XBox 360

Remember folks, tilting your XBox 360 when in use, can cause damage to discs in the disc drive!!!

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/12/16/xbox_scratched_discs_updated/

Well who would have guessed....

Poor old Stephen Fry...

Getting in a tizzy because he can't connect his new laptop to his network... Awww.

There is a saying that a little bit of knowledge is a bad thing. Now I don't know how much knowledge Mr Fry has of IT, but I do know he is not an IT Professional. If an end user gets stuck whilst trying to do something, call support. After all, thats what it is there for!

On my own home network, I have have / had a mixture of PC's (Vista, XP and 2000), Linux (Linpus Lite and Ubuntu) and Macs (OS9, OS X, iPhone and iTouch). All connected without issue.

I wonder, is it possible that the problem was not with the PC but with the user or his network??

Reindeers....

I had a conversation with a friend over the weekend about reindeer. I was told that at Christmas time, the male deer would normally have lost its antlers and therefore the images depicting Rudolph and Co. were all wrong.

I asked if the fact that:

A: They could fly
B: They could talk
C: One had a glowing red nose

might mean that they were indeed magical deer and therefore kept their antlers all year round....

Stunned silence...

Seriously, stop thinking too hard about Reindeer!!

F*cking Engineers!!!

Bastards, the whole lot of them are bastards!!!

Seriously, just give me the mark up in a form that is legible! Oh and when marking up, mark up what you mean, I am not a mind reader. If you mark it up wrong, it will be drawn wrong!

Arrgghhh!!

A Christmas story...

One of my neighbours died on Sunday night. I have lived here almost 10 years and I still did not know the man. My loss I suppose.

Another old neighbour, younger than me, lost her husband to leukaemia. He was only in his early 30'. I didn't know the guy, but it is still sad. They only married 4 months ago.

Yet another friend is facing his first Christmas without his wife.... It will be tough on him and his children.

See... even though things are bad here, there is always someone worse off. Sure my job position is dodgy, sure the economy is in the shits, but hey, I am alive and should be thankful for that.

Its Christmas time. Its not about the presents, its about family and friends, about celebration of life. If you are religious, then obviously it is about Christ.

Remember, you don't need money to be rich.

I came across this today, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

3 is the magic number....

A junior engineer finishes up today, yet another casualty of the failing building industry here in Ireland. Our office now is home to just 3 people... Myself (the cad monkey) and 2 engineers....

Oh well, obviously I wish him all the best in the search for a new job, it looks like I could be joining him in the new year...

For Hire...

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Very experienced Cad Monkey available for hire 2 days a week in the Kildare, Dublin area. Reasonable rates, will draw Electrical, Mechanical, Architectural, Piping Layouts.

No spare CAD packages? Don't worry, I have my own legal copy of CAD.

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What really pisses me off...

I sent my CV off for a few advertised jobs. One was looking for a cad monkey with experience. The money was fine and I certainly had the experience, so the least I was hoping for was an interview.

I got an email back saying I was too experienced. Too experienced?? What the fuck?? I was willing to do the job for the advertised salary. I would not have applied otherwise! How can I be too experienced for the role?

Back in the day when I did the hiring and firing, I had guys with Mechanical degrees who just wanted to draft. They were obviously over qualified for the role advertised, but were happy to do it for the money that was offered. I was delighted to have them as part of my team.

Too experienced.... what a fucking joke.

Oh dear.....

Well the economy has caught up with good old Cad Monkey. As of today, yours truly is on a 3 day week.. Sounds good yeah? Well yeah, apart from the 3 days pay :( I guess I shall be visiting the social soon!

If this goes on into the new year, the place I work will just wind up. That's bad bad news. Time to start looking for new experiences, perhaps time to look abroad????

Intellicad 8

I like Intellicad. I have been using it as an Autocad replacement for nearly 10 year. During that 10 years, due to beta testing for Visio and free copies from Cadopia, I have never had to pay for a legal version in my life!!

Well that changed today. I have just ordered Cadopia 8 Professional Version. I opted for the download as it means I will have it quicker. So, hopefully, once America wakes up, my order can be processed and I can download my copy and get cracking with it!

I shall post sometime in the future about it and what I think of it.

Oh, Cadopia can be found at www.cadopia.com

F*cking Apple!

My name is Cad Monkey and I'm a gadget freak. There I've said it. god that feels good to get it off my chest!

I don't normally go out and buy the latest gadgets though, I wait a while and buy the next version. I generally let them work out the bugs before I buy.

I decided I wanted an Apple iPod Touch. Apple recently launched version 2 of this delightful piece of kit and I thought to myself, "I WANT ONE".

I have tried 5 shops, 3 in the UK and 2 in Ireland and have been unable to purchase one. They are all out of stock. Maybe they should take down the large posters that say "Apple iPod Touch Now In Stock!"

Seriously though, surely Apple in their infinite wisdom knew that these were going to be a hit. Why the hell then can't they get enough stock to suppliers??? I was quoted a 2 week waiting time by a store in Dublin last night. 2 weeks!!!

Well f*ck you Apple. You can take your iPod Touch and shove it up your hole. I have decided that I am not going to wait 2 weeks for you to get your act together and get the stock back in to stores.

It would seem that at this stage, I am destined never to own one of those shiny little music boxes. I shall make do with my 1G Nano with a whopping 2gig of space!

Seriously.... your having a laugh!

And I don't find it funny!

Tender day... the day the drawings go out..
Why the hell does the architect leave it till that day to change around the layout of part of the building?? Come on, play fairly, stop messing us about!!

Oh and why oh why oh why do engineers leave it till tender day to rearrange their lighting layouts or add in copious amounts of other services into drawings that were already on final markups????? Seriously, that does my head in, big time.

32 minutes to go before I leave for the weekend, the drawings are not printed yet..... This does not look good and I am pissed.

Quiet times here...

Damn the building trade is quiet here... Thankfully I have a bit of work on at the moment, but I just heard that a lot of people got laid off at the last place I worked. The company did it with a complete lack of style also.

Ahh yeah, Multinational Firms, always thinking about the shareholders, never the staff. They seem to forget that a happy staff will be a more productive staff. Its all about getting as many jobs out the door, forget about the quality of the work.

There has to be a balance between quality and productiveness. There is no point spending weeks on one drawing just so it looks perfect. The flip side is though, if you rush things, well mistakes happen and quality drops.

When I left, my old Dept. was still trying to produce quality work. There were some old school staff there who cared about the work the produced. I can't say the same for some other Depts. Their standards were shocking, atrocious even. I offered my services to them, to show them how spending a few hours at the start of a project setting it up correctly would benefit them further down the line, but no, they were not interested. Those tools didn't have a standard between them. No two drawings produced ever used the same layers or linetypes. Then they wondered why mistakes happened.

Anyway....

Holidays...

Fucks sake, if you are going on holidays, just go on holidays. Stop ringing the fucking office and checking up on us. Stop ringing the office and inventing work also!!!

Piss off, forget about us (not our wages though) and enjoy your break, because we want to enjoy ours!

I lost a friend...

This week I said good bye to a friend, one of lifes true good guys. Little Sid was one of those guys that you might not meet for months, maybe even years, but you would pick up exactly where you left off the last time.

I remember the first day he walked into our office, not that tall, but his hair made up for it, it added at least an extra inch or two on to his height! From that day on, Derek was know as Little Sid to all his friends in the office.

Rest easy Derek.

Hello Architects...

Y'know CAD Layers are there for a reason... Windows go on one layer, doors on another, internal walls on another, walls to be demolished on yet another... You get the idea I hope.

Well why oh why oh why do you tools insist on putting everything on as few layers as possible???? They are not being rationed y'know. There is no world shortage of cad layers either, don't be shy, use them!!

Whilst I am ranting, how about using a standard layering system too! Maybe one that does not contain layers called "None" or "None1" What part of None explains that it contains the furniture???

Seriously, spend a little time on the quality of your drawing work. Remember, these drawings are circulated to the whole design team. It makes you guys look bad and gets other design team members stressed!

Thanks :)

What is a CAD Monkey??

Well... One definition is:

A low level cad person who makes edits with no regard for or knowledge of proper production methods or standards.

Personally I think thats a load of rubbish. A CAD Monkey can be a highly skilled operative with years of experience.

I happen to prefer this definition though:

A whoring draftsman using computer aided design (drafting)
"Look at that cad monkey make magic with a mouse!"

Much much better.

There you go, not only am I a CAD Monkey, I am also a CAD Whore.