smiling mantis

Yes, I use the SSD cache all of the time and it's brilliant. Highly recommended, esp. for games.

The reason I want another passport isn't to avoid taxes. It's to distribute my assets so that I'm protected from a single point of failure.

Consider, you enter the Forex market, and invest in currencies. The dollar goes tits up, like we all know it will. You're protected? How, if your investment is made via a U.S. brokerage firm, and the dollar going in the toilet puts them out of business (infrastructure issues, like not being able to import oil anymore? run on withdrawals? take-the-money-and-run syndrome?) Does anybody seriously believe they understand how the collapse will play out?

So you try to money all over the place, so not only are you invested in multiple currencies from around the world (and stocks, and bonds, yada yada) but also brokerage firms and banks from around the world. The dollar goes under, taking the U.S. with it, and you'd be reasonably ok, only that with your U.S. passport, you're increasingly shut out of these opportunities.

I'm wondering now too, when do my banks here in Thailand say enough is enough, and tell me to take my business elsewhere?

And if you survey the landscape with regards to alternate residencies, it's pretty clear at least to me that the U.S. is working hard to shut these opportunities down. When you go shopping for new countries, be sure to find recent information. There's a lot of old web pages out there that paint rosy pictures that aren't the case anymore. The situation with regards to residency and citizenship is changing rapidly, and not for the better. The result of pressure from the U.S.? Of course.

But really, this latest move is no more or less egregious than any of the other moves they've made. As expats, we have no constituency in Washington. They do these things and each time they do, we all say to ourselves, that's ok, that doesn't affect me, even though we can plainly see it sets the stage for further abuse of our liberty. What's the son of FBAR going to look like? What other double jeopardy laws are they going to put in place? Are we even going to be allowed to trade in currencies or have foreign investments in the future?

The job of the US government is not to assist you in spreading your risk around to hedge against possible US financial failure.

No one is asking them to assist in doing anything. Just get out of our way, that's all.

Yes, but what happens with clowns is that when they shoot to hit those guys over there they invariably end up hitting us guys over here.

OP, be aware that you are comparing boards based on two different chipsets. I'm running a Z68 right now and am very happy with it, but the Z77's are newer and support more features. Something to do some research on is whether or not you really need PCIe 3.

I'll also echo what has been said about Asus build quality of later, esp. their bargain boards, like the P8Z68V_LX, which, btw, was the first board I had in my system. Had to return it. I'm running now with an ASRock Z68 board, great price and couldn't be happier. That said I've had great success with Gigabyte in the past too.

The reason I want another passport isn't to avoid taxes. It's to distribute my assets so that I'm protected from a single point of failure.

Consider, you enter the Forex market, and invest in currencies. The dollar goes tits up, like we all know it will. You're protected? How, if your investment is made via a U.S. brokerage firm, and the dollar going in the toilet puts them out of business (infrastructure issues, like not being able to import oil anymore? run on withdrawals? take-the-money-and-run syndrome?) Does anybody seriously believe they understand how the collapse will play out?

So you try to money all over the place, so not only are you invested in multiple currencies from around the world (and stocks, and bonds, yada yada) but also brokerage firms and banks from around the world. The dollar goes under, taking the U.S. with it, and you'd be reasonably ok, only that with your U.S. passport, you're increasingly shut out of these opportunities.

I'm wondering now too, when do my banks here in Thailand say enough is enough, and tell me to take my business elsewhere?

And if you survey the landscape with regards to alternate residencies, it's pretty clear at least to me that the U.S. is working hard to shut these opportunities down. When you go shopping for new countries, be sure to find recent information. There's a lot of old web pages out there that paint rosy pictures that aren't the case anymore. The situation with regards to residency and citizenship is changing rapidly, and not for the better. The result of pressure from the U.S.? Of course.

But really, this latest move is no more or less egregious than any of the other moves they've made. As expats, we have no constituency in Washington. They do these things and each time they do, we all say to ourselves, that's ok, that doesn't affect me, even though we can plainly see it sets the stage for further abuse of our liberty. What's the son of FBAR going to look like? What other double jeopardy laws are they going to put in place? Are we even going to be allowed to trade in currencies or have foreign investments in the future?

Combine this with the recent bill that adds being late on your taxes as a reason to confiscate your passport, on top of using underage sex to extend U.S. law into any and all jurisdictions on the planet (a precedent sure to see other use), and it really does appear that life as an expat is only going to get worse. By design?

This is Thailand's great weakness as a retirement destination... you can't really know that you get to retire here.

why some people write : rest in peace?

this guy killed 270 people for khadaffi or religious belies

That's just it, he didn't. Anyone who's actually followed along all this time knows he didn't.

There's a certain country out there that likes to have its intelligence services stages attacks like this, with the goal of making it appear to be the work of others (who are the real target).

If you have a 3 prong lead, wired up correctly and a good earth, no probs.

The PC I recently put together has a premium power supply that incredibly comes with only the two prong plug!

I use it and it's fine, except on occasion it emits what sounds like a 60-cycle-hum.

I know the outlet is grounded because it wasn't before and I would get shocks from when I used my MacBook Pro while it was plugged in. It was fixed, and the shocks stopped.

So wow, I really don't know what to think. I'm not a solid-state physicist, and you go on the web to educate yourself about grounding issues and you get umpteen different answers from guys who sound like they all know what they're talking about, except they can't all possibly know because they keep contradicting each other.

When they come out with tesseract-powered computers I'm definitely getting me one of those.

I'm TOT in Chiang Mai too, and it's been a very odd experience with this outage. Sometimes it will even affect DNS queries. But only _some_ DNS queries, others go through. Sometimes it is international traffic only, sometimes even TV has issues loading. Most of the time I'm getting ~100% packet throughput via ping but then there are times when I get 50% packet loss. It's almost like a Internet brownout.

What is needed is a map of Chiang Mai where roads are highlighted based on their friendliness to pedestrians.

There are really two issues here. First is the ease with which you can walk along the street. Second, as OP points out, is the ability to cross that street. Many of the roads around the moat are an excellent example of streets that are easy to walk along, but difficult or dangeous -- if not impossible -- to cross. And then of course there are any number of busy sois that, though easy to cross, are very dangerous to walk along since there are no sidewalks and you have a mix of scooters, tuk-tuks and cars all vying for the same real estate.

My advise is to explore your immediate area keeping all of this in mind and be prepared to turn back. Basically, you're performing a depth-first search across the domain of possible routes that take you from point A to B. And when you find something passable, stick with it.

Some other lessons learned: be very careful with nighttime crossing situations where you feel the need to just go-for-broke and dash across the road. There are many cars and bikes that don't have lights turned on. Nearly lost the bacon one time crossing the western moat road that way. Also, you're not just looking out for oncoming traffic, you're also looking at parked cars and bikes in your immediate area... they may be looking for the opportunity to dash out and get in between the cars too. Lots of close calls on Nimmanheiman doing this.

Like OP, I'm from NYC too. It is a lot more challenging here. The mix of traffic combined with the cultural disregard for pedestrians makes for a toxic walking experience. I'll point out that it isn't a Thai thing; lots of good memories walking about in Udon Thani and parts of Bangkok.

Sounds more like some hardware is being misidentified and so the wrong driver is loaded. This can result in a startup delay in certain cases, as with a misidentified network card, then network services try to start but can't but will sit there for 30 seconds or more waiting for a response.

I do not believe there is any Linux distro out there that is too "heavy" for even 10-year-old hardware, let alone something the OP describes.

What does dmesg tell you?

Smoking is hardly a Korean-only thing. Visit Hong Kong some time.

The Taliban repeatedly offered to turn bin Laden & Co. over to a third country to stand trial.

Also, the decision to invade Afghanistan was made _before_ 9/11.

What the U.S. and friends has committed in that country is nothing short of an atrocity, but I don't expect anyone will ever be made accountable, at least not before the collapse.

Get a NAS. Storage of big files is something you're laptop shouldn't be labored with. Most if not all NAS's will let you configure as Raid 1 so you get transparent backups.

Makes digital life a lot easier.

That said, these 2.5" external drives are amazingly useful creatures, but really, they should be reserved for things like streamlining system maintenance tasks, OS backups, etc. IMHO

I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately after the news came out that the U.S. might start confiscating passports if the IRS alleges non-payment. I've no doubt that this will pass, and then the question is, what is the next agency to be given this kind of power? I'm in no trouble with the IRS, today... but with these new reporting requirements of offshore banking accounts and so forth, it's easy to see how failing to dot an i or cross a t screws me over and big.

A valid U.S. passport is required in order for me to stay in Thailand, even if under the so-called retirement visa. So I'm looking at lots of things that can go wrong in the future, that would force me to leave. How can I actually retire here in the face of that? I'm supposed buy a condo? Get a car?

I don't have the kind of money where I can do this here, and then be forced to do it all over again in some other country.

So, as much as I like Thailand, I'm forced to start looking at other venues. The Philippines retirement option is more to my liking, as it basically states you get to live there for life. Not clear what losing the passport would mean though. In Cambodia you can apparently buy citizenship for $50K? And Mexico has what they call Immigrado status, which is obtained after five years of holding an FM-2 visa and which then basically confers you citizenship, minus the right to vote. But no requirement that I have a U.S. passport once Immigrado is achieved. Mexico has the added attraction of having a long track record with liberal treatment of immigrants, and as bonus just recently revised their laws toward immigration making them simpler and easier (at least for someone like me).

I know there are those who think there is nothing to worry about, but seriously, you can't be reading the same news I am. The U.S. is becoming increasingly hostile to all its citizens, not just expats, and the Thais are free to change the rules in any way they wish, at any time, and they certainly are not without good reasons for doing so. Every time I apply for an extension they can say no, and if I'm all in, that basically wipes me out, esp. if they're saying no to other expats and now I can't sell my condo or car for anywhere near what I paid for it.

In a way, the combinations of these policies amounts to a de facto raising of the capital requirements for retirement here. If I decide I need to keep a fallback option in place, it's just too expensive to stay here. It's really more of a deluxe tourist visa at this point.

Good luck with that. lol

And what a lovely evening in Nimman afterwards.

This rain thing? I don't know about the rest of you, but I approve.

Power was out here in Nimmanheiman too. For a short time.

Then for a longer time but just in my building. Only came on (for good) just a few minutes ago.

Beer in the fridge is still cold though so no harm done.

Install Linux.

Any usenet subscription that offers binaries should work.

All NZB files do is tell you the identity of the articles are that make up the file you're looking for. You still need to download it, and for that you need the usenet subscription. Giganews is probably the biggest, but that doesn't necessarily mean the best.

I think you can buy a Cambodian passport for $50K.

Just be aware that plasma displays really suck down the power.

Also, if you use the thing for gaming, be prepared for screen burn-in. It's recoverable on most models, but it's still kind of a pain in the ass.

Since 'nikster' suggested that 'this year was surprisingly bad already in February', I find it quite reasonable to show (not 'suggest') that he is wrong.

As a newcomer to Chiang Mai let me say that this statement is absolutely correct. The air here is surprisingly bad. There were a few days in March where I was in genuine fear for my health.

Your efforts at spinning these conditions as normal, and calling posters here "deluded" for pointing out obvious efforts to hide the truth, are in my view what is really wrong here.

Upon further examination, it appears the row in the table for Chiang Mai has only been moved. It's a dreadful web page, but if you can manage to look closer, you'll see that the table is in fact hosted in its own frame. You need to scroll down almost to the bottom of the frame to see the entries for Chiang Mai.

Why the move though?

...but suspecting sinister intentions probably says more about you than about PCD.

Yeah, nothing sinister ever happens in this world.