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autonomous_unit

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Posts posted by autonomous_unit

  1. It is every 24 hours, since the connection was established. You can change this to a more convenient time simply by rebooting your modem/router at a time of your choosing, and it will recycle itself every 24 hours at that time (until the next real disruption like TOT outage or power outage).

    When this would bother me at home, I'd try to remember to reset the router either right before bed on a night I was awake later than usual, or first thing on waking some morning that I had to get up earlier than usual.

  2. These threads always make me cringe.

    The forum sometimes seems to try awfully hard to crowd out less common perspectives, and this drives away a lot of interesting, but less typical members. This thread is full of people suggesting that there's only one way that Thai/Farang families work, and doubting the veracity of anyone's marriage who dares to suggest otherwise... I am only posting this reply in case some other lurker sees it and decides maybe they aren't quite so alone in the wilderness. Most of the people "like me" who I've encountered on this forum have eventually told me that they gave up and stopped visiting due to this feeling.

    Maybe my wife has become "less Thai" with me, and I've become "less American" with her. We figure out how we can take care of family needs together, and neither of us is petty enough to force a choice "between parent or spouse". And that goes both ways: you don't find compromise in life by walking around thinking about absolutes and ultimatums.

    We've both come from modest "lower middle class" roots and built ourselves up into successful professionals, then decided to risk it all to stay together. By relocating first to Thailand and now back to the US, we've both disrupted our career tracks and made substantial financial sacrifices (the majority of our cumulative net worth to age 35) to remain together on our own terms. Neither of us get the lives we imagined at age 23 (shortly before we met). But that's just it--we've built a life together that neither of us could have imagined. Neither of our families probably really understood what we were getting ourselves into, nor entirely agreed with some of our choices. But they respect our independence and our need to find our own happiness, so they gave us their blessings as well.

  3. Maybe you just notice the tinnitus more in the states since there is less noise masking it? I notice my notebook computer fan is also "louder" in the states than in Thailand. But I've come to realize that Thailand abhors silence, so all the equipment, workers, children, vehicles, weather, birds, and even insects coordinate to make sure it never gets quiet there.

    Oh great, now I've gotten wistful about the many different kinds of quiet in California...

  4. I made it work finally on Fedora 10, after a google search gave me a result page written in Thai (which I don't read) but with enough ASCII/english config file bits in it to jog my memory... I made two changes at once, so am not sure which one fixed it.

    1. I edited the /etc/ppp/chap-secrets and /etc/ppp/pap-secrets files to use "dtac" as user and password instead of the previous value "dummy" that I had in there (which works everywhere else).
    2. I added these extra options to the /etc/ppp/peers/gprs file: noauth noipdefault noaccomp nopcomp novjccomp noccp

    I think these changes could have been applied through the system-config-network utility via some of the connection editing tabs, but I didn't want to try it, as I recall it makes a mess of some of my other customized network settings for wireless etc. (because I'm old fashioned and do not use NetworkManager and its ilk).

    (Edit: By the way, I have had mixed experience with both AIS and DTAC from previous long-term GPRS usage when we did not have ADSL yet. Now I am trying to make sure we can use either SIM as a backup so we can access whatever pre-paid credits we have on those existing SIMs...)

  5. I haven't had a need to use GPRS in Thailand for several years, due to having ADSL at our place. However, I found yesterday that I can no longer get DTAC (pre-paid) to connect via my Linux laptop. I was able to change the one setting related to APN and test with my AIS SIM, so I know the phone and laptop work together, but despite the DTAC representative saying GPRS is enabled on our account, I had no luck.

    For AIS, I used these settings which I had scribbled down in notes from years ago:

    modem init (to set APN for AIS internet service): AT+CGDCONT=1,IP,"",202.183.255.20

    dial string: *99***1#

    With this, I could do "ifup gprs". When I change the modem init to this, also from my notes, it fails:

    modem init (to set APN for DTAC internet service): AT+CGDCONT=1,IP,www.dtac.co.th

    With this setting, I get the following short and unhelpful log messages:

    pppd[26655]: Serial connection established.

    pppd[26655]: Using interface ppp0

    pppd[26655]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyACM0

    pppd[26655]: PAP authentication succeeded

    pppd[26655]: LCP terminated by peer (^E^@^@^J^@^@^@^@^@^@)

    pppd[26655]: Hangup (SIGHUP)

    pppd[26655]: Modem hangup

    pppd[26655]: Connection terminated.

    pppd[26655]: Exit.

    This is with a Motorola L72, the only type of phone I have available anymore.

  6. I flew United from LAX to BKK a few weeks ago and did not experience any significant delay. We had to sit on the plane for at most 5 or 10 minutes at the arrival gate in Narita while some ground personnel with face masks walked briskly through the plane visually inspecting people. As a transit passenger, I did not need any medical clearance form.

    At BKK, I experienced the exact procedure described in this thread (walk past thermal scanner, hand in medical form to be binned immediately) as I still got through immigration well before my checked bag came out on the carousel (also as usual).

  7. That's a big help, thanks. Interesting technology, I guess you have two random number generators that mimic each other. Does it have a time limit on it? For can you get a code from the card then use it a week later?

    Yes, the codes are limited in time. Normally to a scale of a few minutes. The idea is that possessing the current code more or less proves that you have control of the card. It shows the code on LCD, and you type that code back into the request form. The SecureID card looks a lot like those pocket/credit-card style calculators you used to see around.

  8. If it's a normal SecureID card, it will work anywhere. It basically is a small high-accuracy clock running on internal battery, and produces psuedo-random numbers based on the clock and a unique key assigned to the user and installed in the card. The bank will run the same psuedo-random generator using their own high-accuracy clock (and their record of your unique key) so they can they see that you're providing the correct key for "you" at the time of the transaction request.

  9. Yes, those are RAID1 and the system thinks they are in sync with redundancy. However, as you seem to be aware, the disks could be unhealthy and the system just hasn't noticed yet, particularly if they are many years old and have data that is never accessed.

    # smartctl -a /dev/sda

    # smartctl -a /dev/sdb

    these commands will tell you something about the SMART diagnostic status of the drives. Of interest are Reallocated_Sector_Ct to tell you of bad blocks that have been remapped, Current_Pending_Sector to tell you of blocks that are currently having trouble, and Offline_Uncorrectable to tell you blocks that are unrecoverable. You might also be interested in temperature (to see if your server is having cooling problems) and the lifetime counters such as start/stop count, power on hours, etc. Search the web for SMART attributes for more information on this topic.

    Before reading further, you might want to attempt backups from the disks if you are worried about their health. The more activity you cause, the more change that a failing disk will completely fail, so it is good to try to prioritize and copy your most important files off the disks before doing anything else!

    As for more active checks, I have my systems set to do the following automatically:

    1. In /etc/smartd.conf I have the following automatic entry on Fedora (might need entries per drive on CentOS, but am not sure)

    DEVICESCAN -H -m root -a -o on -S on -s (S/../.././02|L/../../6/03)

    this triggers a SMART self-test on a regular basis. I have to be honest, I don't even remember the rule meaning here, as I've been copying it from system to system for many years. I suspect it runs a short test daily and a long test weekly.

    2. In a small /etc/cron.weekly/md-scan.sh script, I have:

    #!/bin/sh
    
    # initiate MD block-check sync action on all MD devices
    
    for f in /sys/block/md*/md/sync_action
    do
    if [[ -w "$f" ]]
    then
    	echo check > "$f"
    fi
    done

    this will actually cause the software RAID system to access and check the redundancy in RAID1 (or parity codes in RAID5 etc) and eventually access every block on the RAID volume. This is good to make sure your data is really there on a bulk server that has lots of data files that go unaccessed for months or years by applications. It will help detect a failing disk much sooner, so less chance of a catastrophic RAID array failure. Of course, this causes a prolonged burst of activity on the disks for a large server filesystem...

  10. I think the best advice is to always be honest with them.

    From reports I've heard, they usually give you some warning on arrival, such as "you'd better stay in the US longer on this entry, or surrender your permit abroad the next time you leave". Worst case, you would have to surrender the permit and reapply later (losing some application fees and hassle). Apparently it looks better on your records to have surrendered the permit voluntarily than to ignore warnings and have it seized on a later entry attempt. Has she had any comments or warnings on previous entries to the US? How long has it been since her last entry?

    If you know you will be in Thailand for quite a while longer (years), you might just want to surrender it at the UCSIS office in Bangkok, and apply for a 10 year B visa for her short trips, so you are on good terms and can reapply for residency later when your relocation plans are more certain...

    I think the worst thing you could do is get caught in some silly lie, and then actually endanger your future immigration options.

  11. I think if you could separate the different Thai factions that make up yellow or red camps, you'd find their sister factions in the west are scattered among different political parties.

    Is the red/yellow thing primarily a rural versus urban issue? Or establishment versus individual? Or populist versus ruling elite? Or constitutional law (and if so, against which side)? Or old-money versus new-money?

    I think the different factions would answer this differently.

  12. How strange, our nicely sized Mitsubishi Tiara fridge, purchased from HomePro a few years ago, has most of the reversible door trimmings, but I just checked the top of the cabinet and it does not see drilled and tapped to change the hinge to the left! But the doors are molded for hinge on either side and I do see small flush-mounted dust caps at the front where the hinge between the upper and lower door would be transferred.

    This must be the missing link generation between ambidextrous and right-hand only fridge generations!

  13. I think these suggestions of RAID are over the top for a basic home user. Also, the SOHO NAS devices have questionable benefit for inexperienced users, because there are many failure modes where you lose the NAS data anyway, and the RAID gives you a false sense of security.

    The main concerns you should have are: user error (accidentally deleting files and wanting them back), physical loss of the single disk through theft or other damage (as above), or unexpected failure. There have been many reports of premature failure in the latest high-density drives, and I would personally never trust my data on just one drive. The fact that drives on average last 3-5 years does not mean that yours isn't the unlucky one to fail in 6 months. And a warranty replacement will not recover your data! Also, the huge size means that it may be unlikely you can copy off all your data in time if you do notice a drive "starting to go bad".

    You should strive to keep your data on at least two disks, and then if you are really concerned, also in at least two separate locations (different buildings or cities, such as at a friend or relative's home). So do not transfer something to the external drive and then delete it from the PC. Consider the external drive a backup copy but also keep a copy on the PC so you can rebuild the backup if the external drive fails. If either fails, it is important to obtain a replacement and restore from the other working drive, as in the meantime you are at risk of the second drive failing too and having no more backups.

    If you need more space, get two external drives and make sure you copy things to BOTH drives before deleting from the PC. (Or, consider upgrading the PC drive first since that is easier to use day-to-day than multiple external drives.) The option of putting data in another building is just an extension of this... periodically copy onto another external drive either by visiting with the PC (if it is a laptop), or picking up the drive on a visit, updating it to match your home drive, and then returning it on another visit.

    There are many possibilities in between "no backups" and "extremely good backups". The most important thing is to find some happy medium that you can perform consistently. If you make it too complicated for yourself, you'll find you don't do backups frequently enough and then you lose more data when the eventual failure occurs. Some of my friends will use the drive at another person's house for just the most important data like their digital photo albums and banking/tax documents from previous years. So they only have to update those backups once in a blue moon. I'm a crazy computer professional so I use a sledge-hammer approach and run RAID here and there and automatically keep multiple backups in sync over the Internet. :o

  14. What kind of ADSL equipment are you using? People get confused and think they should use "PPPoE" settings in their OS when they are actually using a router that already handles the PPPoE part. In most of these cases, you should just use the DHCP LAN configuration in the OS, and the router will act as the Internet gateway for your LAN (and perform network-address translation to share the Internet connection to multiple PCs). You only use PPPoE on the OS when using an old-fashioned modem that just bridges the ADSL traffic onto an ethernet segment.

    I used my D-Link DSL-G604T router with True several years ago without issues (now using same device with TOT). It contains the PPPoE account settings in its router configuration settings, and my Linux PCs simply use DHCP. No issues whatsoever. In fact, I am also running OpenWRT Linux on the router itself, but I don't think you care about that. :o

  15. I am free, but apparently have different interests than you. I rarely went to Thai banks at all unless she needed to do an errand in one while we were out. My wife mostly drove in TH, and I drove in the US, to prevent either of us frequently switching between left-hand to right-hand drive. We went to Suan Phlu together every year, for the "Thai wife" extension process. She often went along for other non-essential trips like re-entry permits too, as we established a favorite lunch stop on the way home from there.

    For the most part, I was exhausted whenever I got to TH, and she did most errands by herself on the way to or from work (same as when I was away), while I enjoyed our house like my private R&R. Then I turned around and headed back out on business trips, living out of hotels and such. Now I'm on my last few visits, working a new permanent job in the US while she finishes up her job and we arrange her immigration.

    I'm too lazy to post again in your other thread, so I'll say I tried learning Thai for a while when we moved here, but eventually stopped bothering. She was already westernized and fluent in English when we met in the US, and I never had any immersion in Thai at home nor with work. After a while I realized I wouldn't be happy here long term, so I focused on my work and future career options to relocate again (to anywhere more western and less tropical), and eventually a new opportunity presented itself back where we started...

  16. If you can still find D-Link DSL-G604T routers they ought to be cheap. And they can run OpenWRT via the AR7 platform port, which is what we've been doing for several years. It is just ADSL router plus 4-port 100baseT, and the wireless does not work with OpenWRT (at least not well enough to bother with). We've used it with True and with TOT at 2 Mb/s speeds.

    We use this as the always-on router with basic services like dyndns and ssh, and then have a regular 5-port gigabit switch between it and other LAN devices. We still use some of the slower ports on the D-Link for basic things like a networked printer and older PC without a gigabit NIC. We have a separate Buffalo router running OpenWRT as a wireless access point on the LAN, which is also nice because we can put it in the room nearest wireless clients instead of where the D-Link attaches to the ADSL line.

  17. You can file the petition at the USCIS office across the street from the US embassy in Bangkok. You have to be able to prove you have been living in Thailand, and you must file the petition in person. Also, in spite of what online instructions told us, they produced a new instruction sheet with hand-lettered requirements for US passport-style photos for both of you, so I suggest bringing those as well. As I recall, the process involves walking back and forth between the USCIS office for filing, the embassy cashier for payment, and USCIS to return the cashier's receipts to add to the filing... so give yourselves plenty of time!

    You file the basic petition form according to its instructions, using your Thai address (or at least your wife's), and then a visa packet should arrive in the mail to your Thailand residence. As I recall, it only took a month or so for ours. The packet includes the full application form set and instructions, and this has to be prepared with all of the immigration support documentation such as police reports, proof of support once you're in the US, proof of relationship, etc. Then your wife arranges an interview at the embassy when the packet is completely prepared. The initial petition requires an address where your wife intends to stay in the US, but the later full filing can be updated with new address and employment information in case you are still arranging things.

    During the embassy interview, there is an opportunity for her to learn of missing documentation and return with it later to complete the process to obtain an immigrant visa. One caution: they procedurally canceled my wife's existing 10 year B-visa to the US following the interview. So, she is unable to visit me in the US until she completes the paperwork and process to get the immigration visa.

  18. According to the manuals for my current and previous Motorola phones (L72 and L6), if you lock the phone with the PIN, you need to enter it to dial or answer incoming calls. The only thing you can do without unlocking is place emergency calls. It will ring, but you cannot answer while it is locked. These are relatively cheap GSM world phones, costing about 2-4k THB at Jaymart etc.

  19. You want to read about the rules for one year extension of stay for a foreign male married to a Thai. I think you should be able to get a single-use "non-O" visa in Los Angeles based on your marriage, travel over, and apply for annual extension of stay toward the end of the 90 day period. You just need to confirm for yourself that you'll be able to meet the financial requirements based on bank deposits (both for the first extension and each subsequent extension). Search back in the forum for a recent thread on the updated extension of stay rules.

    Since you already have a house in Thailand, I assume you know about bank accounts and can wire appropriate funds before you leave the US. With the extension, you do not need to leave Thailand. You do have to report your address every 90 days when you remain in Thailand continuously on your extension.

  20. You cannot claim the exemption until you've qualified, which takes a one year qualification period. But once you qualify, it is applied retroactively to the entire period abroad. So you have to file (or file for extensions) and pay your pre-exemption tax liabilities and then get a refund once you qualify. That is what makes the first year so complicated.

    You are correct that the first partial year has a pro-rated exemption limit, and that only the earnings "earned abroad" are subject to the exemption. This calculation is often similar to pro-rating but takes into account your daily presence (or lack thereof) in the US during earning activities of the qualified period. It can be harder to describe than it actually is to understand, once you get your head around the intent of the rules...

  21. I also recommend you read pub 54 and get familiar with the concepts. This form 673 is just an optional thing to stop the tax withholding by the employer. If you fail to do this, you may end up with a large tax refund for the first filing year, but the rules usually allow that without penalty in the case that your circumstances have changed and upset your withholding rate from previous years. You would then want to submit form 673 to stop this from recurring in future years. Of course, you might prefer to keep your money all year instead of having the IRS keep it warm for you. :o

    It isn't clear whether or how long you've lived abroad before starting employment. The complications with the foreign earned income exclusion are with the first and last "partial" years when you move. If you've already lived here, you may already qualify for the exclusion immediately as the two methods of exclusion are based on when you travel or relocate, not on when you take employment. (Though taking employment may affect the circumstances for the bona fide residence test...)

    The physical presence test is good for people who are abroad for temporary work but require you to stay out of the US roughly 11 out of every 12 months as mentioned above. The bona fide residence test is more stringent, but puts no specific limit on how often you can return to the US. It requires that you've actually moved abroad for an indefinite or permanent duration. It is essentially based on "intent" and your idea of where your home is... if you intend to return to the US in a specific period, or maintain a home and family ties to the US, you may not be maintaining bona fide residence abroad. They have a number of examples for trying to deduce intent from your circumstances, but this is an area where you can find yourself arguing your case with an auditor if you ruffle the wrong feathers.

    Also, each spouse applies the test separately, and each is allowed to use a different test if desired. Through a quirk of circumstances, I used the bona fide residence test while my wife used the physical presence test on our joint returns.

  22. I am overseas, but just heard that my mother-in-law is in the hospital being observed after going to emergency with the belief that she had a fish bone caught in her throat. Apparently, they've done X-rays and run a scope down her throat and found nothing to explain it. It's not clear to me what other tests they have in mind, but they have her off food and may just be waiting to see if she develops an infection.

    Are there any particular things my wife should watch out for, to be sure they are giving her mother appropriate exams and treatment? I don't really know if she choked while eating (possible, as she recently had the last of her teeth removed to switch to prepare for a full denture appliance). She doesn't always describe her symptoms very accurately; I remember once diagnosing her with a kidney stone when she was trying to tell my wife it was her bowels from some bad food... it was difficult to get her to go to the doctor to find out for sure!

    Far away and worried... auto-unit.

  23. Search for mplayer and mencoder howtos. The player has a -dumstream option and mencoder can encode to a huge range of outputs using most of the same encoder libraries as all the other tools...

    It is a pretty arcane command-line tool, so you need to either read and understand documentation and start tinkering, or find some existing scripts on the web that would suit your purpose. I've never done what you are asking, but I have done the different steps and it should be possible. I've dumped a DVD onto my laptop for later viewing from HDD, and I've converted other mpeg streams using the x264 codec into AVI files, but the manpage suggests it can do MP4 and even has a special flag for ipod to get the right type of MP4 for those... I can never remember how to use it and have to re-read the documentation constantly. It's a swiss army knife of a utility...

  24. It would help to know what kind of files are in question. But regardless, the problem is quite difficult. You are on the right track to think about comparing things for similarities instead of trying to mark the file creation in some way.

    Someone mentioned earlier that you should recognize the duplication when grading. This, unfortunately, is the best answer. :D The problem of detecting pairwise similarities in a set of many students becomes very expensive, so having your brain do the work is the most practical. Use the file-comparison program to help convince yourself how similar two files are after you've noticed them.

    Imagine you didn't even read the files first. For a class of 25 students, each submitting one file, you would have to consider 300 possible pairings of different files to brute-force check all of them! Are you going to launch a comparison program 300 times for one batch of student work? That would be 24 hours of work if it takes 2 minutes for each comparison. In university, we faced this issue in lectures with 200 students which leads to about 20 thousand possible pairings... (those up on their maths call this particular calculation "N choose 2" where N is the number of students).

    It's an interesting problem that brings out the obsessive compulsiveness of some technical people. But in practice, once you detect similarities you still have a human problem of distinguishing who (if anybody) actually cheated. Sometimes a poorly designed assignment leads many students to independently write almost the same answer, leading to false accusations if you are not careful. Good luck. :o

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