Author: TruXter

AutoCAD LT, 2 Months Review

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I have been using AutoCAD since version 2007.
From 2007 I moved up to 2011. From 2011, I moved up to 2013. From 2013 I moved to 2014. Where i have been sitting. Until January 2018,
In January my work partner got fed up with his 2011 version of AutoCAD and decided to move to the subscription 2018 AutoCAD lt.
We tested AutoCAD LT by opening all of the past files we had worked on and saw no problem. In fact, the files opened much faster and smoother.
Took me a couple weeks of having to get my work partner to convert files down to my version, me taking almost 3 minutes to open files on my Ryzen 1800x liquid cooled machine while his Pentium 4 was opening the same files in under 30 seconds. So I had to give in. The cost was low and the installation went quick and tech support was there for all of my questions before I made the actual purchase. So far I haven’t had to ask anything. Googled a couple times but that’s about it.

This Pros and cons will be between using an older full version of cad, and a new full support LT subscription version. Yes I understand how that is not a fair comparison but it is what I have.
If you are looking to change from a full version older version to the new subscription version and just want to do the LT plan to save a buck each year, here’s what I have found
Pros
Opens much faster.
Uses video card to speed up use- Acceleration far better than previous versions of full AutoCAD
Drawings look better Lines no longer have the odd zigzag that we have all come to accept.

Cons
Bcount is gone in LT
Multiline or MLINE is gone. You can no longer draw 2 inch or 8 inch walls without drawing each layer of Sheetrock separately.
EATTEXT – gone
Lisp – Gone

I find myself searching the internet trying to find alternative methods of doing my everyday stuff.
There is nothing that wont break the agreement with AutoCAD and getting my account canceled.

It looks as though I will have to give BricsCad, ProgeCAD and NanoCAD another run through to see what is missing where and how can I fix it.
Looks like AutoCAD LT turned out to be too little of of what I need for it to be of any use to me. Let’s see how the return policy (I was told about over the phone) about holds up.
I have to have all functions that full version AutoCAD 2013 had. I design fire alarm systems for fire alarm companies all around Texas. There is plenty of importance in me being able to draw everything I need to draw, use function of all attributes and block functions I have created over the years. I have a large collection of fire alarm tools, blocks, and symbols.

How to Change the Printhead for Canon IPF710

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Canon Image  Prograph 710. Prints a nice fine colorful line, Excellent for design in  computer aided drafting.
It seems the printhead has an exact life predetermined. As if there is an exact number of prints it is allowed  before you have to pay your plotter dues. What I mean is, this head goes out pretty often. about once every two years where I work.
Today I got the  fine duty of removing and replacing this printhead.
So I took pictures along the way and decided I would post a “How to” for those who might want to see the process.
Fairly simple printhead to replace.

Before anything, on eyour Image  Prograph 710 (ipf710) go to the menu, and go to maintenance.
1. Select the option that says “replace printhead”.
The plotter will make a few sounds and put up a warning on the screen saying it is busy.
What plotter  is doing, is evacuating all of the ink in the printhead so you don’t make a mess and or mess up the plotter with an ink spill.
This  took about 3-5 minutes.
2.  When the  plotter has completed dumping the ink out of the printhead, you should hear some beeps and the screen will now tell you to unlock and  lift the large front  cover.
3.  The printhead carriage will now be in the center (or close enough that you can access the printhead) and the screen should be prompting you to open the  carriage cover.  Do that, it lifts from the front to the back. It’s about 3″x5 “.

carriage cover

4. Inside you will there is another locking mechanism, likely the same color. Lift that one also, it should lift from  back to the front. More like a locking arm.

Arm Lock

5.You should then find yet another locking mechanism,  likely the same color, it should lift from front to back.
When you lift this one, you should feel a click, that’s the printhead being released and slightly pushed up and outward. No more than an 8th of an inch though.

Last Lock

6. Now is a good time to put on a glove. There may be some ink.  Ours was quite clean.    Now reach in and grip the printhead tight and pull upward. Should not need much force. Be careful. Many breakable  parts in this area that can cost you plenty of downtime.

PF-03 printhead

This is what it looks like from the side Look at the image closely and look at the image above for orientation.
Put the old printhead in a bag  for  recycling. Or save it.
7. Now unbox and unbag the new print head and take the  safety covers off.

Now just reverse what you  just did, but with  new printhead.

Once everything is back together, the printer will  fill the new printhead with ink and begin testing and calibrating. This takes several minutes 10-15 minutes.

Once the calibration is complete, check the printout for anything that looks jagged or like ink blobs. If anything looks out of the ordinary, you may want to run to the menu and see if you can calibrate it again, or run the  head cleaner mode.
Mine was fine so I walked around the office with the calibration results telling everyone I have created a bar graph but couldn’t remember what it was for.
Just to see their frustration about wasted time and ink.
If you came here for drivers or manuals and made it this far, Here’s a link   .

Super Hero Symbols for Fire Alarm

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As a fire alarm designer who has pretty much simplified fire alarm design, I’ve decided to make a handful of super hero symbols that resemble fire alarm symbols for autocad.
Understand that I can’t really use all of their symbols, and I can’t really figure out how to make them all relate.
So I stuck with the basic symbols.
Pull station = The Flashish looking
Smoke Detector = Supermanish looking
Waterflow = Wonder Womanish looking
Strobe = Captain America-ish looking
Horn Strobe = Green Lanternish looking
Duct Detector = Dare Devilish  looking
Smoke/Heat Combo – Dead Poolish
Tamper SWitch – Thor Hammerish looking
……And a few more

Right click and save 1600kb.

Of course the symbols do not look exactly like the actual character’s logos. That would just be weird. It’s kind of nice having them resemble the real deal.

Feel free to use these when messing around. These are not to be sold because… Well you know. Neither of us is Marvel or DC.
These autocad block for fire alarm design are also not NFPA  170 (and likely ahj) approved symbols. These do not  come with any guarantee of passing plans review at all. They do come with guarantee that I doubt they will pass but I won’t bet on that.
They are however in  their own blocks and can be dropped right in your autocad template for messing around.
Enjoy.
Here’s some more free fire alarm blocks for autocad

If you’d like to see more of my  work go to firealarmdwg.com For a large bundled set of Fire alarm symbols and blocks. About ten years of work.

 

Comment below if you have any requests or suggestions.

Did Houston Police Throw Away Donation

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There is an image being shared by a lady on Facebook. It shows a garbage truck and a couple police cruisers under an overpass in Houston.
The image description says that the police showed up to a spot where someone was giving out food and “other gifts” with a garbage truck to throw away these items.
Here’s the exact quoted text (minus the hash-tags)

I was just informed that a group of people came to pass out free food and other gifts to the homeless in downtown Houston. Not only were the police called, but they brought a large waste management truck and are forcing the homeless to throw away their food, pillows and other items.

What this suggest is that the police have a guy in the garbage industry that can man up and fuel up a garbage truck quickly and without hesitation, and get to that location before the items scatter into different directions. As if there is a garbageman police sting set up at every intersection just waiting to pounce. Or, if the garbage truck and police cruisers are following this person around the city taking things from everyone they donate to.

I don’t know about every single spot in Houston, but most overpasses have a maximum of about 4 people under them and, when they see police, they just kind of scatter. Because, if they don’t, the police will break them up. If there is an overpass that has so many homeless and hungry people under it that it would require a garbage truck to show up, then the police have a huge issue and someone has been slacking.

Nowhere in the picture do you see any homeless people.

Nowhere in the image do you see a vehicle large enough to carry the amount of food that would require a garbage truck to be able to dispose of  it.

The police would not take the items. They would fine the donor; unless, the food was in such poor quality it had to be destroyed.

Where are the videos? Where are the photos of this? There is just this one and it looks like it is coming from someone driving past the location and later making up a story.
Where is the union complaining about the Houston Police forcing people to work after hours? Waste management unions will not put up with such things.

So, is this picture and story for real?
There are too many logical holes in this story. It has nothing to support it other than this one picture that shows less than the story says.

False until proven otherwise

Windows 10 vs upgrade to 10

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I like many people jumped on the windows 10 upgrade from windows 7,8, and 8.1.
One month before the free upgrade to windows 10 ended, I drove to the store and bought myself parts and built me a new computer.
Since I had an extra windows 7 disk laying around that hadn’t been used or registered, I felt I should go ahead and save myself the money of buying an operating system since I already have one.
One month after the windows 10 free upgrade period ended, I ordered me a brand new windows 10 pro 64 bit disk.

Now comes the cool comparison.

I will be comparing windows 10 pro 64 bit full fresh install (not an upgrade) against my windows 10 pro 64 bit upgrade from windows 7.
For the sake of sanity I will just call  one computer the “upgrade” and the other the “full install”.

Upgrade to windows 10 computer
The upgrade came with a  clunky new browser that sort of looked like explorer, only dark blue. Found that explorer had been hidden in the programs folder with no shortcut. So I had to make a shortcut. Took forever to realize you can just click the start menu to get to control panel. Other than those discomforts, the computer was just as fast as it was before the upgrade. In some ways the upgrade computer ran faster and smoother. Until I started messing with new programs. Like the store or the new browser (edge). I installed my default browser, Opera. and wow that moves so much faster. For a little while. After a short while all browsers on the upgrade to windows 10 computer stopped playing videos. All videos just suddenly shut closed after about 10 seconds.
Everything just loads really fast on the upgrade computer

 

Full install of Windows 10 computer
On the full install computer, Edge runs faster but that’s it. Everything is sluggish and slow loading and running. It feels as if this computer is woking extra hard. Even edge after a while seems to get mucky and slow. Sometimes even locking up entirely.

On both versions of ten, My media players seems to cut out after a few seconds of watching video. Typically on facebook and some news website. Never on Youtube.

The eBay shipping deception

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So, you go to EBAY and select to search only items within your country. Be it so you can find items that will get there sooner, or because you feel safer.
This is your choice.
This is what you selected and this is what you should find.
But there is a secret that people outside of your country know about that you might not know about.
there are companies that are built to give people from outside of your country, a mailing address to set up their ebay accounts with.
In the USA there are a few. Most common are in Compton California,Florida and New York. I will not post the names of these companies because I don’t want to pass this on to other people who want to know how this is done.

What I do want to make clear is that EBAY needs to filter this better.

Why does this bother me?
Here’s an example:
I just bought a phone from my phone carrier. Most expensive phone i ever bought. I researched everything I could on this phone. I looked up a good case for my new phone on Ebay. So i made my purchase through my phone carrier’s website, then I made my purchase on Ebay from a company stating that it is in the USA.
Shipping states that it will take 5 days for the case to get here.
6 days go by, and I have been delicately carrying my phone around. I look online to check the tracking and the information is cleared saying that it will now take three weeks for my phone case to get here. Why? because it takes forever for things to get mailed from the Philippians to the USA.
So here I am ordering yet another phone from some on that everyone seems to stating the shipping was super fast . Hoping I get a case on my phone before the week’s end.

If I wanted a case that takes forever to get here I would have paid for one of the $3 versions of the exact same case. but no. I paid $16 for it to come from the same country as the rest. Only disguised under some weird p.o. box garbage with a lay over.

Just a heads up about the deceptive mailing addresses of some of ebay’s users.
This type of  scam on ebay makes the website utterly untrustworthy and useless.

How to Talk to the I.T. Guy

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I get it, you are calling someone to help you with something you are incapable of fixing yourself. You want to make sure you called the right person. Don’t confuse “Feeling a person out” with relentlessly challenging a battle of wits with a person who just wants to get the job done so he can go to the next location. You have to keep it professional.

The I.T. guy is a person who does everything like a normal person. Eats lunch, even if your job is an emergency and the puppies in the back are slowly catching on fire. The I.T. guy needs to eat. Be respectful. Move the puppies elsewhere.
Here’s a couple topics to consider when you want to talk to the i.t. guy

When you are on the phone giving them an idea of what’s wrong with your computer:
If something is broke or doesn’t work, don’t say “Nothing is working”. because you now told him your computer is not worth repairing, or you sent him on a goose chase of wasted time trying to find the problem. If everything is broke then he has to check hardware, when in the end it could mean you hit the mute button and didn’t realize it. Totally different issues.
Don’t ever say “I don’t know… You’re the I.T. Guy”.
don’t say “It was working fine before you guys came out last time”. If it was working fine, then why did they come out? Is that normal that people just come out while on the clock and hang out with you and start digging into your computers?

When someone is working on your computer:
Don’t complain on and on about anything. No one wants to work around that. Yes you all complain.
Don’t start tacking on more problems you have while the technician is still trying to diagnose what you called him out for.
Don’t ever say “I tried that”. Ever. Man, I was just reaching for the mouse…
Don’t “quiz” the technician before,during, or after repair. If you’re qualified to quiz, fix it yourself. That’s how you get “Sorry I didn’t find anything wrong, here’s my bill for trip fee and diagnosis”. You called him for a reason, tell him what the reason was. Those quizzes can turn into completely un-technical content. So having a battle of wits with a  computer guy is just dumb, he does not care how much you know about soil samples and he isn’t here to test if he knows more about it than you.
Don’t take control of the computer while the technician is still trying. It’s pretty creepy to have someone come up and slide their hand onto yours (reaching for the mouse) while you’re trying to work. Or sit in your lap for that matter.
While he is working and thinking and trying to come up with a solution, don’t start saying panic stuff like ‘OH MY GOD, DUDE!!!! WHOLY CRAP”. He is focused and you are blowing his attention.
Don’t ask him personal stuff unless you want to hear personal stuff.
Don’t rattle on and on about your problems. He is a computer guy, not a therapist.
No he can’t fix your microwave.
Don’t be over protective of your computer. He can’t work if you are constantly restricting him from doing things. Just as bad as tying a hand behind his back. Hide your selfies before he gets there if you have issues.
Give him space.
Don’t exaggerate.
Don’t pretend to understand, don’t ask for detail about something when you aren’t even listening anyway
Don’t tell him he is working on the wrong thing if your are the one who told him what the symptoms were during initial call.
Don’t bump any body parts on the guy while you are reading over his shoulder. In fact, don’t read over his shoulder. He’s not going to steal your company’s secret documents.
Don’t cough on his back,neck,top of his head while reading over his shoulder. Infact, GTF back and don’t breath on him.

The big one is the quiz game. Don’t quiz the i.t. guy.
I.t. guys have to deal with this stuff 100% of the time. Coworkers who think they can do his job and he is a waste of company money, other i.t. guys.
Anytime you hear someone talking about a problem and you want to just suggest something. You get treated like you told them their mom smells like fish and they should fix their computer with wet bologna.
It becomes tiresome that every time you go to a job you spend the first 15 minutes getting mentally felt up by the village idiot .
He got his job knowing his stuff. You don’t quiz your butcher, hair dresser, traffic cop, librarian, doctor, cab/taxi/uber driver, pilot or even your president. These are people YOU SHOULD quiz. Not the guy trying to fix your machine. Sure, you can question why he charged you for a hard drive and motherboard replacement when all he did was fix your icons. Yeah … question that for sure. but let the man start working. You’re just making it take longer
After the work is through, and you ask the the I.T. guy what the problem was, don’t follow up each answer he gives with “why”. You sound like a 5 year old.
asktheitguy

When he says “So can you tell me what’s going on with the computer?”, replying with “You tell me, you’re the IT guy”, I promise he has a million and one comebacks that would lose a customer. So don’t. It’s not even humorous, to anyone.
Be truthful, and get to the point, then get out of the way.

If you’re an IT guy who got sent here, here’s a video to watch. I.t Guy vs Sales guy.

Pokemon(ed) out

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Well it seems in less than a week we have seen and read so much about Pokemon, we are now sick of the app.
All of the Memes of people with their find on the toilet, or in a wineglass. And all of the creepy van pictures with spray painted signs saying “Pokemon inside” blah blah blah.
We’ve all heard the 60 year old news anchor pretend to be turning off his Pokemon-go app, and we know darn well he doesn’t care about that game.
We’ve heard our local radio hosts yammering on endlessly about their kids getting out of the house finally.
We get it, the game requires you to walk to the end of your street. You did it once and have been posting memes about all of the walking you have been doing for the past six days. We get it…
We’ve seen the Pokemon pop up in weird locations that make us wonder “how’d they know the dimensions of this exact location???”. come on. You have your camera on. It asked you for permission. You can’t be that ignorant can you?
Here’s the permissions, Don’t worry it’s short and no big words.

Version 0.29.0 can access:
In-app purchases
Identity
find accounts on the device
Contacts
find accounts on the device
Location
approximate location (network-based)
precise location (GPS and network-based)
Photos/Media/Files
modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
read the contents of your USB storage
Storage
modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
read the contents of your USB storage
Camera
take pictures and videos
Other
receive data from Internet
control vibration
access Bluetooth settings
use accounts on the device
prevent device from sleeping
view network connections
pair with Bluetooth devices
full network access

It was a short chuckle the first time we all saw the beat up van with “Pokemon inside” then we saw the cleaner but solid white kidnapper van, then the guy “it puts the lotion on it’s skin” and the plethora of clowns. This game is creepier than what we were scared of with facebook. Did you sign in using your Facebook account? because that would be 1000Xs creepier.
That’s enough.
The game has no high moment just a constant “meh” with no climax.

It seems that Pokemon is pretty much for those who ignore simple reality, or children too young to know what their privacy is worth.
And they don’t even care that you can’t battle people. The whole concept of the cartoon the game is based on is battling with your Pokemon. The whole concewpt of the cards that were played with was to battle with your Pokemon.

Your typical pokemon players

Your typical pokemon players


Pokemon-Go away. Please stop promoting this dead horse.

pokemon-goaway

Cricket Wireless Mass Outages

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Share this page to help get the word out
Yes Cricket users you have no signal.
People are reporting outages to the Cricket network across the country on a website called ” isdownrightnow.net”
If you just go to the site and search for Cricket, and when you find the page for reporting outages, just sit there and hit refresh and look at all of the people reporting in they have an outage, and look at where they are reporting from.

Doesn’t look like Cricket to AT&T switching is going all that smooth.

the Cricket website is also going in and out and forcing you to re-log in. The amount of time you stay logged in is about 1/5th the amount of time it takes for Cricket’s website to accept your password.

From New York to Texas to California, all of Cricket cell phone serviceis down.
Nation wide cell phone outages.
since 4pm Central, Cricket has been out of service. No calls in or out. If you call your voicemail from another phone, you can log in and check your voice mails. You can even delete them. Nothing much after that. Your phone will still show that you have voicemails that have not been deleted or heard.

Odd that this happens right after TeamViewer gets hacked then Myspace gets hacked.
Share this page to help get the word out.

How to disable LIVE VIDEO notifications on facebook

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Do we care? Do we care that someone has their iPhone on shooting some useless shaky footage of them at the dmv giving a play-by-play?
No we do not.
If you are at the white house and asking good questions, then yes, we all want to see it  (you might get arrested using the camera. not sure. never tried so.. ask first). but if you are just running the live video for the sake of streaming live on Facebook (which you can do with Ustream and have been able to do since Facebook started). Please don’t send out mass notifications
Dear Facebook, please quit opting me in for that crap. I don’t care is someone is streaming a live video of how to call a library and ask for an extension.

Okay.
That’s out of the way.
Let’s get rid of the “Live video” notifications.

  • Open Facebook on your computer. Click the globe in the top right corner. the one that is for notifications.
    When the list of notifications drops down, look at the top right of that. Click on “settings”
    live.settings
  • Scroll all of the way down to the bottom of the “settings” page, and there it is.Says “Live videos”.
  • Look to the right hand side.
  • There will be a small drop down menu.Likely says on or all on.
  • Click that and make your choice. I selected “ALL OFF!!!!” .
  • livenotificationsoff
  • That simple. You’re done