asiacurious

3 minutes ago, Richard1950 said:

Nothing like getting one's priorities right in the midst of a pandemic.

Actually, I think it makes a lot of sense to invest in infrastructure projects now, when there aren't any/many tourists.  It adds some jobs and helps the economy now and makes things safer for tourists when they do finally come back.

The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is the water issue.  Can't really tell from the photo but it looks like it's at ground level, or perhaps just a single step up from the ground.  That could be a problem even if they have drains and pumps at the bottom of the escalator.

On 1/28/2022 at 12:39 PM, bbko said:

OP, according to their website, you should have been able to get a refund if you left the paid area within 5 minutes

Thank you for that.  There are certain places where I wish I could walk through the station without having to pay.  When it's raining hard, it's nice to be able to walk all the way from Phloen Chit BTS to National Stadium BTS.  It would be completely walkable through malls or the elevated walkway if not for the Chit Lom stop.  But now that I know it's refundable, I'll have to get a single fare card to give it a try.  Wish it worked with Rabbit cards, but I know from experience it doesn't.

On 1/28/2022 at 11:55 AM, Freddy42OZ said:

I was at On Nut BTS and bought a ticket to go to Punnawithi - cost of ticket 15 baht.

 

-SNIP-

 

This has to be the stupidest thing I've every experienced in almost 14 years living here.

Yeah, it sounds pretty stupid, though I also have to admit that it also sounds a bit silly to me to be living here for 14 years and not have a Rabbit card.

11 minutes ago, anymajordude said:

I posted the following in another thread, but I guess I'll post it here as well in case anyone is interested:

 

I went to MTT in Bangkok today (05 Jan 2022), got the 60-day extension until 25 Mar 2022, but they told me that this would be my last extension and that if I went in again, I would only get 7 more days.  I entered Thailand in Feb 2020 and have been doing COVID extensions since then, and they said that part of the reason why I wouldn't get another extension is because of how long I've been here, but from what the woman at the counter said it sounded like they might be ending the COVID extensions generally or changing the system somehow, but this wasn't totally clear.  I guess we'll see what the next announcement brings.

Sounds like what a lot of people have reported in the past.  It's the "last time" until it isn't, because the government extends the extensions again.  Of course, one day they won't extend the extensions, but I'm not sure that day has arrived.  Were I to guess, I'd say they'll probably extend the extensions at least one more time. 

Suggestion as a place to start:

Start by opening Task Manager (type taskman in start search bar or Ctrl-Alt-Delete and select it from the list).

Then look to if something's using a large percentage of your processor (or memory) on the Processes tab.... (

If you don't see all those tabs, click on "More details"

Windows 10 automatically defrags drives (HDs), so there's not much point in running defrag these days.  And SSDs don't need defragging.

According to Microsoft, it can't be done.  If I were to guess (and this is only a guess) I'd say this is likely an issue created by Apple as they are notoriously bad about opening up.  But hey, it could be Microsoft's fault!

Microsoft - Back up and recover account credentials in the Authenticator app

9 hours ago, Muhendis said:

Having been a Big C family for many years, my wife and I always use Makro now. The selection of fruit and veg there is much better and the prices are fine. We do occasionally find ourselves bar codeless at the checkout but the girl takes the item to a nearby scales and does the necessary. Incidentally there is a fine range of cheese in Makro.

I was shocked by how much cheese variety Makro has started to carry.  They had most of the cheeses on the list below, and a bunch more that were NOT on the list.  (This list just seems to be the cheeses supplied by https://www.jagota.com/)

Let's be thankful they haven't done something like this....  (Changed with the font changer browser plugin I mentioned a couple of posts up.)

5 hours ago, J Town said:

What the hell?!? The font just went back to suck and the option to change the Theme was removed.

Frustrating that they've stripped what should be a very basic user option out.  This can be a problem for people with poor vision. 

There are browser plugins that will let you override fonts on a site-by-site basis:

• Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/font-changer-plus/ameggholdkgkdepolbiaekmhjiaiiccg
• Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-font-changer/

You can also change fonts on Firefox without a plugin (though this will override fonts for ALL sites)....

Go to settings....

Then search for Font and click on the Advanced button....

Then uncheck the "Allow pages to choose their own fonts...." box.....

A quick chart on the situation in the UK, which has one of the highest vaccination rates, where the mRNA and AZ vaccines make up the majority of doses given.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_WRL

Note that most of the new cases are reportedly among the young unvaccinated....  

Quote

The Delta variant has taken hold in Britain despite almost 62% of adults being fully vaccinated, a slightly higher rate than in the U.S.  Most of the new cases are in younger people who've yet to have the two doses needed for maximum protection.

And of course, it isn't just in the UK where the Delta variant is becoming a problem....

Quote

But in countries like Russia and Indonesia, where vaccination rates are much lower, the new strain is already being blamed for overwhelming hospitals and filling cemeteries.  In Australia, where tough border controls helped to keep cases in check over the last year and a half, officials just imposed a strict two-week lockdown on Sydney as infections mount.  CBS News' Elaine Cobbe in Paris reported on Tuesday that the Delta variant now accounts for one in five new COVID-19 cases in France — a similar proportion to that seen in the U.S.

Source for quotes: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/delta-variant-covid-uk-warning-hope/

In places like Thailand, where the majority of vaccines are of the inactivated virus type that are turning out to be much less effective at preventing transmission of the virus, but importantly do appear to be very effective at preventing serious illness or death, herd immunity does not appear to be possible.

Does anyone have any other data that bolsters or refutes this assertion?

Uh oh.....

https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccinated-people-account-for-half-of-new-covid-19-delta-cases-in-israeli-outbreak-11624624326

Delta Variant Outbreak in Israel Infects Some Vaccinated Adults
Government reimposes indoor mask requirement in light of preliminary findings

Quote

TEL AVIV—About half of adults infected in an outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated with the Pfizer Inc. vaccine, prompting the government to reimpose an indoor mask requirement and other measures to contain the highly transmissible strain.  (emphasis added)

[SNIP]

Quote

Israeli health officials are optimistic that even if the variant does spread, evidence from countries such as the U.K. indicate the vaccine will prevent a large increase in severe illness and hospitalizations that plagued the country’s health system in previous outbreaks. Israel has only recorded five severe cases in the past 10 days, Prof. Balicer said, but whether more will emerge is too early to tell.  (emphasis added)

8 hours ago, NNNN said:

All liers will burn in hell

So what should one do?  Sleep standing up?!

As of this moment, the booking site is gone.  Blank page.  Also, I thought the link to the online booking site was on their main page (down near the bottom) but I can no longer find that link either.

Maybe they're in the process of updating the whole thing?  Who knows, maybe they'll use their bangkokimmigration.com domain once again.  (That site even has and SSL cert. set up.)

Thoughts?

5 minutes ago, mtls2005 said:

email comes from [email protected]

https://bizpotential.com/

Sure enough!  Thanks for pointing that out!

I just wrote a post about them!  Directly above this one.

There was one final thing I was curious about regarding the immigration booking form.  I wondered what one would see if you typed just the IP address without the rest of the URL.  Well, here it is....

A quick search for "BizPotential Thailand" yields this company https://www.bizpotential.com/ 

This web/system developer states on their site, "More than 500 government and private agencies trust in the quality of our services and products."   And in one piece of their marketing materials the company lists the Ministry of Health as a client.  (FYI, the DoH website looks a lot better than most websites in Thailand.  It's actually functional and pretty well organized.)

I think what likely happened was that someone in Immigration thought a booking site would be a good idea.  And honestly it WAS a good idea.  It was a FANTASTIC idea!  But I'd guess that they didn't have anyone who could turn it around quickly and somehow BizPotential ended up doing Immigration (or more likely the Ministry of Health) a favor by creating the booking form.

Well, you know the old saying....

Fast, Cheap, or Good - Pick Two!

26 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

If you sue the link to open the site you will see this after clicking this  notice.

 

Yes, you are correct!  Seems it has one more year to go!

I typed that anamai.moph.go.th into the address bar of my browser and got to here....

So it looks like the immigration form is being hosted on the DoH's server.  I found a complaint form link in the footer of the DoH site and when eventually getting to the form it looks oddly familiar.

The Immigration and DoH forms are same same, but different:

Neither is secure and both use IP addresses (instead of domain names).  Both starting pages have centered bold headings with lines under them, and they both use ordered (numbered) lists stating all the rules/terms, which have to be agreed to with check boxes.

It looks like both might have been built by the same person/company.

1 hour ago, mtls2005 said:

Saw a report that using the https link and accepting the warning may prevent the leak?

 

https://203.151.166.132/immigrant_queue/booking/

I saw some comments from Richard Barrow's tweet on this that:

• The cert you get if you add the "s" is for a different web site, so the certificate will report as invalid
• The certificate actually expires in a few days and if they don't renew it, even that won't work.

Another comment said something about the immigration appointment thing seems to be hosted on the Department of Health's sever and that it might have been someone from the DoH that created the form for immigration.

So much sloppiness.

20 hours ago, Kwaibill said:

Usually see the kids standing on the floor boards in front of the driver, but still without helmets. 

Far too common.  Even on tiny little scooters.....