Joke of Sept. 29, 07

Genre: Police Jokes

A man awoke one evening to discover prowlers in his storage shed. He immediately called 911, gave his address, to report the prowlers and possible burglary. The operator at the other end said "Are they in your house?" He said they were not, only in his storage shed in back of the house. The operator said there were no cars available at that time. He thanked the operator, hung up the phone and counted to 30 and called again. "I just called you about prowlers in my storage shed. Well you do not have to worry, as I just shot them all dead!" Within seconds there were 3 police cars, an ambulance and fire engine at the scene. After capturing the prowlers red-handed, the policeman asked the caller, "I thought you said you had shot them all!" The man answered, "I thought you said there were no police available!"

extracted from ajokeaday.com

AutoCAD Tutorial #1

I am going to launch a series of AutoCAD tutorials based on the course i've recently taken. Teaching people how to draw 2D & 3D drawings by using AutoCAD software.

For the tutorials, i am going to use AutoCAD 2005 as the platform (AutoCAD 2004 has very similar interface). If you are using different versions, please play around at the menu list to find appropriate functions i am talking about. Thanks and cheers :)

Let's get to know more about the interface of AutoCAD 2005 (click to enlarge the image):

Part 1
How to Draw a Line?
There are at least three ways to draw a line:-

1. using two sets of absolute coordinate points (origin and end points)
2. using incremental value
   
3. using angle

Tutorial #1
Method #1: Using Two Sets of Absolute Coordinate Points to draw LINE(s)

Firstly, open a new file (file->new->'Open with no Template - Metric'); NOTE: we will be using metric scale for all the upcoming tutorials. By default, the AutoCAD opens a 420 x 290 mm drawing screen for you to draw. How to make sure i was right?















When you open a new file, :-
i) type 'z' then enter to zoom;
ii) type 'e' then enter to extend the zoom to fit the drawing limit to the maximum of the screen;
iii) hit 'F7' to view the grids (as shown in snapshot below);
















iv) move the mouse cursor to bottom where the coordinate reference locates, click on the 'SNAP' and check in Command Line where it states 'Snap on', now you can move your crosshair around and can see the crosshair only points to the grid;
v) Select Tools -> Inquiry -> ID Point on the menu bar. Command Line asks you '_id Specify point'; so now you click the crosshair to the bottom left; you can see the result in the command line stating: 'Command: '_id Specify point: X = 0.0000 Y = 0.0000 Z = 0.0000' ; repeat the same steps in v) to check the coordinates of the top right grid.









Practice #1: Let's now draw a horizontal line starting from point of 25,25 and 125 mm away from the origin

1.1.1 select the draw line button from the left tool bar menu (refer to the image above); or type 'line'; or type 'l' in the command line at the bottom of the AutoCAD screen, then hit enter.

1.1.2 Command Line now turns to 'LINE Specify first point:', type 25,25 then hit enter

1.1.3 Command Line now asks you to 'Specify next point or [Undo]:'; now you type in 150,25 then hit enter TWICE to complete the draw line task.


















AutoCAD then draws you a horizontal line that is 125 mm in length.



Practice #2: Let's now continue to draw a vertical line starting from the end of the horizontal line that we just drawn at 150,25 and 100 mm up

1.2.1 Let's draw the vertical line from the end point of the horizontal line. Click on 'Snap to Endpoint'
















1.2.2 Click on the end point of the horizontal line as the first point then type 150,125 and hit enter. You've now drawn a vertical line 100 mm up from the end point (as shown in snapshot below).

Let's continue on the current drawing to make it a rectangle.
- Draw another line starting from P3 to P4 locates at 25, 125; then continue to draw another line to P1.



















So simply put, you can draw this rectangle in one shot as follow:
1.) l, 'enter';
2.) 25,25 'enter'
3.) 150,25 'enter'
4.) 150,125 'enter'
5.) 25,125 'enter'
6.) type 'c' to close or 25,25


Here's the Exercise:



Please practice yourself and i'll be giving the answer in next four days

Free CAD Software

#1. freeCAD offered by AR-CAd at http://www.ar-cad.com

freeCAD is a basic 3D CAD with advanced motion simulation capabilities. It is suitable for anyone interested in learning 3d CAD and motion simulation for free before using more sophisticated packages. Educators, students and new engineers will find it ideal for the teaching and learning of geometry, kinematics, dynamics, vibrations, mechanisms, linkages, cams, machine design and physics. The program runs on windows, linux PC, macintosh PPC and other Unix's. Assembly data are unchanged across platform. It is a freeware and can be distributed freely subject to the disclaimer.


#2. FelixCAD LT Second Edition by GiveMePower GmbH at http://www.givemepower.de

Create Professional 2D Designs absolutely FREE with FelixCAD LT, brief descriptions as below:-

Powerful CAD for Everyone
- Don't miss out! Be one of the first 1 million users to register your FREE FelixCAD LT

Use Your Existing Designs
- Directly open billions of existing designs saved in industry standard DWG® and DXF®. Compare with industry leader AutoCAD®.

Sync FREE With PowerCAD CE
- FelixCAD LT and PowerCAD are the perfect desktop companions for mobile PowerCAD CE, & etc.

#3. CADstd by Apperson & Daughters Present at http://www.cadstd.com/
CadStd is a general purpose, easy to learn CAD/drafting program for creating professional quality mechanical designs, house plans, blueprints, schematics and charts utilizing ANSI drawing standards. The Lite version is free and can read any drawing created by the Pro version. CadStd Lite can export files as DXF so you can share your drawings with friends who have other CAD programs like Autocad.

F.O.C. Antivirus Applications

avast! 4 Home Edition

avast! 4 Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home users and non-commercial use. Both of these conditions should be met! The company offers the Home Edition free of charge, since, in its opinion, it is possible to avoid global virus spreading by efficient prevention; however, many users are not able to or do not want to pay for antivirus software.

Institutions (even non-commercial ones) are not allowed to use avast! Home Edition. However, ALWIL Software provides the full line of avast! antivirus products at special discount prices for non-profit, charity, educational and government institutions.

The latest version of this program is 4.7.

Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic

Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic reliably protects your private computer against dangerous viruses, worms, Trojans and costly dialers.

More than 30 million users worldwide trust in the reliable protection of Avira AntiVir. And this is no coincidence at all: Avira has gained several awards. The product combines first-class detection rates and ease of use with a top performance that protects your computer safely and hardly burdens older PCs.

Active Virus Shield

Active Virus Shield is free anti-virus for your PC that combines traditional antivirus programs, stopping them before they can infect your computer.

Active Virus Shield is brought to you as a free service of AOL and is based on Kaspersky Lab’s award winning Personal Anti-Virus:

• Ranked #2 by Consumer Reports (Sep. ’05)
• Rated “Excellent” by TopTenReviews.com (2006)
• “Offers updates with more frequency… compared with… other security vendors” – Information Week
• “No anti-virus vendor launches a fix faster” – Red Herring

Active Virus Shield seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems and is compatible with other PC protection programs (firewalls, anti-spyware, etc.). Like other anti-virus programs, using Active Virus Shield may require that you uninstall other anti-virus programs to avoid product incompatibilities.

Comodo Antivirus

Developed by one of the world’s leading IT security providers, Comodo AntiVirus leverages multiple technologies (including on demand & on access scanning, email scanning, process monitoring, worm blocking and host intrusion prevention) to immediately start cleaning or quarantining suspicious files from your hard drives, shared disks, emails, downloads and system memory.

Updated virus definitions are automatically downloaded according to a schedule of your choice or by a single click on the 'updater' button. Once installed, Comodo AntiVirus 2.0 beta will unobtrusively sit in your system tray, silently and efficiently defending your system from the latest virus outbreaks.

How to build a computer?

Well, many people might have experiences building computers for their own or for their friends. However, many others are still clueless and keep asking questions like: What parts are needed to build a computer? What OS i should use? What graphics card to use? and etc...

Here are some articles related to this topic. Please refer to the articles available at www.geeks.com:-

• Part 1: Choosing the Basic Computer Components

• Part 2: Choosing the Hard Drive, RAM & Motherboard

• Part 3: Choosing the CPU & Heat Sink Fan

• Part 4: Choosing the Hard Floppy Drive Cables, CD/DVD Drive Cable and Graphics Card

• Part 5: Choosing the Computer Peripherals (Please search the string through any search engines to get the article. Thanks!)

• Part 6: Installing the Motherboard, CPU, Heat Sink, Fan and RAM

• Part 7: Installing Computer Peripherals