Author Archives: gmcdavid

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About gmcdavid

Retired IT professional with a wide range of interests. Married. Three sons, two with autistic-spectrum disorders and the third being transgender with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. From Chicago but now living in the Twin Cities metro, Minnesota. Episcopalian. Carleton College (BA 1972, physics) and Stanford University (MS 1974, Applied Physics; MS 1976 Statistics).

Adding a second internal SSD drive to a system

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Having done a memory upgrade to my HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF system, it was time to add more storage. It came with a 256GB SSD, and I added the 512GB that I had taken from an old laptop. Since I was leaving the original drive in place and simply adding a drive, the process was much simpler than in the drive replacements I have done. The whole thing would have been trivial if I had put the new drive in an external USB 3 adapter. USB 3 is fast, but imposing the USB/SATA conversion would add some overhead, so I decided to open up the machine and make another SATA connection. There was a free SATA power connector inside, but I had to add an extension cable to reach any plausible place to put a new drive. Fortunately, there was a free SATA data cable already present. I put the new drive into a 2.5″/3.5″ mount, but there were no holes to screw it into the obvious place. This is a problem I have faced before, and I used the same remedy: Duct tape.
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Downsizing a disk

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I have an old laptop which I do not use often. I had installed a 512GB SSD on it, but decided to replace it with a 256GB SSD so I could use the larger drive on a more modern system. Once again, I planned to used Macrium Reflect Free to clone the drive. This is a lot harder when you want to clone a larger drive to a smaller one. I had to delete my Linux partitions and shrink the Windows one with gparted on my Linux boot repair disk. My total space in use was well under 256GB but Macrium still objected. Examination revealed that I had forgotten to shrink the extended partition in which my Linux partitions had resided. So I fixed that. Still no joy. There was a big (>256GB) gap between the end of the extended partition and the last Windows partition. So I moved that partition inward to leave all the free space at the end. This finally satisfied Macrium Reflect Free and it was able to clone the drive.

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Rang Gaeilge, 17ú lá Mí na Samhna 2021

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Duinnín i Ráth Maonais

Also Duinnín i Ráth Maonais

Fairim … I watch, guard; notice, perceive; spy (with ar); I wake or hold a wake on; I keep a thing from (ar); Tá sé ag faire na taoide ar an dtráigh, he is endeavoring to keep the tide away from the strand, attempting to do the impossible (Con.); ag faire an chait ar an mbainne … sean-duine ‘na chodladh agus seana-bhean ag faire uirthe féin … d’fhaireas go bhfaca é …. [the cat watching for milk…an old person asleep and an old woman watching herself … I watched him see it.]

  • Ní raibh an tAthair Pádraig O Duinnín rócheanúil ar Miss
    Charlotte Lehane a raibh cónaí uirthi i Lána na Sceach, Ráth
    Maonais. Mar sin féin, shuíodh sé ina parlús – seomra tosaigh
    dorcha, troscánshactha – uair sa ráithe, nó mar sin, agus
    thugadh sé deis di sceitheadh uirthi féin. Lig sí uirthi riamh
    nach raibh ach gannchuid Gaelainne aici
    ‘Mummy, and Daddy didn’t speak Irish but the servant girl did…’

    Father Patrick Dineen was not too fond of Miss Charlotte Lehane
    who lived in Thornbush Lane, Rathmines. Even so, he used to sit in her parlor –
    a dark front room, stuffed furniture -once a quarter, or so,
    he gave her a chance to express/explode herself. She always pretended to
    speak only a little bit of Irish.

    ‘Mummy and Daddy didn’t speak Irish but the servant girl did…’

    ceanúil Loving, affectionate
    Sceach Thorn-bush f
    Mar sin féin Even so
    troscán furniture m
    ráithe Three-month period, quarter, season f
    Gaelainn = gaeilge

    • Léigh tuilleadh

Return to St. Luke’s

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My wife Mia and I left Windycon about 9AM Sunday, missing the con events of that day. It took nearly an hour, in perfect traffic conditions, to reach the east side of Evanston. Our objective there was St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. We were members of it from 1977 until 1997, and were married there in 1978. The church went through a difficult period in the late 1990’s, but has since recovered and seems to be thriving again. The liturgy is still excellent. Some people from our day are still members, and we were able to talk to a couple of them, including our old EFM mentor. There was quite a crowd for an ordinary Sunday in November, especially in the age of Covid. We introduced ourselves to the new Rector and told her how happy we were at how the parish is doing under her leadership.

Windycon 2021

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My wife Mia and I spend the past weekend in Chicagoland. Friday and Saturday we were at Windycon, a science fiction convention that we have frequently attended since the 1970s. This was first SF con we have been to since the world shut down for Covid-19. There was no Windycon in 2020. Covid, of course, has not gone away, but this year Windycon was back, with changes. There were very strict and detailed Covid policies. Proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid test were required for admission. Masks were required everywhere except “while … actively consuming food or drink in the consuite or green room” or for performers while performing and at least 6 feet from anyone else. Bill Roper has a positive con report, with which I completely agree.

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A Computer Memory Upgrade

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Having experienced resourse limitations on an HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF I decided to add more memory to it. It has four slots for memory and came with two 4GB memory modules. I ordered two 8GB modules from Crucial, where you can search for upgrades compatible with your particular computer model. These arrived and I proceeded to install them, hoping for a 24GB system. This proved to be trickier than I had expected. Continue reading →

Rang Gaeilge, 20ú lá Mí na mí Dheireadh Fómhair 2021

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Duinnín agus na Bollain (tuilleadh)

  • Chiúnaigh an tseanbhean tar éis tamaill agus d’fhill Brídín. ar
    an gcomhluadar. Thóg an tAthair Pádraig an buideal uaithi.
    Bhain se an corc as agus é ag mothú gurbh é uair na cinniúna é.
    Bholaigh sé é. Ansin dhoirt se braon ar a bhois agus bhlais sé de.
    Bhí sé ar an bpoitín ba ghairge agus ba ghránna a bhlais sé
    riamh, ach ní raibh aon amhras air ach gur phoitín é. Bhí na
    cailíní á choimhéad. Chuimil sé an braon go cúramach ar alt a
    ordóige.

    ‘Tá leigheas ann ceart go leor,’ ar seisean.

    The old woman calmed down after a while and Bridey returned to
    the company. Father Patrick took the bottle from her. He removed the cork,
    feeling it was the moment of destiny. He smelled it. Then he poured a
    drop on his palm and tasted it. It was the harshest and ugliest poteen he
    had ever tasted, but he had no doubt but that it was poteen.
    The girls were watching him. He carefully rubbed the drop on a joint of his thumb.

    ‘That is certainly medicine,’ he said.

    Ciúnaigh Calm; pacify
    comhluadar (social) company m
    mothú Feeling, perception; sensation, consciousness m
    cinniúint Destiny; chance; Tragedy, misfortune f gs cinniúna
    Bolaigh smell v
    doirt
    braon drop m
    gairge Harshness, pungency f
    gránna ugly
    coimhéad watch, guard m
    Cuimil rub, stroke, fondle; wipe
    alt joint m

    • Léigh tuilleadh

Duct tape disk

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Following up on Installing Debian Linux I decided to replace that machines’s hard drive by a 500GB SSD. This went quite smoothly. The only hitch was that the 3.5″ SSD mounting bracket for the 2.5″ SSD did not have any any screw holes to match those in the space left behind by the old 3.5″ drive. So I ended up securing it with duct tape!

I also had to reinstall Debian. The free edition of Macrium did not have an obvious way to transfer the Debian partition from its external USB drive to the new internal SSD, even though there was plenty of space. I expect this can be done, but I did not have the knowledge. I could have left Debian on the USB drive, but the new SSD had space for it and I have too many USD devices hanging off that machine anyway.

Adding new disk partitions to a Linux system

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The default Ubuntu installation process places all of the files in a single disk partition. However, it may be desirable to use multiple partitions. In particular you might want to have /home in its own partition and have yet another partition for the swap area. This way you could install another Linux distribution and have it share the swap area and /home, so you can save swap space and share your data files between the distributions. I have done this successfully on another system. In that case I created the multiple partitions when installing the distributions. For the Ubuntu installer it is the “something else” option when you choose how you are going to use your disk. It is fussier than following the defaults, but easier than the Slackware disk partitioning I used to do.

What if you followed the default Ubuntu install process and want to create additional partitions after the fact? That is what I wanted to do before I ended up Rebuilding a Linux System.

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