AutoCAD | zero to 60 in 1 over infinity seconds

One of the great things about a new job: learnings. This one is no different. I love learning new software. Well, AutoCAD really isn’t “new”. But the last time I did any real work in the product was, well, a version for DOS. Yeah, it was on a computer running Windows 95, but still….

Anyway, with another staff change, my need to KNOW AutoCAD shot up immensely. Got to love added stress!

It’s fun, but crazy. No panic…not yet, at least. And I have a strategy, so there.

Wish me luck.

Visio & Office Versions – Troubleshooting Fun

For some time I’ve been using Visio 2007. It’s worked fine, but it won’t let me import .dwg files (CAD files, if you didn’t know) that have been made recently. So, finally, we buckled down the budget and upgraded to Visio 2016. And, well, things got screwy.

I ended up with this error as I tried to install Vision:

I’ve never dealt with Error Code 30029-39 before. Turns out it was something simple, overlooking a basic issue.

Our version of Office was 2013. Now, I’ve been using Visio 2007 with Office 2013 just fine, no problems. But Office 2016 doesn’t play well with other versions of Office. I should’ve checked Office version compatibility.

So, now I was left with a choice:

  1. Upgrade the rest of Office to 2016 – or –
  2. Find some other way

In the spirit of cheapness, I spent time looking at ways to force Windows 10 to let me have 2 versions of Office. And, well, nope. I did find some ways to use a VM client, like Windows built in Hyper-V, but it started to get to a high butt-pain threshold and I went with option 1).

There are times that being able to get back to work is worth quite a bit.

Ah, Wingdings and Useful Fonts

I regularly use Wingding elements such as check-marks. And I regularly forget the letters assigned to those characters.

I’ve used this chart in the past, yet need to Google it every time. The last time I needed it, I spent several minutes digging through the Google to find it. Scared me. So, here we go. Now I’ll never lose it again.

A Random WiFi Issue I Fixed Yesterday

A Windows 10 laptop in my office had a fascinating connection issue. It connected to our network just fine,  but showed an error: “WiFi doesn’t have a valid IP configuration”.  Now, the other machines in my office were connecting fine. So, I knew it was this specific PC.

With that, I then noticed it had the same issue with the other local WiFi networks. Forgetting the network and reentering the password didn’t do diddly. Finally,  I looked up this article at Microsoft, and started working through it. About two minutes in,  I noticed a Web page load. Internet connectivity had been restored. Oddly,I can’t tell you what I did that accomplished it. I guess some random background process finished up and released a file. Basic guess, though.

Have you seen anything like this before?

Reflecting on Om Malik’s article “Silicon Valley Has An Empthy Problem”

​”Silicon Valley Has An Empthy Problem”

It’s very hard to break free of our focus bubble, seeing the impacts of our technological creations. Whether Uber, Amazon, Bitcoin , or any of a huge number of disruptive changes. People’s lives, and livelihoods are hugely impacted. We lose sight of that at our peril. 

i agree quite heartily with Om here. Tech needs to add empathy into its DNA. A simple elementary possibility: add empathically oriented checks in the project mapping. Ask “who’s hurt by this product”?

It’s a start. An important one. Or, perhaps, a critical one. 

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Rebooting a Samsung S7

My phone froze earlier today (black screen, no activity), and several of my default fixes didn’t do diddly-squat.

I googled it and found several options. Most of them didn’t do anything. Don’t know if that was due to some model differences (Verizon vs ATT, for instance), or something else.

Anyway, what finally worked was this simple combination:

  • Press and hold the Power button at the same time as the Volume Down button. You’ll hold them for around 10/12 seconds, so don’t give up too early.

That’s all it took. It booted fine and seems to be happy now.

Solved Mailchimp Issue 

While trying to send out an email this morning I got stuck with this error message. 

“Your list has an email type option, so the text part is required”

Mailchimp has settings for each list and the issue is buried in there. 

  1. Go to “Lists” 
  2. Select the list in question 
  3. Then “settings”
  4. Then “List Name and Defaults”
  5. Uncheck “let users pick plain text or html”

That fixed the problem for me and let me send the email. 

Not Able To View Tabs In Google Sheets

We had an issue this week of not being able to view the worksheet tabs across the bottom of a Google Sheet spreadsheet. This one was extremely annoying as I couldn’t see the screen of the user in question. Oddly, when I opened up the same sheet, I couldn’t either. But simply scrolling down brought the tabs into view. Didn’t work for the person I was helping, though. So, I poked around the internets and found this discussion in Google Docs Help. There are a couple of things they recommend.

  • if you have the Ask toolbar in your browser, remove it
  • try opening the spreadsheet using “incognito mode”
  • if that works, then we need to disable extensions until we determine the one causing the problem
  • try resizing the browser screen
  • try using Firefox (or another browser. If you’re in Firefox, then try Chrome or IE)

Anyway, I hope you find this helpful. Let me know in the comments.

Update: this came up again today. For this case, the line across the bottom of the Chrome window which pops-up when you download a file was blocking the tabs view. Make sure you close that window!

Download Popup Box