tjo o tjim

I live in a tourist destination that requires a few documents to be uploaded prior to boarding an airplane. *That* level of complexity, while hated, has not reduced tourist numbers. (It hasn’t keept COVID at bay either.) The problem is really in the mandatory hospitalization. In Mexico, I asked at our hotel what happened if we tested positive (for return flight home) and the response is “We have a special discount for that and we will take care of you for the week of isolation.” Compare and contrast to Mandatory Hospitalization.

Mexico has done a pretty good job capitalizing on the opportunity in the last 12 months at least. Was in the Cancun area last month, and things were pretty solid. (One spot we went had essentially just re-opened and was having major re-opening pains, but that is to be expected.) If Thailand wants to learn from this all, they need to get enough tourists in to restart businesses and build the employment base, and slowly grow from there. That process is going to take over a year judging by other places… better start now if you don’t want to lose big in next year’s peak season.

The original design was that once the mid-field concorse was built you need to expand the oriiginal terminal into the gardens to support check-in, baggage claim, and customs. This is just agreeing to do it…

The Opposition Party might do well to look at the 10 countries ahead of Thailand on the list and the good and bad things that come with it. Spain, Portugal, and France don’t seem to be that impacted by retirees on the whole, although I will acknowledge it depends on where and what you do. Costa Rica and Panama gain different things from retirees than the first three, and might be more like Thailand in the end; from what I can tell they generally come out ahead with them. Mexico is more of a special case than Panama and Costa Rica; they are more like France or Spain in it not really impacting their culture or values much, but the economic contribution is valued like Panama and Costa Rica. The others… I don’t have enough personal experience to say. As for the contribution retirees give… maybe stop trying to lable and stereotype everybody. What is the difference between a backpacker, retiree, digital nomad when you get right down to it?

To the extent possible you may want to home run everything to a box with DIN rail rather than switching in the ceiling. (Plan for about 40mm of rail per discrete switching zone.) This gives you the best flexibility and simplest troubleshooting.

Shelly and Sonoff are global, but they are all based on ESP8266s and have the same issues. Insteon was available in Thailand a long time ago, but getting anything now is not practical. I had seen a UD ISY-994 in a Bangkok restaurant before, but I do doubt that it is a common offering. The main thing I am trying to convey is that the most important decision you make is what you are going to use for your wiring devices, and how you are going to address wifi. After that, everything else is pretty easy and flexible… you don’t have any decisions to make that will require re-wiring things.

I run HomeAssistant in the US on a Proxmox VE VM; I tried with a Pi and the results were underwhelming. I also have a Universal Devices ISY994i which controls a bunch of Insteon devices and interfaces in nicely with HASS. The crack about it being a part-time job is not necessarily that far off, but most of the work is just in updating it. There are parts of HASS that I have really struggled with making work properly, and other parts that are amazingly easy. I would say though that the biggest decision is in your wiring devices. For me, I have about 25% of my switches replaced, and I simply cannot get stock from Insteon. By far, I would prefer to have all Insteon wall switches because the ISY makes dealing with them a pleasure, and the powerline + wireless network (proprietary?) simplifies a number of things. I’ve also used a handful of Shelly relays, and they can be a great solution… but I have no idea how to future-proof wifi. If I sold the house, I would need to somehow document a whole lot of stuff, and likely throw in the HASS VM and all the neworking equipment. I also have some Sonoff devices with mixed results— I have a bunch that need to be flashed with ESPHome, but I am struggling. I did use OpenHAB in the past; it was ok, but I do like the flexibility of HASS better, despite OpenHAB being significantly more transparent. Without the ISY I am not sure what I would really think of HASS though; some of the automations are pretty clunky.

Having dealt with various flywheel systems over the years (Piller, Hitec, Active Power, and the one that was originally for hybrid busses), they have come a long way. 12MWs was doable and reliable 10 years ago, and maintenance was reasonable. That said, hard to beat LFP batteries today.

Having an EV (Tesla Y) I could never go back. The ones who do go back purchased a car with insufficient range which makes it hard to deal with otherwise minor challenges. I need a pickup truck, but I will get by until there are viable electric ones readily available.

Not only that, but they will offer the best quality and have the lowest prices!

I thought it started in the late 60’s. Its modern incarnation was always planned for 100MAP, and the terminal was specifically designed to add the east and west wings after the midfield concourse was built. Getting more than 100MAP out of the airport would be nearly impossible though within the current footprint; there isn’t enough runway capacity.

You do upgrades like this when air travel is down… it will pick up again eventually. I’m sure there are plenty of reasons to be cynical on the projects, but doing so based on today’s traffic is just silly.

I am fairly certain those are older numbers— maybe even 3-4 years. Performance has improved dramatically.

It is interesting to see what happens when you mix lightning protection systems. I specified the streamer terminal system for Suvarnabhumi early on, but never got to review the shop drawings on it. Wonder how it would hold up in a close or direct strike.

Is this an issue with “properly” (US NEC) laid out systems? Ground rods collected at a common bus and grounding electrode connections tied to that bus? For data centers we would generally run a ground ring on the exterior of the building with ties to the column footings. Individual substations would tie to the ground ring (plus a supplemental local rod and a local water pipe for compliance).

15/45 is pretty small for a 10kW setup. You might do better with about 8kW of panels on a 5kW inverter. Are you getting PEA approval?

I have known “nomads” who are radiologists, post-production sound engineers and video editors, architects, business consultants, financial advisers, and various other types of remote work. Most would disagree. This type of person still needs a residence somewhere for tax and legal purposes. The easy solution is to keep your residence as your home country, but this is not viable for everyone. You are still a nomad if you do not have a company here and a work permit. As for transporting your kit, I knew one person that travelled with a 30” MRI-grade monitor and associated equipment. It went with him in a very large Pelican Box or two; he usually stayed in a place for 3-4 months before moving on. Many people don’t need to work the standard 8-hour day for remote things. I would work two 20-hour days per week way back when, and meet all my expectations for a week or two, beyond responding to emails and quick incidental work that could be done from a phone or tablet. At the time, I was traveling for quality of life more than the financial benefits, but I made good money based on my experience.

There are many different types of digital nomads. Some need a base (or multiple) somewhere, but travel extensively. In some places they use storage lockers, but an attractively priced and secure condo works much better for others. I had a condo in a place where I could keep my servers located that gave me a solid VPN connection for getting around geoblocking. Others I have known over the years had companies in places they did not want to live, so they used a condo here as their official residence.

No MOV is going to protect you against a snake bridging HV-LV. At that point you want an air gap arrester and an over-voltage trip on your main— you want defense in depth. The industrial SPDs typically have capacitors in parallel to the MOVs to absorb the instantaneous peak of the transient; it will both extend the life of the MOV and significantly reduce the let-through energy. You can chain MOVs in series for higher clamping voltage or parallel for increased energy, or a series-parallel arrangement as you need… but you get all kinds of opportunities for problems. It’s something I would want a UL or TUV label on and from a legitimate source.

…until one catches fire (without a surge).

To add to what Crossy said, if you have exposed metal on the fixture a ground wire is recommended.

I would beg (and have begged) anyone to not try to use the NEC in Thailand for oh so many reasons. There are a few things we made a big push for in Thailand decades ago, like tamper-resistant outlets that make a lot of sense when using a high-impedance 120V wiring system and devices in a reasonably low-impedance 220V network. The lack of galvanic isolation for 220V loads is something I am still not a huge fan of, but trying to impose it here would be nonsensical. Grounding in the US is just so different (as a system) to Thailand that almost all parallels are moot. I would love to see NEC working spaces imposed on anything I built here though, as well as a few of the prescriptive requirements for branch circuits.

It will be interesting to see where we are in a few years. As it stands today for me, it would be illogical to go back to Thailand and visit friends. I generally feel like my home is a better place to be. If Thailand wants to become a relevant tourist destination again, they are going to have to focus on the young crowd and hope they grow up and spend more in Thailand as they get older, just like generations before them. I think for most people over 40 the luster of Thailand has faded and is unlikely to save the tourism industry.

For some unknown reason, I am actually going on a cruise next month. The restrictions for vaccination and testing are similar to Thailand’s rules, and if you test positive at boarding you are turned away. I think that is going to be part of the math for a while and it won’t be a deal killer for some people that are committed to going. The problem is you really impact the pool of people with the layered restrictions. Alcohol restrictions might be the only deal-killer for me personally, but other things will impact different people. Net effect is that you might have an addressable market 2-5% of the size of 2019’s peak season.

Energy balance still favors dirty coal powered electric car compared to gasoline. Maybe not if you are 1000 miles away from said dirty coal power plant and it is the only source of power in that radius… It only gets better the more you clean up or eliminate the coal…