haha

I wonder if bicycle paths would be used by people if they existed?

I know there are a few areas with bike paths. but they are out of the way, and do not exist where most people travel to and fro.

when I was a kid in oregon, I used to ride my bicycle to school everyday. it was a 2 mile ride each way. no big deal.

most of the places I hang out in bangkok are within a 3 mile radius. seems to me that more people should consider bicycles as an option.

now, all we need are bike paths as an incentive for people to use bikes as their main means of transportation.

Interesting point hahah.  But aren't there a tonne of cartoon heroes the kids get to see slaughter evil dudes.

The only problem with this ' balance' that you propose is that all these 'super heroes' still use violence to solve the worlds problems.

Perhaps it's not Thailand that needs a balance but the world.

On the Thai Soapy side, I find them quite annoying, but when you look at it, they only confront issues that exist and how things are normally dealt with (extreme as they maybe somitimes).  If theres a problem, nobody will speak up in a Thai Soapy.  In England everyone's bitter and angry at the world (so an Englishman tells me) and in Aus we only ever seem to confront adolescent issues(i.e neighbours).

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your opinion is noted.

I think part of the problem with the world nowadays is that reality is so much in everybodys face that we are becoming insensitive to it.

you read about people dying, but it just goes out the other ear. the newspapers are so full of stories regarding death, and unhappiness. ugh!

I just think that people need a break from reality sometimes. so that you can reflect on things. superheroes may be one way to address this.

I grew up on comic books, superheros, etc. and I think I came out ok. at least I don't wish my neighbor ill will. actually, I believe that it is good karma to wish my neighbors good memories.

I don't smoke, gamble, take drugs, drink excessively, or chase women. isn't that the type of citizens the world wants?

er... maybe TV is the wrong place to ask that question?

...to the audience in the back. yeah. I know. it's time for me to sit down.

I like thaksin. he is trying. he has more guts than I will ever have. and I admire him for that. nobody is perfect. so, I don't expect him to be.

frankly, I think you got to be crazy to be a politician because there will always be somebody who doesn't like you.

but since he is brave enough to take the job, I wish him the best.

..I've noticed a lot more mainland chinese coming to thailand for their vacations lately.

last week, I bumped into a young couple from mainland china. we talked a little. they told me that they liked coming here for their holidays because it was affordable.

this guy's english was so good, I thought he was a fellow asian american.

globalization.

just went by mbk yesterday. they have a new promotion going on at the bowling alley there. 3 games for 100 baht. valid monday thru friday, 10am to 1pm.

haven't bowled in over 3 years. but will be dusting my balls off today for a try at their lanes again tomorrow.

bowling. ...ahhhhhh. ...oooohhhhhhh.

have you ever mistaken a 100 baht note with a 500 baht note? I have.

...maybe they are trying to remedy this problem.

sounds like progress to me.

Totally rediculous sentancing..

Police estimate he probably brought in 1000 pills (nice round number) jusdging by the size of the container they found some others in ?!?!? &lt;deleted&gt; !!!

50 pills could be gone through in 5 - 8 sessions by a heavy user.. Hard night on E probably less damaging socially and physically than a hard night on cheap alchohol..

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...the issue here is legality.

thailand says it's against the law. so, don't do it.

why is it so hard for some people to understand this?

it doesn't matter if the punishment may be considered too excessive by many. ..just don't do it.

it seems to be a no brainer to me.

a story...

recently, I found this place in paradise dove that was not only inexpensive, but was brand spanking new.  the place was so good, the facilities there rivaled places that charged twice the daily rate.

anyway, I told many of my friends about the place.  and they were impressed too by the price vs. value.

next thing I know, the place increases their prices.  (?)

I asked the owner why he did that.  he replied quote, "your friend convinced me that I was charging too little."

I then went to my "friend" and asked him why he did that.  his reply, "it's true, they did charge too little.  they deserve to get the going rate."

I then tried to plead my case with other "friends".  some said I was being cheap.  others said quote, "how would you feel if you were the owner?  wouldn't you want to get as much as possible?"  ..and yet others said I was being selfish.

these are all valid opinions.

but I keep thinking to myself... 

if I had just kept my mouth shut, I could have had the use of the place for a while longer at that great price.

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Were your friends thai by any chance? As I don't any falang in there right mind who would stab someone in the back that way! Perhaps they were jealous?

I see their point (to a degree) but people need to remember that we falangs need every leg-up we can get. After all the whole country operates a dual pricing system.

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sorry for not replying sooner. I was in the states dealing with some family matters. so, didn't have the time to read replies to my postings.

anyway, in answer to you question... no, these friends of mine were not thais.

actually, in retrospect, I have this belief that one of the guys is trying to figure out some way to make money out of this rental market. ..in the way of commissions. ..get it?

middleman.

the guy doesn't care if the rents go up in general for everybody else. .just so long as he gets his cut.

most people don't work for free, you know. sooner or later, they will expect some reward for their hard work.

mr.roomfinder?

Looking for an apartment, no more than 15,000, utilities included.

Must have Kitchen and be furnished.

Must have highest internet speed (no 512 garbage) in room in bangkok (will pay for internet).

I'm dying here, none of the places I have looked at have h/s internet.  They call 512 "Fast".

Anyone know of a place that can point me in the right direction.  I have no idea about where anything is in bangkok or where to stay.  Currently am staying at Bangkok City Suites on 1 Petchburi.  I like the location along this street with Pantip plaza not too far away and cheap taxi's.

I am not looking for anything fancy (but will take it if its cheap), just need a bed, a hotplate, and highspeed.

Please help.

(p.s I looked on Mr. Roomfinder but they don't specify things like h/s internet in room and the locations mean nothing to me)

Liam

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just curious...

how desperate are you to get the information you need? would you be willing to pay someone for this information?

there are many real estate agents in the city willing to help you for a small fee.

Cant say im surprised... Pattaya is a shit hole, most normal non sex tourists would agree to that. In fact most Thais will even dispute thats its part of Thailand.

Its a city full of the countries low-life workers, ###### just take a look at standard of girls working there.

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I'm wondering if all the abnormal non sex tourists would agree to that as well....

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are you the famous michael dorn of star trek fame?

I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy.

thailand needs more heros. I remember when I was growing up, we had -

1) the lone ranger,

2) have gun will travel

3) bonanza

4) rawhide

5) mighty mouse

6) superman

7) batman

and a whole slew of other characters ready to fight evil whenever and whereever evil appears.

some homespun heros would do wonders to the kids here. instead of bringing in characters from other countries, create your own.

comic books with superheros doing good deeds. if you want to set good examples, that's one way to do it.

how about the adventures of "buddha man"? ..able to crush evil doers with a single prayer. "khun somchai" - the guy next door who is mild mannered but packs a punch when the going gets tough.

hey. if you want to brainwash the kids to be good citizens, you might as well do it right. right?

these soap operas depicting all the cheating and unhappiness between people. don't people ever wonder how kids will grow up watching this stuff all the time?

there needs to be a balance with some hardhitting hero type shows.

after the scan, I use norton speedisk to defrag both harddrives.

only after doing all the above do I actually invoke norton ghost to backup my primary drive to my secondary drive.

You are doing the exact opposite what i do.

I make a backup BEFORE a defrag. A defrag moves all your data around which is compared to making a backup a dangerous process!!

Are you doing a sector by sector backup or a file backup?

If it is a file backup i strongly urge you to first backup the disk and then defrag the drive. Your backup will only be a little little bit slower but so much safer. And with a file backup the copied files are defragmented already.

A sector by sector backup i would not recommend. You have potentially more problems restoring it.

Another note. You can make backups and feel save you have them. But did you actually try to restore them once in a while, to test if the whole process of backing up AND restoring is functioning as it should. Never can be too carefull with backups.

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sorry for not answering your questions sooner. I'm in the states right now on vacation. and even though I have been reading thaivisa while on vacation, I don't go through TV as throughly as I normally do when I'm in the los.

anyway, in answer to your questions...

I have never had a problem with ghost. knock on wood.

I do defrag all the time. it's something everybody should do if they are worried about their harddrives.

part of the backup process is to do like one other poster noted, "grandfathering".

and yes, I have restored from backups many a time. like I noted in an earlier response, my backups have saved my neck many a time.

a story....

in my previous life, I was worked at a company called genentech. I worked there in the capacity of a 3rd level tech support person. I would estimate that 40% of all the trouble tickets that I worked on were remedied by just doing a scandisk, followed by a defrag.

before I would endeavor to work on a scientists computer, I would always tell them to backup all their data files. (for the safety of their data, and also for the safety of my job. hehehe)

on occasion, I would encounter personal computers where the harddrives would crash on me when I attempted to do a scandisk followed by a defrag.

usually these computers were ones which have not been properly maintained with a monthly scandisk and defrag. I recall one in particular where the scientist told me he never did a scandisk nor a defrag for 4 years.

so, khun jean, yes, when you are servicing a customer, I would strongly recommend that you do a backup before doing a scandisk and a defrag. ...especially if they are in a mission critical scenario.

but for me personally, since I do my maintenance on a regular basis, and also have a grandfathering scheme, I don't trouble myself with doing backups before doing scandisk followed by a defrag. it would double the time to do maintenance if I did.

like you, I also am very detailed in my backups having been stung many times in the past.

for the very paranoid, you can backup your vip files onto the internet like I do using yahoo briefcase. my cell phone numbers, cheatsheets, resumes, bookmarks are all backed up on the internet for retrieval anywhere in the world from any pc with internet access.

hope this information answers your questions...

that's kind of high though, don't you think? i mean, i won't die paying 5,000 baht for a phone line, but all the people earning 5,000 baht/month - how do they do it? doesnt make sense to me..

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it maybe a price that a foreigner pays versus what a local thai pays. ...I thought about it once, and got a headache.

actually, I think a local thai pays about 200 baht to have a telephone line installed. I seem to recall someone telling me that.

then, I thought to myself. is my life overall better here than in the states? and after much thought, I said yes. so, I decided to accept many of the injustices that may exist in this society and pursue my goal of achieving happiness within it.

if it ever comes to a point where I think I am unhappy here, I will leave. right now, I'm having a good time. but keeping an eye open for possible pitfalls that may occur due to "unknown factors".

I paid 3500 baht to get my telephone line put in my current place. since I did it once before, and also know several others who have done it also, I guess this installation fee is the norm.

what's interesting is - that if you move out of the apartment but want to keep the same phone number, TOT will set you up at your new location with the same phone number for no extra fee.

this is what I heard from others. ..but correct me if I'm wrong.

talking about salaries is a very sensitive topic anywhere in the world. and it's all relative on how you look at things.

a couple of stories...

I lived in the philippines for a few months once. rented a 4 bedroom house for about 120 dollars a month. it wasn't as well-builted as many in the states, but for the price, I had no complaints.

one day, I was shooting the breeze with a couple of other expats comparing the salaries we were making when we were still working in the states. I mentioned that at my peak I was commanding xx dollars an hour. a mid-level hourly rate at the time for a network engineer.

anyway, one of the electricians working on our rented house came up to me saying that I must be a millionaire. I replied no. far from that. since he was in a chatting mood, I asked him how much he made an hour. he replied in a sad way saying that he earned about a dollar a day for a whole day's work.

upon hearing his story, I didn't want to discuss salaries anymore knowing that such discussion could be looked at in many ways by other people and could possibly result in a vicious confrontation due to misunderstandings.

on the other side of the coin...

I remember walking down this soi on sukhumvit when all of a sudden I saw this huge mansion that encompassed about 2 square blocks of space. man, it was big. anyway, I was curious as to who owned the place. so, I asked one of the food vendors that had a stall near the place. get this, his reply to my question was that the place was owned by a colonel in the military.

right off the bat, I said to myself. wow! those guys in the military must be getting paid a lot to be able to afford that place. .. a little later after thinking about it, I said to myself..... yeah. right.

simple supply and demand.

not trying to be negative. but I've seen it time and time again. when a great apartment gets a lot of attention, the prices jump up drastically. in fact, usually what happens is that the prices jump up so much, it forces a lot of long term local thais out on the streets.

at one time, the grand president hotel went for 19k baht a month for their topaz room. I know because I stayed there before. ...then, I naively mentioned to people on the internet that it was a great place.

as a result, the place received so much attention their vacancy rate disappeared to the point where you can't a room by walking up to their hotel counter.

people tell me that it now costs about 1800 baht a day to rent a topaz room there now.

check out www.onlinecomics.net

I have pretty much the same setup you have. and I have never had a problem with norton ghost.

there could any number of problems with your setup that is causing problems. so, I won't go there. but I would be willing to provide you details with my backup routine.

here's the scoop....

first off, my primary drive is formatted ntfs, and my secondary drive is formatted with fat32. the reason I use ntfs for my primary drive is because ntsp is security conscious. helps to deter hackers. I use fat32 for my secondary drive because it is more lenient with legacy stuff. you can change the formatting schemes by using norton partitiionmagic but readup on this software before doing so.

my monthly backup routine using norton systemworks...

delete all unnecessary files off hard drive. recycle bin, internet cache files, etc. you could use some of norton systemworks utilties to clean the stuff out like webclean.

before I do a ghost backup, I use norton disk doctor to scan my drives for physical errors. I opt for the quick test as opposed to the time consuming one at this time.

after the scan, I use norton speedisk to defrag both harddrives.

only after doing all the above do I actually invoke norton ghost to backup my primary drive to my secondary drive.

I normally use the backup a partition versus backup the whole drive because I like to partition my whole 60gig hard drive into segments. restoring partitions makes it easier to restore things if only one partition is at fault.

almost forgot to mention...

I partition my primary drive into 2 partitions. one for my software, and one for my data. if something screws up my software, I only have to restore that partition then. and not have to restore my data. saves time.

of course, with all the software I use, I designate where I store, create, and save my important files so that they all get stored on the partition that I use for data. for unimportant files, I just use the default locations that any particular software uses.

I name my ghost backup files "b" plus the date mm/dd/yy when asked to do so for id.

before leaving... make sure you make disaster disks.

that's basically it.

my ghost backups have saved my neck many a time. worth the time to do them.

hope this info helps you...

er..? people. maybe we should close this thread. logic dictates that if we want to be able to receive social security payments when we reach age 62, someone has to work their buns off so we will get it.

right??!???

I'm glad so many people like their work. thank god!

a story...

recently, I found this place in paradise dove that was not only inexpensive, but was brand spanking new. the place was so good, the facilities there rivaled places that charged twice the daily rate.

anyway, I told many of my friends about the place. and they were impressed too by the price vs. value.

next thing I know, the place increases their prices. (?)

I asked the owner why he did that. he replied quote, "your friend convinced me that I was charging too little."

I then went to my "friend" and asked him why he did that. his reply, "it's true, they did charge too little. they deserve to get the going rate."

I then tried to plead my case with other "friends". some said I was being cheap. others said quote, "how would you feel if you were the owner? wouldn't you want to get as much as possible?" ..and yet others said I was being selfish.

these are all valid opinions.

but I keep thinking to myself...

if I had just kept my mouth shut, I could have had the use of the place for a while longer at that great price.

I wish angela mckay much happiness.

ahhh. a subject I used to be very fond of. back in my childhood days, I collected comic books with a passion. my favorite were marvels comics. thor, daredevil, x-men, dr.strange, etc.

back in the 60's they cost me from 10 to 25 cents an issue. after they got expensive, I stopped buying them. at my peak, I had over 20k comic books.

I still have about 3k sitting in a closet in sacramento. mostly 60's stuff. will go back soon to see if they are still in good shape to sell. should be able to get at least a dollar per issue.

I remember having #1s of daredevil, sub-mariner, iron-man, and conan. also had the issue of the avengers where captain america was revived. I think it was issue #2 or 3.

boy. I wish I kept my #1 of fantastic four, and spiderman. hmmm... I wonder how much my #1s are worth now? I will check...

my favorite stories were the ones with the silver surfer and the magnus. the eternal one, the watcher, chaos, and all the celestrial elements fighting it out.

yeah. I know. kind of nerdy, right? hehehe.

actually, I have less than that.

but back to your question....

first off, I don't smoke, gamble, take drugs, or drink a lot. I'm not into parties. and I don't take out girls all the time.

what do I do, you ask?

I workout at the gym, hangout at starbucks, or coffee world, see movies, window shop at the malls, eat at cheap buffets/food courts, surf the internet, watch tv, play computer games, and of course, I hang out with friends in various places in the city that don't require that you spend money to enter their premises.

before in the past, I would also go bowling a lot, play pool, and take thai language courses.

I live in a inexpensive studio apartment that costs me about 7k baht a month. (I used to live in a cheaper accommodations that averaged 5k baht a month. hehehe. ..an upgrade.)

it's a full life.

I think what causes a lot of people to spend a lot of money is peer pressure. people all around you endlessly try to influence you to "keep up with the jones". and when you fall prey to this brainwashing, you end up spending more money than you need to. I have no need to impress everybody with clothes and other material things. mind you, I have a closet full of clothes, even a few suits, and dress shoes. but I have no need to always buy the latest fashions, or to replace things with each new year.

last, but not least, I don't have this "big shot" mentally that a lot of people have where they have to constantly show off their weatlh. frankly, I think this mentally is a sign of a weak self-image.

but then, that's me. everybody is different. if I have a family, I know my expenses would grow. but on the other hand, I don't think by much.

would you believe that many of my friends have less and spend less money than me? it's true.

in fact, many of my friends think I'm rich.

tip: pick your friends carefully. much of your happiness in this world will depend on who they are.

I never access any financial stuff at internet cafes. ..only email.

a long time ago, I played around with a variety of keyloggers to see just how effective they are in obtaining your passwords.

if you knew what I know now, you would never access your financial records in a cyber cafe.

they even have keyloggers that you can install which hide the fact that you installed them. no reference to the installation in your control panel.

have you heard about the boeing study?

check this website out....

http://www.seeya-downtheroad.com/Informati...etireYoung.html

when this information first came out, the us government came down hard on the guy who published it. ..but we all know the real reason behind the clampdown, right?

...use your little brain, and you will know, too.

I've been in thailand for over 7 years now, and I don't have even a third of the money you have.

wishing everybody happy memories....