Briandajew

Actually, you could even dress the cats in a sailor suit and hat and make them the captain of their own Kratong - merrily floating down the Mae Ping - they could even fight off the pirates trying to steal the money from the vessel like that new movie Captain Philips!

The Tom Hanks Cat from Thailand!

Brings a whole new meaning to raining cats n dogs.......imagine driving along and next thing ,,,splat, a kitten on the windscreen!

At least they would get to see something of Thailand from the air, as opposed to being tied to a tree by their hind legs and raped by an abbot! Also, they would not necesarrily need to splat on your windscreen - they could possibly Miaooww at the passengers on the morning TG flight from Chian Mai to Bangkok - I saw Wow Fais up above 20000 feet a few years back - imagine a kitten sitting there looking at you as you eat your rancid breakfast!

Keep the Charms menu, it does have its uses, e.g. searching is quite nice.

It did have some uses in Windows 8 - try it again after upgrading to Windows 8.1 - the search function has been completely destroyed! It is worthless! - (It is even worse if you allow it to search using Bing - it can barely find anything on your main system - it usually defaults to searching Bing on the web, it really is shit! Win 8 worked OK - this is terrible. (Just as an example - in Win 8 type in "Start"....you get virtually anything with the word START brought up - and you can select things like start up etc, try doing the same search in Win 8.1....it brings up 1 entry on my machine "MANGA" (I disabled Bing or else I would probably have a million useless results from the web) - it has no reference to STARTUP / Shutdown Start Program or anything else, it is <deleted>!

Given that it is the Loy Kratong festival and tonight is the "Big Night" when all of the Thais will go out and apologise for throwing all of their rubbish into the waterways for the past 364 days, (only to go back to dumping all of their rubbish back into the waterways tomorrow) I wanted to know if any one had any advice on the size and power of the "Wow Fai"

Basically, I am looking for a wow fai with quite a payload, yes I know the Thais generally suspend a string of fireworks from the wow fai, however, does anyone know the mathematical formulae to calculate the size of a wow fai and the required heat generation to lift around 4 small kittens into the jetstream?

Thais (my wife) seem to be against putting stray animals to sleep, and frankly, I really don't want to do the Thai thing of dumping them at a temple - there has been to many reports of monks and abbots behaving like catholic priests towards defenceless animals, so I thought it might be nice to construct a small cabin for the kittens and give them an unique experience - They may find that they land in some paradise....

I estimate the weight of each kitten to be about 350 grammes, so total payload would be 4 x 350 + unpressurized cabin, call it 2 kg - I don't want it to rise too high as they may get hypoxia, so something that will keep them afloat at around 8000 metres for at least 3 hours would be fantastic!

I am sure given the festivities tonight that they would love the amazing view!

The last thing is, does anyone have any designs that can automatically detonate a Kratong whilst in the river should anyone swim up and remove the 20 Baht?

Thanks!

Wow! That was damning. I have nothing but praise for the MBs and laptops. No wonder the RT16 is cheaper than the older WRT54GL. Thanks for the heads up.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

I will give credit where credit is due, and Intel and Linksys have been a bit of an eye opener as to what customer support should be!

Asus are an absolute disgrace - their customer support consists of you complaining, then waiting for a retard to reply to you after 48 hours asking you to do all the things that you have already done and already told them...once you reply...they are stuck! They are useless!

Then after about 5 days, they send you a link to some customer satisfaction questionaire... that takes a week or two to load...it just hangs your browser!

These cretins have no idea of customer support! They are off the planet in being in touch with their customers.

Sad really, their products are normally OK, but when they make a mistake, they bury their heads up their own asses - and their customer support should be lined up against a wall!

Depends upon your system - I have the Nvidia GTX 460 1GB O/C from Gigabyte, any new drivers past about 310.xx cause this problem, See if you can roll back your drivers (I have this problem in Win 8.1 and Win 8 - x64) You will probably need to reboot into safe mode, uninstall everything from Nvidia, then restart, then reboot again into safe mode and try and reinstall an earlier driver - 314 was not too bad, but 310 is stable! (I am using 335 at the minute and it is not too bad as long as you do not use IE V11 - this just crashes the video drivers, if you use FF or Chrome you should be OK)

Reinstalling was a problem for me ( reverting to an earlier version - I kept getting error messages from the Nvidia drivers saying that they could not install - you need to use safe mode and then do a CLEAN INSTALL!)

The clean install option is only available if you select CUSTOM when you try to install the drivers!

The other thing I found was that if you are using an Intel Chipset - you can go and download the latest chipset drivers from Intel, run the Install package and everything says it has been installed...not true!

Go to device manager, click on System devices, click on Chipset, and my pc was still showing Microsoft Generic Chipset drivers from 2006!!!!!

If you get this, download the latest chipset drivers from intel - series 9...unzip (do not try and install) to a directory you can find easy - then go to device manager and select each chipset entry and then click on update driver - point it to the directory where you installed the Intel INF file....and as if by magic your chipset will be updated correctly! (The Intel install program falsley reports a correct install.....it does not work on my Z77 chipset)

I continuosly upgrade, my latest build is Intel 3770K, clocked at 4.5GHz (Yes it is a sad little hobby) - Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe, 32GB RAM, DDR 3 1600MHz. Intel 520 series 248 GB SSD, AC1750 Linksys router, I need to upgrade my Graphics card - Nvidia GTX 460 1 GB - OC. My only regret is upgrading from Win 8 Pro x64 to win 8.1 - it is a step back as far as I am concerned -
If you have Win 8 and like it - (some of us did) - stick with it - Win 8.1 is a backward step, the search function is absolute crap!

Draftvader: The ASUS RT 15 is said to be blazingly fast but the reviews on Amazon are overwhelmingly negative since so many have had it stop working within a few months and found ASUS tech support unhelpful. Although I am not an Apple fanboy, to go with the new 802.11ac I bought an Airport Extreme. Since Linksys was sold to Belkin, their routers' quality is said to have gone down.

Ha ha! steer well away from ASUS as far as routers and WiFI go - they might be good at making motherboards, but their recent venture inbto WIFI AC 1750 is an absolute disgrace! (As is their customer service)

I just bought a brand new PCE - AC1750 AC66U PCIE card - supposedly it is able to connect to WIFI - (My EA6700 Cisco router) at 1.3GBPs....ha ha...try 11MBs from 7 feet away!

This card has now been discontinued, however, there are a few vendors selling this piece of junk!

It can kill a few PCs' - Z87 MB - Blue Screen, mine just powers down and runs like a snail - Do not touch this rubbish with a bargepole!

They have brought out a new version - AC68 - and from the reviews I have read on Newegg and a couple more sites, this replacement is just as bad! You are lucky if you can connect, then when you do, the best speed I had was 1.3GBPs for 3 seconds or so, then it throttles back to about 119 MBs - 11 MBS - GARBAGE!

Then try and contact their support....what a joke that is! They are a disgrace!

As for Linksys/Cisco/Belkin, their support is second to none, they are really on par with Intel. Great online live chat, they will walk you through the problems step by step, my EA6500 (the first router I bought ) had a few problems, would not retain firmware etc. After contacting their support we went through steps to check the router, after a 20 minutes they told me to return it, gave me an RMA, I had a new router in 5 days, they sent me the EA6700 as a replacement - ASUS on the other hand will just reply with garbage e mails from retards that care nothing about your problems, I would sack the bloody lot! they are completely useless.

Looks like a banded Krait - pretty deadly if it bites you - best left alone, I have had a few nasty snakes in my place, most of the time they just disappear on their own accord - the worst thing I think you can do is to try and remove it yourself - best leave it to a local if you want it gone, the only time I actually did something about a snake here was when we had a cobra in the downstairs toilet, it was trapped under a piece of wood frame, it was extremely angry and frightened, and was raised up with the hood puffed up - mostly I just leave alone and eventually they make off on their own - this one didn't, so I shot it through the head from a safe distance.

There is no way I would confront one, I have had a few here and like I say 9 out 10 they leave on their own, they don't want to eat you or even want to try to bite you if you leave them alone - The baby snakes are much more dangerous, the adults can usually weigh you up and realise that you are too big to eat, and they won't waste their venom (which takes them a bit of an effort to make) so they often give a dry bite with no venom...however, the babies do not have this experience, and they will bite and inject venom, and kill you!

^ Briandajew, please read the shop owners comments he posted several hours ago now. He didn't just "bugger off."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_captain

There is absolutely NO excuse for leaving divers - so all your BS does not change the fact that the captain deserted the people diving!

And, if your boat had enough power to return to shore for whatever reapirs it needed, it should have waited for those people that were underwater at the time!

I have to agree with the advice - I have been here over 10 years, and the lack of any responsibility that has gone on with the Thai banks over this sort of theft over the past 10 years has made me a firm believer that to have an ATM card here is almost like playing roulette!

I would never have one, (If you read some of the stories - one particular book comes to mind about the Farang P.I - that was able to get access to peoples bank details by buying the bank teller a box of chocolates springs to mind) I feel a bit sorry for anyone just coming out here and expecting that banks here are like they are in REAL countries....but anyone that uses an ATM card after hearing the stories over the years, and if they have lived here for any ammount of time....well let the buyer beware!

They don't give a damn!

First time my Mrs came over to Scotland she hated it almost starved to death so she claimed and only stayed about 1 week then it was back to Thailand but after a few visits of a few months at a time now she is quite contented she knows the location of the nearest Thai shop and Can get her papaya fresh every Thursday her driving in the UK is also a good bonus and we now stay 6months in UK and 6 in Thailand so it suits both of us just fine and also now with the cheap rate phone calls under 1p per minute to phone Thailand mobile she spends Hrs on the phone to her mother and her friends and she is all excited at the moment about going to UK for Christmas with my family, she also loves the snow, but not driving if it is to icy or snow is deeper than 2 foot. My wife prefers to be with my family or her own Scottish friends and neighbours rather than any Thai friends in Scotland

I hope it all works out well for you on your return.

Indeed! It is surprising how well they can adapt - Especially to the weather (I guess the same way we adapt to the heat here!)

My wife initially moved from Thailand out to Shanghai in the winter and it was miserably cold - even for me (A Northern Brit) - by the time the summer came she was gagging for air con when the temperatures hit mid 40's with horrible humidity - after that we used to take my work holidays at some rather strange times of the year and some strange places - Beijing and Harbin in mid winter!!! My wife had never seen snow - Harbin allowed her to experience 3 feet of powdery snow, have her hair, nose and lips freeze over with ice - she loved it - 3 pairs of trousers, three jumpers and two coats....it was an experience - also the Great Wall at Badaling in January is pretty harsh...but she adapts!

Christmas in Sanya....a bit more pleasant, just give them a bit of time to relax, try and make sure they are able to eat something they like and after a while they will be fine! (The worst thing is when they cannot get rice or similar staples - and when they get the innevitable "Cold / Flu" ...that nearly killed my wife! (Stuck in the Holiday Inn in Pudong for two weeks in bed with an overcoat shoes and a wooly hat!

But if they can get through that they will be all the better for it!

Good luck, I wish you all the best.

Interesting thread - I have been wit TOT for about 4 years, basically since they put a landline into our village.

Initially the service was great - considering the only phone/internet where I am was using a mobile on AIS on the 500 Baht /Month....if you wanted anything bigger than 5MB files then forget it!

We initially got the TOT package - 3MB/s this was later upgraded to 5MBs and then upgraded again to 7MBs.

They have been pushing a promo lately - 13MBs for 690 Baht, so I thought OK, another 100 Baht a month... it makes sense. Rang their "helpline"...cough cough... and they told me I had to go and pay my bill first...which hadn't arrived....anyway, we went to the office, they checked a few things, and said they would send someone out to check the line the next day to see if we could get the 13MBs (This was despite the computer screen in the TOT office showing "MAX LINE CAPACITY 17MBs" - it was all in English on a quite nice interface - but the woman on the desk was obviously completely out of her depth.)

So, we signed a piece of paper to agree to the line check - Next morning I get a call from TOT asking me what is the problem with my internet!!

After a few minutes the girl understands that their is some sort of mix up and I am happy with the 7MB but want to UPGRADE to the 13MB...she promises someone will call back.

As usual, no one does... I wait 3 days, then call 1100 for service... the usual shit...yes..blah blah we are looking into it ...will call back...another 3 days....blah blah blah ...will call back!

It is now 10 days NOTHING!!!

I am thinking of changing to 3BB - they have a promo for 10MB @ 590 or 13MB @900 - does anyone know what happens with the old TOT line? Will 3BB use the old cable? I don't need a router and I don't need the phone - basically can 3 BB install all the cables or utilise the old ones and completely disconnect from TOT? I don't want to pay these idiots another Baht! - I am not in Chiang Mai City - I am about 40Km down highway 108, off in the boonies a little bit so not sure if True or 3BB are around here - I do see the 3BB vans now and again though.

Cheers!

I took my wife to the UK 3 years ago, 2 years a resident now, The food is easy to get at Asian supermarkets and online if you need. I eat Thai food that she cooks 90% of the time. It's incredible. My friends eat such bland and boring British foods. She has also learned to cook 'farang' food though which she likes to make whenever I want it but I rarely do.

My wife doesn't seem to mind the weather. She can't be out is the cold too much because I think Thai genetics mean they don't cope well. Once cold her hands and feet shut off all blood, making them icy cold. Unlike a westerners hands that one, can take more cold and two if placed in gloves, pockets etc quickly become warm again. This is partly solved by very warm clothing and short stints outside. Unfortunately I like to fish. Warm cups of tea help a bit.

I completely agree with the friends thing. The many gold diggers who have come here will quickly question a girls thoughts, plans and mind state telling her all the best ways to secure herself lots of money. They also further the naivety I like to think I left behind in Thailand like superstitions, BS medicines and bitching. Find the right friends and it should be fine. Find the wrong ones and it could be hell on earth even ending a relationship.

My wife has never complained about the weather. After a lifetime in Thailand she's happy not to be boiling hot and to be able to walk around without aircon being required. She loves seeing snow but doesn't seem to mind the cold wet weather at all. She does amaze me because what I and many westerners class as chores she seems to happily get on with without a second thought. She loves to cook and likes ironing. It's good for her to have friends to go shopping with and eating with now and again. One other problem is expectation. I'm 31 and working. Her friends are married to retired Brits, some of which are wealthy or wont be around that much longer so not much thought is given to money. She sees her friends blowing money on garbage in vast amounts. I'm not poor but it's crazy to be going out and spending £300 on phones, bags, clothes every other week.

What I would focus on though is your daughter. There is no question that she will benefit more from a UK education than one in Thailand. You need to do what's right for your kids, even if that risks an unhappy future with your wife.

Good luck.

Yeah... good luck to the OP too! Most Thais are pretty tough and are able to adapt - they are probably much more adaptable than us Westerners - Some of those Thais living in the rural villages would be able to live on Mars....and after my experience here over the past 13 years, half of them seem to be living on another planet already!

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/680223-what-would-you-do-2/

Have a read through the above thread, some crap, but some valid points too.

Visting is not the same as living there, my main advice would be to be very very careful who she mixes with in your abscence, I am not suggesting you keep her a prisoner but be careful, many things she wont understand and may take literally.

Keep regular contact with her during you abscence and make sure she doesnt feel alone.

If there are other thai females around be even more wary, dont let her get involved in a group, one is good for friendship talk to etc, a group can be trouble with comparing and jealousy etc.

Find somewhere near or online etc you can get "her" food, she will miss it and the offerrings many uknstores and supermarkets have wont even come close, she will miss "proper" thai food if living there for any period of time.

Good luck, take it slow, take care each other.

Probably the same as you in Thailand then?

Sounds like an unfortunate accident caused by a medical condition.

Exactly, the poor guy could have a heart condition or anything....glad to see the locals beat up a 72 year old! That was nice of them, bloody cowards. and as for the police and the medication...no publication as to wheter it was Smack or Paracetemol, so lets wait to find out eh.

You can see what is coming here can't you! They are going to make up a huge stink when the ruling goes against them, along with the Amnesty Bill.....then give it a week before the tanks start rolling down Sukhumvit for about the 19th time since 1932! Goodbye and adieu Yingluk!

Had a look at her pics on the links, sadly, not even the hint of a Camels Toe!

invadeit get a big +

but they send from Hua Hin

I would give a big thumbs up to Invadeit as far as the quality of components that they sell...and usually their delivery...(they FUXXcked up my order delivery this week for the first time - big surprise! but that is once over a period of years and I must have spent well over 100K with these guys and they are very very good!)

As far as some of the other recomendations go - well sorry but I would not touch Banana with a bargepole - here in Chiang Mai they will sell you any old shit just to get your cash - The other one to avoid is Goodspeed, they again will destroy everything on your PC if you take it for repair - make sure you back up everything first as they will trash it - they will install pirate software and you will have no back up CD's best avoid them both.

I build my own systems these days, frankly because most of the Thai installs are buggered up as they can barely understand the english yes or no when the system requires a decision...they just keep clicking NEXT! try repairing it after their techs have been at it...not in a million years!

As Aldous Huxley once said..."Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored"....a pretty good summary of Thailand from any point of view!

I had something similiar happen years ago on A desktop.My hard drive was done.Take it to A computer shop

Best awnser so far. I have repaired many computers before.. You could know by bios beeps what was wrong and such. But computer shops have spare parts they can switch to see if it is truly what they think it is. It probably wont be too expensive.. depending on what is broken.

even without a drive or a broken drive the BIOS should show up on the screen (as mentioned by Pib already). one possibility is that the PC is running but the screen is broken or the cable disconnected.

You would still expect to get either the one BEEP on the correct BIOS loading or the three Beeps if there was a ram problem..or all of the other types of error beeps providing you bothered to connect the little piezo speaker supplied with you motherboard to help in determining the problem..then again, he could have suffered a motherboard failure along with RAM, CPU and the audio...what are the odds on that one?

Is 775 the old P3 or P4? I have a working Intel DG101C that runs on DDR2 lying around - I was going to turn it into a router but I cannot be arsed to go and buy the NIC's - if you want it drop me a PM you can have it, case 2GB RAM PSU / old hard drive - another unfinished project!!! etc. for the price of the postage and 200 Baht for my diesel....if you can wait a few days, you can forget the 200 for the diesel as I need to go into the Post Office to pick some things up...drop me a message.

I think I still have a brand new ASUS P7P55D LX motherboard in a box here - I know it isn't 775 - I think it is LGA 1155 or something, again another project that never came to fruition - and another board that I would be happy to give to someone that is willing to pay the postage - Not being funny, but I offered this a while back and all I got were greedy Thais trying to get something for nothing looking to sell it on...I would rather it went to some good use for some kids PC etc. as it is still quite a decent piece of kit!

Open the case, (after power off, remove all connectors to Hard Drives or disk Drives, remove all of the RAM except on slot - check you MB manuall to see which is the first one selected to boot - check your MB manual and see if you have the ability to short out the CMOS jumpers, normally, you can just lift a little interconnect from your CMOS BIOS and put them into another position that will reset BIOS/CMOS - make sure you unplug completely from the mains for at least 10 minutes or do to allow any residual power to dissipate.

Only connect the main C drive, along with the 1 piece of RAM

Connect your jumper back to the correct setting for CMOS/bios and then reconnect the power - switch it on and wait for the beep! Unless it has died a terrible death, it will probably fire up - I have had this problem a few times with a pretty new ASUS model and if it does not fire up on reboot it looks like it is dead and just sits there doing nothing except blowing the fans.

If it boots from here, power off - (remove the mains cable - wait 5 minutes then connect one more device, i.e one more slot of RAM, or one more hard drive, just keep repeating this until you find the culprit - it is probably nothing, just some stupid hang up or conflict - you will probably end up with everything reconnected and scratching your head as to what went wrong in the first place!

even without a drive or a broken drive the BIOS should show up on the screen (as mentioned by Pib already).

Indeed.

one possibility is that the PC is running but the screen is broken or the cable disconnected.

If this was so the POST beeps would still be audible, and apparently they are not.

none of my PCs beep.

Then you probably haven't bothered to install the little speaker that comes with you motherboard - All PC's beep when correctly setup - that is how you diagnose the boot problems!

What I would suggest that you do initially, is disconnect everything apart from your main PC from you Wifi/internet etc. just have a wired Ethernet to your modem/router - once you have done this REBOOT everything, starting with your modem, followed by your router if you are using a separate connection then boot up the PC - give it 10 minutes or so to settle and allow everything to connect.

Once all is working, go into you OS - usually in Windows you can type [WINKEY+R] or in the search box type in CMD - if you are using win 8 you need to right click and select "run as Administrator" I forget the options for Win 7, but you do need to be in ADMIN mode.

Once you are in the CMD screen, type in the following (without the quotes) "Ping -f -l 1492 www.tot.co.th (This is assuming you are connected to TOT - if you are not then change the IP address to the ISP that you use)

If you get back a response that says blah blah blah...no packet loss, it will usually ping four sets of data and measure the reurtn - at 1492 I would imagine that you get everything rejected...i.e. 100% loss and it will tell you it connected but the packets need defragmenting.

Now, all you need to do is to pinging the same address, but each time you ping reduce that 1492 number by 10, i.e. 1482, 1472, 1462, you will probably be close at 1452 if you are using PPOE.

Once you get to the situation where you get 100% return with no defragmentation and /or packet loss, you have your base MTU - now, all you need to do ist to take that figure and add 28 to it...eg. you get 100% sucess with 1452, add 28 to that and you get 1480.

Now go into you router setup page and look for the MTU settings, it is probably set to 1500 or 1492, you need to set this to manual and type in your result - 1480...or whatever you got.

This should help.

Whilst it is sad at the loss of life, I doubt there will be much made about this or any other accident here - The heads will be in the sand as usual.

I bet this will be yesterdays news before the day is out and will barely make Thai TV!

On the other hand, anyone watching the Thai news this last week will no doubt have seen the almost non stop coverage of the dreadful plane crash in Laos, that involved 5 Thais.

Virtually every terrestrial channel has been covering this story since it broke, constantly going on and on about the Laos Airline involved.

Put it into perspective!

5 Thais die in a plane crash run by a foreign company and the news is never ending - in comparison...

20 Thais dead today in a bus crash, very little coverage, 16 dead a couple of weeks back in a Thai pick up truck accident - very little coverage, 19 dead in a Thai bus crash earlier in central Thailand - burnt to death, very little coverage, 5 dead in another bus crash in April, again very little news coverage!

The News Is Always Greener on the other side!

Maybe get your own house in order before you harp on about others!