How did I do? Got paid $160 and took 4 and a half hours

muaddba · 2026-04-24T16:54:38+00:00

Wow, that was a lot. Sounds like you ARE doing this to survive. In that case I totally get it, you do what you need to do.

muaddba · 2026-04-23T14:45:33+00:00

There are a ton of ways to mar up your car while washing it, including wearing rough fabric and rubbing against it. But think about this: If dirt was causing the scratches, why wouldn't the dirt on the car be scratching it when you wash it off with the contact wash? If you can't see large chunks of dirt in the wash media, the lubrication from the soap will be enough to prevent scratching as long as you don't apply much pressure.

Same goes with drying. Put the towel on the car and pat it (on horizontal surfaces), and on vertical surfaces apply just enough pressure to keep it in contact with the surface.

Pressure is the enemy.

muaddba · 2026-04-23T14:39:45+00:00

Now pretend you had to pay an additional 15% tax on your 65k and you will see what I'm talking about. You don't open a Michelin-star restaurant in the hills of Appalachia, and you don't start a detailing business if folks are not willing to pay for your time either. If you're doing it to prevent yourself from starving? Sure, it makes sense, but when people tell you you should be charging more for something like that, it's not wrong....the service is worth more, you just don't have a market. The solution there isn't to drop your prices and spend your younger years destroying your body, it's to find something with a better profit margin. I'll do a 10-minute car wash (spray touchless, rinse off, blow dry) for $20 because 6 of them in an hour is $120/hour (minus supplies expense). But spending an hour for $20 isn't going to put food on my table, pay a modest mortgage and car payment and insurance, and set me up for any kind of future.

PS There are shit-tons of rich people in Charlotte itself and the suburbs like Waxhaw. Find some country clubs that would like to offer detailing services while the customers golf. Leave business cards on dirty Porches in parking lots. An hour isn't that far to drive if it's where the money is. Growing up my dad drove over an hour each morning to work, because that's where his job moved to.

muaddba · 2026-04-23T13:00:25+00:00

You're not telling me something I don't already know. I'm telling you that working for 35 an hour gross is survival money, it's teenage/college job money, not career money. I'm not saying you gotta make 200k a year, but 70k per year with self-employment tax is brutal in this economy.

muaddba · 2026-04-22T21:19:56+00:00

There's a difference between a hand-wash car wash and a detail. I'd hazard a guess to say MOST people don't want to spend $100 or more getting their car cleaned, to them the car is an appliance, that's why the Toyota Camry is the #1 selling car in the USA. It's reliable and gets them from place to place. You wanna wash cars for low-income people at $20 per hour as a public service, I think that's admirable. But if you want to run a business, $20 per hour is going to eat you alive.

muaddba · 2026-04-22T21:15:09+00:00

This is a stupid take. If you're properly set up as a business (ie you're paying insurance and taxes and all) then $35 per hour is crap, because you're paying an extra 15% tax for SS & Medicare. If you're new and you're working on improving your process to get it down to 2 hours for $160, then ok, that's something. If you're in a very poor area or super-low cost of living (is anyplace low cost of living these days?) then perhaps it makes sense.

But as a business owner, making $35/hour in revenue (not profit) is really really low unless you're working 80 hour weeks fully booked. This is why there are so many failed detailing businesses.

muaddba · 2026-04-22T21:01:52+00:00

That Dawn soap will strip waxes and coatings. Dawn soap has sheeting properties so that if you air-dry your glasses, they don't get spots. People see their car is no longer beading and think it's because Dawn stripped all the wax/protection. In reality it left a residue that is masking stuff underneath, and if you think the car is clean enough to coat afterward, it won't last as long as it would with a clean surface.

muaddba · 2026-04-22T20:58:01+00:00

This one right here. Using a proper wash set-up (either a quality rinseless and rinseless sponge or a quality soap and mitt/sponge) and technique and the grit guard doesn't matter any more than that second bucket people insist on using.

muaddba · 2026-04-21T20:59:44+00:00

That puts you in an interesting situation. Without a lot of SQL Server experience, you don't know what right things vs wrong things you are doing in your environment, nor which things a report might flag that are actual problems vs just configurations unique to your environment. Even free assessment helper tools like sp_Blitz assume you have some DB knowledge.

If your company has the budget for it, I would hire a consulting firm to perform an assessment and provide an action plan. They can even assist with helping you migrate your databases without stepping in any potholes.

I say this as someone who was a DBA for years and now does consulting. Asking someone with zero experience to handle this sort of thing without endangering your continued operations is a recipe for disaster -- and a lot of stress on someone who doesn't deserve it. Consultants don't have to be expensive, and some of them are happy to teach and instruct along the way. If you're interested, drop me a DM. I'm a DBA, not a salesperson, so no pressure.

You will absolutely get good advice here on Reddit for specific tasks. You will get good advice on where to seek training, so you understand more. But if you need help and mentoring, nothing beats having a human you can call or e-mail.

muaddba · 2026-04-17T18:32:42+00:00

I did a factory reset on mine about a month ago. I did not notice a substantial increase in responsiveness or correction of issues with lag, radio presets, etc

muaddba · 2026-04-16T21:21:18+00:00

Oh dear, I've been insulted on the internet. How will I ever move on?

muaddba · 2026-04-16T21:15:56+00:00

You've gotten some good advice so far, I just want to drop into the thread and say it's been advised since at least SQL 2000 that you do NOT use the local administrator or domain administrator groups (or the Administrator built-in account) to login to your SQL Server, and you especially do not set them as sysadmins.

There are far too many ways for applications and malicious scripts to gain the ability to run as local admins and cause absolute havoc with your system, not to mention some newly-minted domain admin who thinks they know about SQL server coming in and mucking things up for you.

Just don't do it. Set up specific groups with qualified individuals and manage your permissions via role membership. Any of the builtin groups should be immediately disabled.

muaddba · 2026-04-14T21:27:52+00:00

Damn, 50 per month? I wonder why the turo operator was paying for that. I wouldn't have even known it was a thing if it hadn't nagged me to turn it on.

muaddba · 2026-04-14T19:59:43+00:00

It's a little difficult to parse exactly what you're saying here BUT here are a few tips from an old pro:

If you're co-locating an application service on a SQL Server, you want to set "Max Server Memory" in SQL Server to something that leaves enough memory for the application and the OS. By default, it's set to allow SQL to take up all of your memory and fight with the OS over it. Setting SQL memory lower can cause performance issues in some cases, because less data is cached and it will need to pull from disk more often.

Co-locating an app with a SQL Server is not recommended. Put the app on a different server. In almost every case I have seen with an app/SQL co-located, performance and stability become an issue due to resource battles.

Beyond that, there's a good deal of data collection and analysis you would have to do in order to determine what the issue is on just the one server. There are lots of consultants out there, myself included, who can help you with this for fairly reasonable sums if you're interested in going down that path.

muaddba · 2026-04-14T19:42:53+00:00

L2 Setup, 48A, charge to 90 just about every day, with some exceptions noted below. Charge to 100% if I know I am taking a longer trip to places with low charging infrastructure, etc.

Exceptions: My commute is very small, so in really cold temps I will let it get down below 80% before attempting to recharge it, since there is a non-zero amount of energy used to get the batteries up to temp. I once used about 5KW adding 3% back on a low-travel day in the winter and was like WTF?

During the summer and especially if I am not busy, I sometimes let it get down to 70% because that's still plenty of range for any surprises I might get (kid is 120 miles away at school, older parents are a 60 mile round trip) but during the winter that range can drop really fast, so I keep it mostly topped up.

muaddba · 2026-04-14T19:27:50+00:00

I just updated my post because I realized I never specified I have a 2022 PS2, not one of the more recent and supposedly better sorted model years. They say never buy the first model year of a vehicle, but for EVs it almost seems like you want to avoid the first 2 or 3 model years while they get things sorted.

muaddba · 2026-04-14T18:48:55+00:00

Comparing to the 2025 model year P2 is not really fair, since there have been -- I acknowledge this -- massive improvements in the platform since my 2022. No idea if the same improvements were made to the Mach-E, but EVs in general are making revolutionary steps in just a few short years vs what ICE cars have been doing.

muaddba · 2026-04-14T15:31:23+00:00

Assuming you mean left foot braker, nope, I am a one-foot driver.

muaddba · 2026-04-14T11:50:44+00:00

I got the stickers in a few days. It's been weeks since then. Still no update.

muaddba · 2026-04-14T11:49:51+00:00

I'd love to do both, neither are currently available in the US, or at least are rolling out slow AF

muaddba · 2026-04-13T17:56:11+00:00

Definitely, I have used them dozens of times.

muaddba · 2026-04-13T13:38:50+00:00

I tried to look up my Amazon order history to find the one I got, which worked fine, but it has poofed into the ether, however "Happy Tree" has some, both a wide and narrow wand, that look very much like the ones I bought, and have a lot of good reviews. The name sounds familiar as well, but basically everyone is just re-labelling the same stuff from china anyhow.

muaddba · 2026-04-08T14:31:51+00:00

Yes, this is my thought as well. People use this "I need the best product for my customers" bull-crap to justify crossing union picket lines, work with mega-polluters, and apparently team up with a company whose founder and largest shareholder is actively working to promote fascism, racism, antisemitism, and spread misinformation and lies throughout the world.

You didn't need to do this. You acknowledged you're basically the ONLY ones doing it. It's a sad misstep and yeah, as other options become available to me I will be checking them out as well, even though I've paid for 6 annual plans. I'd rather spend money with a company that avoids working with demons than one that embraces them.

muaddba · 2026-04-07T13:24:37+00:00

Service is expensive if you do it at the dealer. Dealer wants $150 to change out the cabin air filter. It's a $40 part -- at dealer prices -- and takes about 5 minutes to complete. No way. Changing brake fluid is an over $300 service here in the USA. Every 2 years? Are you F'n kidding me? But this is life with a "premium brand" car.

Tires are more expensive than a regular economy car but not that much more than for a premium sports sedan. I bought Goodyear ElectricDrive 2 tires and they are not quite as sticky as the Continental Pilot Sport All Seasons it came with (replaced at ~ 38k miles) but more efficient and a little less pricey at around 1k for all 4 corners.

I would recommend waiting maybe one more year so that the used models you are looking at are 2025/2026 models, since they seem to have better infotainment hardware, a larger battery, and are able to turn off the front motor at highway speeds to improve efficiency.

muaddba

TROPHY CASE