higgy88

I see this is your 2nd attempt for information on this subject.

In the first one, you mentioned Li, which is a city at the opposite end of Lamphun Province and a good couple of hours drive away from the city of Lamphun. You also mentioned that your son is 7, has been educated in England for the last 3 years, and has poor Thai language skills. Good luck in finding a school in this area that will be able to accommodate him. Your best bet for his education will be in Chiangmai.

My kids were 3 when they started kindergarten at a local private school in the city of Lamphun, as we wanted to keep them closer to home. Both had very good English language skills (for their age) and very poor Thai language skills. They both had difficulties adjusting to school, even at that very young age, especially my son. We sent them both to Chiang Mai for their secondary school education. I do not know any other mixed couples with school age children here, but I do know many Thai couples who send even their very young children to Chiang Mai for their education. The schools in Chiang Mai are considered much better.

I can give you some names of private primary schools here in Lamphun, but you will have to check them out and talk to them yourself. I assume you have a Thai wife or someone who will be able to communicate with them in Thai, as English is not widely used here. You can do your own google searches, but the results will mostly be in Thai. I can get you phone numbers and/or email addresses and specific locations if you need it.

Orapin School, which is where my kids went but does not necessarily mean that I recommend it.

Rapeelert School, which is currently advertising for their new primary school English program.

Baiboon School, and

Laohajit School.



As far as places to rent, I have no direct experience, but I have a friend who recently found a house here to rent. This is something that you are going to have to come here and do for yourself. Houses that are for rent go very quickly. Most people want to sell, but will rent if they can't find a buyer, especially if the house had been sitting vacant for a while. There are plenty of one room dorimatory style buildings, which you probably don't want to live in, especially with a child. There are a couple of new "condos", one which was just completed and one still under construction. However "condos" seems to be the new catch phrase to also describe appartments and flats. Again, you will most likely have to come and look around yourself.


Personally, if I were you, I would not be looking to live here with a British educated school age child, I would be in Chiang Mai.

I've been doing what you want to do for a number of years, except I'm using two flash drives, one 8 GB for the OS and the other a 16 GB for my data. That way I can change OSes whenever I want to without affecting my data. My current distro of choice is the Xubuntu LTS, and I have been using it this way since 4/2012. I have also installed a few other distros this way, but not with your favorite, SUSE, although I did play with their live CD once a while back, and I have never tried Knoppix. If you can make a live SUSE USB, I can't see why it wouldn't work with that.

What I did was make a live Xubuntu USB from the iso, and used that to do a full installation onto the 8 GB flash drive, using a very old Pentium 4 HP Pavilion desktop which no longer has a functional CD drive. I did physically disconnect the hard drive to make sure that the Windows MBR was not written over during the installation.

I just took a look at it, and of the 8 GB, 2.1 is for the swap and 5.9 is usable, and the installation, along with all of the additional apps I have installed, comes out to 4.5 GB, which still leaves me with 1.2 GB free. I am able to get all updates, including kernel updates, but I need to keep it clean by getting rid of all of the old kernels and other removeable residual stuff no longer needed. I just now did an update to the new 3.2.0-43 kernel.

I have used this to boot a number of different computers with no problems, but these have all been relatively old computers (the newest being a 2 year old Sony Vaio) before the secure UFEI bios, which after reading about I am afraid to go near. I must also say that it is very slow running from a USB flash drive this way.

Mornin' Zippy

This morning I went right into the site, no VPN needed. Go figure.

What will we do with your information?

We use the information you give us to verify your identity. We verify the information you give us against our records. We also use Experian, an external authentication service provider, to help us verify your identity. Experian verifies the information you give us against their records. We do not share your Social Security number with Experian. Experian keeps your information only for the time period permitted by Federal laws, Regulations, or guidelines. We use Experian's fraud prevention services to protect you from identity theft.

When we make a verification request to establish your account, Experian may use information from your credit report to help verify your identity. As a result, you may see an entry called a “soft inquiry” on your Experian credit report. This will show an inquiry by the Social Security Administration with our address and the date of the request. Soft inquiries do not affect your credit score, and you do not incur any charges related to them. Soft inquiries are displayed in the version of the credit profile viewable only to consumers and are not reported to lenders. The soft inquiry will not appear on your credit report from Equifax or TransUnion, and will generally be removed from your Experian credit report after 25 months. Once you have registered for an online account, you will not generate additional soft inquiries by logging in to access our services.

Well, Zippy, like the other members, I also had to use a VPN to get to the sign in page using True cable broadband. They do specify that you must have a US address to use this online system, so that kinda leaves me out.

New Users

You must be able to verify some information about yourself and:

Have a valid E-mail address,

Have a Social Security number,

Have a U.S. mailing address, and

Be at least 18 years of age.

I was warned a number of years ago not to bother contacting Baltimore as they know next to nothing about citizens living abroad. All my contacts have been with Manila, who has been very helpful.

Higgy

Just to add a few more things to this topic.

A very interesting list from wikipedia of organizations and individuals who have switched to Linux from other operating systems.

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

What I also find very interesting is that a country such as Turkey has developed its own linux distro for its own use.

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

I have read that because it received such good reveiws from the linux community, they decided to release it to the world in a variety of languages. Anyone can use it for free.

IMHO, this is going to be the future of the corporate IT environment. Individual PCs are still going to be using Windows only because that is what the computer came with. I'm hoping one day I can just go out to buy a PC and have the OS of my choice installed for me while I wait. If I want Windows, I can just pay the extra cost.

Relax you guys. I've been doing it by post to the above address for more than 3 years now and have never been dissappointed. I do remember I was a bit nervous the first time, and had my wife call them when I hadn't received the return envelop after a week. They told me "don't worry, call us back if you haven't received it after a month". Some times it takes just a few days, some times it takes over a week. I do have a copy of the old reciept I send in, along with the reciept from the post for the registered mail, so I figure I'm good if anyone wants to make a problem for me.

I'm sure Haybilly has the DOCSIS cable internet as I have the same Thomson TCW750-4TH router supplied by True.

I think he may have an additional internet add-on to his True visions cable TV service, not just the internet service we have, which is why it is 9 Mb.

We still don't know why he thinks he has a DNS problem.

Personally, I've completely given up on speedtests, as I think they have become pretty much meaningless here. For me, the proof is in the pudding, which is how fast I can actually download and upload files, how well I can watch streaming video without buffering, and how well I can carry on a video call.

With my 10Mb/1Mb plan, I would be more than happy if I was able to get 6Mb/0.89Mb to international servers. I don't think it's poor at all. And, as stated, changing the DNS servers won't improve that at all.

I have the same Thomson router that I got with the True cable 10Mb/1Mb plan. I can't give you any inside info, but I can verify that I haven't been able to find anywhere in the router settings where I can change the DNS servers, and I do have the manual for it.

I've had this True service for about 2+ months and I've been pretty happy with it. Before True, I had CAT ADSL service which was pretty bad. The Allied router they gave me had the DNS servers hard wired into the router settings, which could not be changed, and it was absolutely terrible. Luckily, I still had the old Zyxel router that I had kept when I cancelled service with Maxnet/3BB, which I was able to use with CAT after making a few changes. I tested just about every free DNS service available to me, and concluded that Google was the best. So I basically only used the Google DNS for the 2+ years that I had CAT, which was the only thing that made the CAT ADSL usable for me.

When I got the True service, I tested various DNS servers by changing the settings in my computer rather than the router (I'm a Linux user) and concluded that the True DNS were just as good as Google, as well as the other ones I looked at, so that is what I am using. I can also verify that they are the same as Pib.

I would like to add that from another thread and info provided by Pib, I'm also changing around using the True proxy settings and am seeing some interesting differences. Which is not to say that one is better than the other, only different. The setting for the True proxy that I sometimes use is proxy.asianet.co.th on port 8080.

Thanks to all who have replied--sorry to be slow to respond--it does seem that the True Vision supplied Router has DNS settings blocked by Default--as in the only section in the settings with any reference to DNS the detail is blank-therefore without specialist knowledge can neither find out what the servers are nor alter them--just have to stick with what I got; does seem tetchy, slow and problematic, though.

Anyone who has similar router, Thomson TGW750-4TH, got any inside info?

I have recently started following this thread and have read through all 26 pages. True has recently wired up my neighborhood in Lamphun for cable broadband and put up advertising for their Ultra High Speed internet all over the place, so I am seriously considering it.

I have been marginally satisfied with the CAT dsl 4M/1M service I've had for the last couple of years. It's fine in the mornings and I can usually get 2 to 3M download speeds internationally, but it really starts to slow down in the afternoons and evenings when I can get maybe 200 to 300K. The good thing is that it has been very constant and reliable, and actual downtimes when I have no connection at all is very rare. I'm paying 690 baht a month, just about the same as the 10M/1M True cable service which I would be interested in. The problem, of course, would be jumping from a known into the unknown.

I'm also concerned with the free cable modem that would be supplied by True. I use Magic Jack to make calls to the US, and for some unknown reason the free Zyxel dsl modem/router supplied by CAT gives me terrible call quality. I had bought my own D-Link dsl modem/router and have no problems making Magic Jack calls with that one. If one of you guys could give me some information on the free cable modem that would be supplied by True, it would be most appreciated.

Interesting thread, of which I also have my own ideas, opinions, and preferences.

So I thought I'd do a little search, and found this.

http://www.inspectapedia.com/septic/Toilet_Tissue_Test.htm

Bathroom Tissue Lab Test: What Happens to Toilet Paper in the Septic Tank?

InspectAPedia® -

ShareThis

A simple test demonstrates toilet paper break down in the septic tank

Explanation of importance of septic tank settlement time

Does toilet tissue create a problem in the septic tank?

Recommendations for use of recycled-paper toilet tissue versus ultra-soft fluffy toilet paper brands address using recycled paper versus cutting down standing trees

Recommendations for use of biodegradable toilet paper

For whatever this is worth, I had been running Ubuntu 10.10 on a bootable flash drive and had used it on several computers without any problems except for my daughter's Asus eeePC notebook, where the mic did not work same as yours. I played around with trying to get it to work, with no luck, but I must admit that I didn't try all that hard. When I updated my flash drive to Ubuntu 11.04, the problem was fixed.

You may want to consider updating your Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.04, and I would suggest a fresh install.

For me, the biggest problem with carrying my passport with me is that I think that most, if not all, of the Thai police officers believe that it is within their power and authority to confiscate and hold on to my passport. I believe this is usually done, for all practical purposes, until some sort of ransom is paid, and I have heard this to be particularly true if you are involved in a traffic accident. Since I do not believe that they have this authority, I will not give them my passport unless I am reasonably assured that they will give it back. So far, in my many years of living here, I have not had to test this, and hope I never do.

Since I do not believe that the Thai police have the authority to keep my passport, I just decided to do a google search on it. While many countries do engage in this practice, including the USA, I didn't find any definitive yes or no answers. For those interested, here is a very good paper written by a US law school on this subject. The link is a pdf file.

http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1138&context=annlsurvey

Since law papers are usually rather tedious reading, I would just like to quote excepts from the introduction and conclusion.

INTRODUCTION

In the United States of America, the Department of Homeland Security

(“DHS”) confiscates a foreign national’s passport when he or she is

detained pursuant to the initiation of removal proceedings. This is done

for practical reasons—to prevent flight and facilitate return of the foreign

national to his or her country of origin if ordered deported. If the foreign

national is not ordered to be removed from the United States, his or her

passport will be returned by the DHS.

Because “international law is part of United States law, and therefore

must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of

appropriate jurisdiction,” one would think that the practical reasons for

administratively confiscating and impounding a foreign national’s

passport would comport with general principles of customary

international law. However, this may not be so.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, we conclude

that the United States government’s impounding of a foreign passport

violates general principles of customary international law because the

United States government’s act of impounding a foreign passport is an

encroachment upon the personal jurisdiction of the issuing State.

Unfortunately, the insert link and insert quotation doesn't seem to be working right now. Oh well!

Come to the computer club meeting, Tuesdays, 1 pm, at the D'Lite restaurant directly across the street from immigration. If you are using a lap top, bring it with you and the odds are your problem will be solved on the spot.

Have you asked your bank if they will allow access from outside the country? You might test that without calling by trying to access your account via a VPN. If you can get in through that but not otherwise, then I would say the bank is blocking it.

Come to the meeting today and go home a happy banker.

Which city are you talking about?

Chiang Mai. As Noise says, directly across the street from immigration, near the airport.

Had the same problem, and had the same thoughts about travel agents.

So I called one, and was told that China Air will cease flying into CNX, I think end of February.

You also may want to contact a travel agent to verify this.

Sorry. Wasn't clear. Can get no info out of cnx to anywhere. but travel websites like Kayak can schedule flights.

yes according to their website all the CNX to Taipei and beyond flights are booked. I could be that travel agents etc have reserved all the tickets. Plenty of flights from BKK to the US etc are available.

Meaningless, unless they also update the Thai helmet standards, throw away all of the helmets that can only meet these worthless standards, and actually require the helmets that they force people to wear to protect the rider's head. Not likely.

David,

I'm going through the process for SSA retirement benefits right now, and it really is quite painless. Nothing to worry about. Claims here are handled through the SSA office in Manila, and is part of the Embassy there. They are your your best source of info. http://manila.usembassy.gov/wwwha013.html

Contact them about 3 months before you want to start getting your benefits.

I actually got my interview before they had much any info from me except my name, SSA number, birthday, and phone and email numbers. The call just came unexpectedly and I was not really prepared. I imagine it may have been just a call to set up the interview, as Noise suggested, but I was asked if I was ready for the interview now and I said yes. I guess it's all in the timing. There were a few questions that I did not know the exact answer to, like some dates and the routing number of my US bank where I wanted the benefits to be direct deposited to, so I followed up the interview with the correct info by email. That was followed by the documents that I needed to go to the Consulate to have certified.

BTW, I have been told that any documents that need to by certified by the Consulate that have been requested by a US gov't agency, like SSA, is done free. Others, like to the Thai gov't or a US non-gov't agency, you must pay for. I also just let them forward the documents to SSA Manila, as I kept all the originals and figured if they didn't get them, I would just have to do it again. No big deal.

The SSA agent in Manila verified that he did receive the documents, said everything was in order and that he would be forwarding everything to the main SSA office in Baltimore. They are the only ones who approve applications, and I would be contacted by them if they needed anything else. So now is when the the real waiting occurs. The agent in Manila was very nice and very easy to deal with. I have not bothered checking the progress of my application through the SSA website, I suspect that I will hear nothing from Baltimore, and at the appropriate time I will look at my account in the US and see they have deposited the money.

Higgy

from the ssa website

If you leave the United States

Leaving the United States means leaving the 50 states, the District of Columbia or the Northern Mariana Islands. Usually, if you leave the United States for 30 days or more, you can no longer get SSI.

If you move to Puerto Rico, you are considered to be outside the United States for SSI purposes only. People who live in Puerto Rico cannot get SSI.

If you plan to leave the United States, tell us before you leave. We need to know the date you plan to leave and the date you plan to come back. Then we can tell you if your SSI will be affected.

Once you have been outside the United States for 30 or more days in a row, your SSI cannot start again until you have been back in the country for at least 30 straight days.

There are special rules for dependent children of military personnel who leave the U.S. They may be able to get or apply for SSI while overseas. There also are exceptions for students studying abroad.

http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/11011.html#14c

I would say that the basic problem is that road safety, and safety in general, is simply not important here. You are completely on your own. The Thai helmet standards for certification, TIS 39-253, are so weak as to be basically worthless. If anyone is interested, I have the Thai standard in a pdf file. As far as I could find out, it has never been translated into English, probably for obvious reasons. Anyone who knows anything about helmets knows how weak these standards are, so I must assume that both the Thai government and the Thai helmet manufacturers must also know this. I must also assume that since nothing is done, it must mean that they like the way it is. My belief is that the law requiring motorcycle riders to wear a helmet is all about looking like they are concerned with safety, but in reality it is all about money. You have a choice of either paying a policeman for not wearing one, or supporting a Thai manufacturer by buying an inferior one. Unfortunately, if you want to buy a decent helmet here, you are immediately slapped with a 100% import tax, as well as other taxes which are also applied to the shipping costs. So if you want decent motorcycle gear for a decent price, you have to buy it in another country. I've been told that Singapore is a good place for decent motorcycle gear at decent prices.

My son died from head injuries while wearing what I had thought was a good quality Index helmet that I forced him to wear. If there was any possible way that I could have done it, I would have sued both the Thai government and Index for knowingly putting their citizens at risk by their actions, which is exactly what they do.

I will say that there is one Thai manufacturer that does make DOT certified helmets, and that is Real Helmets. Unfortunately, I found out about this too late.

I installed the Cannon MP258 scanner/printer about 9 months ago, it was very easy to do and I am quite pleased with it.

I got everything I needed from the Cannon global site. Here is for yours.

http://support-th.canon-asia.com/P/search?model=PIXMA+MP145&menu=download&filter=0&tagname=g_os&g_os=Linux

You just need to download and install both the debian package and common package for both the scanner and the printer. I really don't remember what order I did it, but I think the printer first.

It appears that you need for the 140 series, not the 150, which is probably why it didn't work.

In doing my own research on what laptop to buy, I came across this report from a company that offers third party warranties on laptops. Very interesting reading.

An analysis of reported laptop failures from malfunctions and accidental damage.

Synopsis:

SquareTrade analyzed failure rates for over 30,000 new laptop computers covered by SquareTrade Laptop Warranty plans and found that one-third of all laptops will fail within 3 years. SquareTrade also found that netbooks are 20% more unreliable than other laptops, and that Asus and Toshiba are the most reliable laptop brands.

http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109/

Yep, it's also a 2 year old HP desktop, with the Realtek ALC 888 chipset. But I've just about completely switched over to Ubuntu, and I still have exactly the same issues. So far no joy in fixing it.

If the OP is still having problems, it may be of interest that he can record direct from the VLC media player without any problems. And there is a Firefox add on called VLC context menu, where he can just right click on the file and add it to his VLC playlist.

I have a two-year-old HP desktop as well with integrated Realtek audio. And, out of the box, it had the same issue as yours...

However, the problem should be able to be solved by changing the default settings on your "Sounds" setup within Windows Control Panel.

I searched it and found the solution some time ago. As best as I recall, it involved enabling your Realtek audio/Stereo Mix under the "Recording" tab, and setting the Stereo Mix or Mixer as your default device for recording in that same "Recording" tab.

Now when I run Free Sound Recorder or any similar recording program, the monitored/sampled sound source automatically becomes whatever audio is coming thru my sound card.

While you're at in, it would be a good idea to first go to the HP support web site for your particular model and download and install the latest version of the Realtek audio drivers (assuming that's the audio setup your HP is using). Realtek's own web site has even later/more recent drivers, though last I checked they weren't customized for HPs...but still worked fine.

I have one computer that has exactly the same problem, an HP with integrated audio. I am unable to get any sound when recording directly from the internal audio source. The only input sources that work are either of the two mic jacks or the audio in jack. My only solution was using a stereo line, with the male plug on both ends, and use it as a jumper from audio out to audio in. I've been able to recorded directly from the integrated audio with many other computers, only not with this one. Go figure!

(OP) My Windows xp did have a 60-second sound-record facility under accessories. Too short for any practical use; hard to understand why they bothered to add it.

I installed 'Free Sound Recorder' from one of the communal download sites. It saved a 58-second sound clip as a 900 kb mp3 file. Source was a live radio station broadcast via Real Player.

BUT whenever I play it – via Window Media Player / Real Player / Quick Time – no sound comes out! Normally these players work fine. Could I be missing a codec? Tucows has a long list of sound recorders … are any of these worthwhile, and free?

I have one computer that has exactly the same problem, an HP with integrated audio. I am unable to get any sound when recording directly from the internal audio source. The only input sources that work are either of the two mic jacks or the audio in jack. My only solution was using a stereo line, with the male plug on both ends, and use it as a jumper from audio out to audio in. I've been able to recorded directly from the integrated audio with many other computers, only not with this one. Go figure!

Are you sure you have it activated? I have it turned off in mine as I don't want it. You can click to activate it under edit>plugins.

You may want to consider Evolution as your email client.

http://www.dipconsultants.com/evolution/

I find it very interesting that while all motorcycle riders are legally required to wear helmets here, the helmets are not actually legally required to protect your head, as the current TIS 369 2539 Thai helmet standards does not appear to require any kind of impact testing. But if you want to buy a decent DOT or ECE helmet, you must pay an additional 100% tariff on all imported safety gear. IMO it's all about money, not safety.