Led Lolly Yellow Lolly

On 1/3/2022 at 12:34 PM, treetops said:

Mechanical splicing equipment is cheap and cheerful, although probably won't give the efficiency of the unspliced cable if that is an issue.

Mechanical splicing is almost impossible to do right on Single Mode fibre (what ISPs use). It's just too thin and the tolerances too tight. As has already been pointed out, the equipment used is called a fusion splicer i.e. it actually melts the fibre together, We have one, it cost us over 50,000 Baht and that was with an 'industry insider' discount. You can get them cheaper but not very good and limited functionality. The good ones will have optical Time Domain Reflectometers that actually read the light 'shape' of the fibre and give you a pretty accurate location of fault distances to help you locate them. . . In summary, forget about fixing it yourself.

On 12/26/2021 at 2:18 PM, muratremix said:

Since passive PON fiber supports 2.5 gbps down, 1.25 gbps up

PON networks were designed to service multiple premises. I find it comical that anyone thinks they need a 2.5 Gbps connection at home. It's just so absurd, and ISPs are never going to give you that speed anyway except in very short bursts to fool an online speed test.

Analysis tools are useless for data resilience. Faults and failures usually just come out of the blue. A sane backup and replication regimen makes recovery tools redundant.

3 hours ago, Artisi said:

see you are very well versed in Thai ways, give it a few more years and you might get it all together.... 

I'm reminded of a defunct news website called The Korat Post. Some longer term expats will remember it. It was run by some idealistic American that ended up getting a defamation case filed against him. I can't remember what it was all about, something to do with a police colonel suing him for defamation.  It all got nasty and I'm sure it was very unpleasant for him and his wife. . . but there never seems to be an end to these foreigners that should be old enough to know better. You can't transfer your ideals to Thailand and expect them to fit snugly into place. He ended up shutting down his rinky dink website, bleating on about it being the death of his freedoms or something like that, but it was because there was a total lack of interest in it, not just in the English language sphere but locally (Thai). The reality is nobody gives a shjt about some old farang wagging his finger at locals and if you put it online you get a harsh lesson in 'Thainess'.

Meh, give a dog a plastic toy and it loves you instantly, even to it's own detriment. Cats however take work. . .
Go on holiday and leave your dog, it goes crazy with love and affection when you come back. A cat just sneers at you and gives you the "Oh, you're back then. Have you see the litter tray? You'd better get cleaning". . . I love cats for this reason.

In all seriousness though, I  have a thing about Felidae in general. While I don't like to see big cats in captivity beyond the purposes of species preservation, I always head straight for the big cats whenever at the zoo. Magnificent animals.

39 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

If it would be that easy to just close a venue and save a lot of money and then just open it again then I am sure that  would happen.

But in reality people have to be paid, if people are fired then they have to get extra payments, etc.

And when everybody is gone what happens if i.e. they want to open again in 6 or 12 months? Hire new people, train them, etc.. That takes time. And when many other venues open at about the same time then there will be a lot of competition to get the good people.

Sometimes it is better to not close the business and lose money but be able to start again when the time is right.

Actually this is precisely what we did. When the pandemic started we stayed open for around 6 months, skeleton staff, all of them with a wages haircut. After six months of that we just shut down completely because we were haemorrhaging money, mothballed over 200 rooms, shut down everything (the IT and WiFi systems alone use around 2 kilowatts for example), wrapped the entire place in plastic, drained the swimming pool (not a small undertaking). The only thing we kept running were the security cameras and just enough fibre optics to make them work.

A year later we re-opened, took on  a few of our old staff, a few new ones. We've had a 'relatively' busy new year and some interest from the civil service in using our meeting rooms. We're surviving, but we're a diverse company and this is not really on topic. . . I just want to comment on this absurd notion that you can now stay in 5-star luxury for 500 baht per night thanks to the pandemic. Hotels are a costly endeavour to operate and maintain. Further, certain services must be maintained in order to keep star ratings (bars, pools, meeting facilities) and hotel licencing rules (security cameras, fire equipment etc etc), it's VERY expensive to do that. You have to pay for that as a guest, even in these difficult times. If people can't understand that, try buying a car at below cost, or a pizza.

6 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

cat bites are more dangerous than dog bites in this regard, because they tend to be deep puncture wounds

Happened to me once around 20 years ago. My cat got into a fight with a neighbour's cat and I stupidly tried to separate them. My own cat sunk it's teeth into my thumb, it was panicked and in defense mode, the teeth went right through my thumbnail down to the bone. The pain was incredible. Immediately went to ER, straight onto antibiotics but it still swelled up to the size of a balloon.

5 hours ago, 2long said:

6/10 is 'better than average'

What is WRONG with these hotels?

I know a thing or two about how these review systems work. Take Agoda for example, while all the reviews are genuine, the system is rigged in a way that it's very hard to score a hotel less than 6/10 unless your really trying to hurt them. If you have a 6/10 aggregated average on that site, you're a terrible hotel.

4 hours ago, Xonax said:

"The review, in which the customer complained that the stay was overpriced for the experience, has already been removed from the website."

Can anyone mention a hotel in Thailand that is not overpriced? Since the government began offering to pay half of the price, the prices were immediately increased.  If Thailand is expecting 1 million foreign tourists to visit in 2022, they will not be filling more than a few percent of the hotel rooms available, which should rather result in record-low hotel prices.

See, this kind of irritates me. Hotels are very good value in Thailand compared to much of the world and the margins are wafer thin. I read a lot of comments that guests are 'powerful' with pricing due to covid. Actually that's not really true and it discloses a fundamental misunderstanding of basic business practices. . . if a hotel is forced to sell room nights below their baseline costs for operating the rooms and all the associated services, the hotel might as well just close, which is what many have done.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

new wave

I'm responding to comments that HDDs are obsolete. They're not, and will likely be in use long after everyone here is dead.

4 hours ago, Darkside Gray said:

That's the cusp of it "well Trained"

4 hours ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

This is normal, pull out and expect others to stop or slow for them.

The point is you can't criticise the driver of the 18 wheeler without more evidence. Yes, it's necessary for drivers of large good vehicles to pull out in front of other drivers to make progress. Nobody gives way to truckers, nobody. Without commanding the road, they would sit at the same point all day with their indicators on. 

4 hours ago, vinci said:

wouldn't that be a cost issue and not the tech itself, in your line of work using HHD make sense but if you compare apple to apple so what's the different

It's not about cost. The HDDs I use are extremely expensive and designed for the use case I describe. SSDs simply don't work, they have a finite write capacity that's used up in just weeks, maybe months and they fail. Site visits to replace are costly and time consuming. It also makes my company look bad if equipment keeps failing. Spinning rust has infinite write capacity (yes, it really is infinite, the mechanics of the drive fall apart first, we replace on a five year schedule).

In our NVRs, I put database operations and OS on SSDs in RAID 10. Video storage is on HDDs in RAID 0. There will probably never be any replacement for HDDs in such an environment unless some magical new technology is created.

6 hours ago, Bangkok Barry said:

Of course. Just part of the Me First culture. I'd expect nothing else.

Not necessarily so. Truckers get a bad rap all over the world. A well trained goods vehicle driver will learn how to properly 'command' the road. In other words, force your will on other road users. It's often the only way for them to make any progress.

Lrok pitsunakBaah.

When learning Thai, I remembered the city Phitsanulok and reconstructed from there.

Some noggin took a gamble and lost. Who cares. Jeez.

On 1/3/2022 at 8:21 PM, robblok said:

Not sure why anyone would read a book in a coffee shop, if i go there its to drink something not to occupy a seat while reading a book.

Ditto that. I like to sit and sip my cappuccino in silence while thinking deep thoughts. About the topic, I think I only read 3 or 4 books in my whole life (I'm 50). I have started reading stories for my son, classics like Alice in Wonderland et al. . . Like Thais, I read my phone all the time. The sum of human knowledge is available now, right there in one's pocket.

30 minutes ago, RickG16 said:

More alarming would be if I didn't ask the question and stayed at home!

 

However, I appreciate your alarm. 

I remember a family staying at our hotel many years ago. The mother was 'scratched' by an aggressive Macaque. When they came back to the hotel they asked for the manager, so I went down and she seemed very worried about it. I explained that I'm not a doctor, but it's only a scratch, the chances of being infected are practically nil, just to soothe her, but advised she go directly to hospital anyway.

One of the problems I have up here is bats. They're absolutely everywhere, in most of our roof spaces. I'm actually overdue for a booster, so thanks for the reminder OP.

This is my understanding after researching the topic (I just couldn't accept what the doctor told me) i.e. booster every 10 years and post-exposure shots if bitten. I think he probably meant there will always be some protection, albeit greatly reduced.

Insecure load + Inexperienced driver. . . Identifying the racing line of the road while in a truck doesn't make you awesome. Som nam na. It's pleasing no innocents were hurt in this one.

Myself, I left the UK age 20, I couldn't wait to get out, I have nothing but bad memories and regrets there and I have to try hard not to look back. I went to Paris, started working in hotels. I was rudderless, drifting from job to job and country to country. In my 30s I married into a warm, loving, welcoming family in Thailand and had kids. I sure never imagined this is where I'd end up. I can't imagine I'll ever set foot in the UK again. Like you I have no friends other than those I've known in expatriate circles from around the world. I have no connections whatsoever from my origin country.

I've been lucky in marriage. Very lucky. I feel Thailand has provided me with stability, a future, a family, love, and a place in society. This is why I have chosen to take the citizenship route.

On 1/1/2022 at 7:13 PM, Grecian said:

I have a decent life here. Nice house, enough money for my simple needs and wants. Nice family. No wife or kids. Of course given up on dating!

My advice, if you come to Thailand, don't be an old fool. Young fools can get away with it and start over. At your age you won't get a second shot. I did the young fool thing, learned my lessons the hard way but was young enough to recover. You'll be dating again in 5 minutes, lifestyle score 20/10. I lost count (and lost interest in counting) how many I saw go broke in 5 years and on a plane back to Blighty, bedsit in Luton or some other part of God's as$#ole, giving yourself a 0/10 lifestyle score, your neighbour will be a 50-something divorcee with clinical depression.

Tree: 5833407634443

Pjssed Driver: 0

On 12/30/2021 at 5:25 AM, prakhonchai nick said:

Turned out to be a fault in the consumer unit.  For the 2nd time in a month the main 63amp breaker started melting. A new unit installed and all seems fine for now

I've not read this thread through again to refresh my memory of it but I know from bitter experience that main breakers will melt because the screws were not torqued properly onto the cable and they get extremely hot as a result. It will also explain the flakey power.

You also get idiot sparks that will cut down the cable to make it fit, sometimes only a few strands of copper. Obviously this is a point of extreme heat under load.

Also, if this is a plug in type CU, the cheap ones are garbage, as are the cheap plugin breakers. The plugin connections are unreliable. They WILL get hot under load on the lower quality end of the market. Also, the scrap coins from the 'knock-out' holes on the mild steel cases may get lodged in the bus bar if the installer was careless. Another possibility.