Apr 24-26 - more about the pc

Of the last three days, more time has been spent fiddling with the PC than anything else, the desktop that is.  I was still on the mission to finish off the move to the larger SSD, increasing the amount of space available to Linux and ultimately my Windows 10 virtual machine.  In the process, I also updated Ubuntu to 18.04 and updated VMware, although those weren't primary objectives.  Now I have to decide whether I also want to order another SSD and I don't have a viable single drive backup solution, but I guess that's not a tragedy.

The last part of the update was expanding the virtual machine.  If I had the paid-for version of VMware, I could do that easily; not so with VMware Player.  I had to create another virtual disk, backup and restore the existing W10 environment onto that larger partition.  I repeatedly ran into issues where the backup solution wouldn't do that.  The Windows backup & restore did a repartition back to 64gb (I was aiming to 80).  Much googling and trial and error, I finally got one that would allow me to restore and then using a Windows tool, simply increasing the partition size.  It's like Coronavirus - I'm nervous about downloading and running these tools that come from strange places.  Who knows what digital viruses they might carry !

However, I think that I'm there.  The only thing that I might have liked to do differently is use a swap file vs a swap drive, for the 18.04 installation.  As it currently stands, I've got an 8gb partition at the beginning of the drive for my swap.  That's probably more efficient but since I don't think that Linux is ever using that swap, it probably doesn't matter and would have been cleaner to use a file.

The other thing that I should look into is adding more memory to the machine - real, physical memory.  I'd have to check and see what memory I have in both the one here and the one up north.  They have different processors at different clock speeds which was a bit of an experiment. One has 2 processors and a faster clock speed than the other with 4 processors and a slower clock speed.  I was curious at the time as to which would "feel" faster - well, the clock speed wins out.  I'd bet that I could replace the processor in the one up north etc. and make it faster, but since I mostly use these machines for a limited amount of desktop work and as toys ( ? ), perhaps I won't bother.  The better solution would simply to buy two new motherboards, processors and sufficient memory to upgrade both ... Because I'm not using them for gaming, the motherboards are all-in-one, with usb, sound, display, ethernet.

Enough about that ...

On the 25th, I did get out for a ride.  That's also my plan for today but I think that I'm going to be having a call with the insurance agent around 4pm so I'll have to get out earlier than usual or cut it short.  Cassie has been getting out for her walks with Sandy and sandbar trips with me. 

Jeffrey & Sara are thinking about coming down; getting cabin fever, I think, or at least the kids are.  Thank goodness they are in a house with a big backyard now.  They would drive down, basically non-stop.

Jason reported back that the cottage is A-OK.  I knew that he was there a few seconds after he rebooted my modem and router ... ding ding ding ding ... the four thermostats reconnected and I got emails.  My camera also reconnected.  I can see the sun streaming in the front window and just now got a "humanoid" detection.  I guess that it's too sensitive ... I don't see any humanoids !

So ... onward.