips here.

    2022-05-03 12_07_04-Vampire Drain - Grafana — Mozilla Firefox

    A normal day at home has the car mostly asleep, which makes sense. Sentry mode is disabled at home (or work) if you set that. I had, but didn’t think about the airport. While it could help me detect who caused damage to the car if something happens, the lot tracks who is in and out and where they park, so they likely could help me pinpoint who damaged the car if I had an issue.

    I’m glad to solve that, and more importantly, I hope more people realize the Sentry mode, while great, can eat up battery over time.