clokwise

An update from today: I arrived 10:00am, thought the place might be closed, hardly anyone there. They called my queue number before I even sat down! Despite a hiccup with a document it was sorted and I had my extension in about an hour. I have never seen the place so quiet, ever.

This seems at odds with what was previously known, including that big sign (shown above) at CF immigration itself. Did you actually get a retirement extension there by yourself (no agent)?

I've looked several times over the years and never once seen even a single queue slot available. People here have said you need to get online like 1 second after midnight to book a spot in the queue for a specific day, there is some math involved to sort out which day will be freed up next. I don't really see the point of the queue system anyway. Just do what the other 99.9% of us does, head down to immigration in the morning, file your papers, wait, and assuming you have everything they need, you'll be outta there in a few hours.

Yeah, I can share something about that. I bought some Reolink IP Cameras from Amazon last year. Out of the four, one of them would not charge, turns out the USB connector was cracked. The camera cost $90. I filed a claim to return the item. Was instructed to take it to DHL because it has lithium batteries built into it so the post office will not ship it. Shipment back to the USA cost 3500 baht - more than the camera itself. I had briefly (but not clearly) read that return shipping costs will be covered, so I just went ahead and paid for the shipping. Short time later I got a Amazon credit for the cost of the camera and nothing more. After reviewing the terms, they only covered up to $20 shipping by US post office only. So I was SOL - I had no camera and DHL got 3500 baht. I would have been FAR better off chucking the broken camera in the bin and ordering another one.

What is wrong with you? Where did I say I wanted to get into politics? I said precisely the opposite - I don't give a sh!t about US politics. Your reaction to my comment says everything I need to know about you. Say whatever you want to me now I won't see it, you're on my morons ignore list.

I stopped being partisan when i realized my vote literally doesn't count - and not just because I live in Thailand. Yes, I know I can register to vote using my old home address, but I don't even bother to register. I'm sick of people personally hating me and arguing that I MUST vote, and why every vote counts blah blah blah. No, actually, that is not true. Explain to me how one more vote (D or R doesn't matter) cast in West Hollywood California is going to change anything - ANYTHING. It won't. Millions of people still living in America sat out the election for the exact same reason. If I had lived in a swing state, that's another story. If they get rid of the EC and made it a straight up vote, I'll be thrilled to vote for the first time ever, but until then, nope. Plus, I have no skin in the game. I escaped the USA when I was 18, have never paid US taxes, have never voted, I don't collect govt benefits, and my US passport expired ages ago. My closest relatives are either dead, nearly dead, or escaped just like I did, long ago. Now that weed is legal here, I have absolutely no reason to return to the US. It's heartbreaking what America is about to go through (and put the entire world through), but their political system is thoroughly corrupt and utterly broken. The only solution would be a revolution and a new constitution (that's of course assuming the good guys win the revolution). But I'm betting on aliens appearing and putting us all to work as their slaves long before America can fix itself.

I've never stayed there but I have been inside to meet some guests, it truly is quite an impressive interior, I was not prepared to see such a grand sight in Chiang Mai of all places. Some guy recently did a "tour" of the hotel, including the parts you're not supposed to see...

Further speculation: Five-year driver licenses may not be issued against a DTV, whereas with a Non-O you can do it. Biggest DTV benefit for me vs Non-O is I won't need an exit visa anymore. Such a pita and not cheap. My problem with the DTV is I have no income whatsoever. I'm envious of you guys with pensions! But if it's as simple as signing up for a 2 week cooking course I'll reconsider, even though I'm a decent Thai cook already I'm sure I can learn something new.

From what I recall of the place, it would be silly to reopen it as-is. It was an architectural nightmare. But after watching the videos I don't think there is any point in reopening it, it looks like it's already been largely destroyed by the elements, it will need to be knocked down. Just my guess - we'll see condos there soon.

It always was a pretty crap mall, but before Central Airport or any of those other malls this was basically all there was.

Oops, forgot to post the link to part 2. wow, what a disaster area

I thought this was quite interesting, I have plenty of memories of the place from back in the day. Unbelievable that it has been left to just flood and collapse in on itself......

I don't do any power monitoring at the moment. Once my solar/battery system is installed next month I'll hook HA into the inverter with a RS435 interface. But I have zero interest in monitoring individual bulbs or sockets for power use because nothing in my home uses electricity to such a degree that I need to monitor or control it. We're talking a few baht here and there, it's basically inconsequential. I may, however, use a clamp such as the one you mentioned, but only to monitor some of my dumb devices to determine when they are on or off, but nothing more than that.

I have WiFi smart plugs with energy monitoring sensors. They work fine, though I don't care about energy monitoring my devices. The trick is to use LocalTuya, not the default Tuya integration.

FWIW, my home is Zigbee, Z-wave, HomeKit, and Matter free. 100% WiFi, with at least 40 various devices now. I know a lot of people swear by Zigbee, but the advantages it offers are minor, at least for my home. Any hardware I need is available in a WiFi version. Worst case for me - I'm quite fine with WiFi sensors that take 2 seconds to go online whenever they are triggered. These technologies also all require additional hardware which I knew was just going to complicate things further down the line. Also, some of these protocols, such as Zigbee, can be vendor specific - there is constantly a lot of discussion online about which zigbee router works with which devices and which it doesn't. No thanks. My objective was to make home automation simpler, not get more technical - that's just gonna make a bigger beast to tackle when things go wrong later. I had a Matter LED strip controller, so I installed a Matter software router. The controller was buggy as hell, so I dumped it and installed a much cheaper Tuya Wifi version - works perfectly. I have a HomeKit Yale lock. Had to move a HomePod speaker close enough to the door to get the lock to go online. It worked 95% of the time, but with a 2 to 3 second lag. That 5% tho....grrrr. Made a $3 ESP32 bluetooth proxy which covers the entire house and now the lock is super responsive and uptime is 100%.