noise

Google buttermilk and you will find a recipe for making it with regular milk and vinegar. I do not remember the ratio or I would just post it.

If you had a library card at your last official or current official residential address in the U.S. you may be able to borrow e-books over the internet.

I use my last address as my absentee ballot address. Some 4 years after I moved here, I heard about this option, investigated it, and found my old library did now have the on-line capability. So I re-activitated my card over the internet and now can download 10 e-books (and/or audio books) at a time. There is a 21 days time limit.

They download to my computer and I transfer them to my reader (or mp3 player). Once I am done with them, I can return them early, just like a regular library. So, theoretically, there is no reason that I could not have 10 unread books on my reader all the time.

I had to download the OverDrive Media Console program (4KB) to do this and it is self explanatory to use. When searching for a book, you can select filters that allow you to select the format and whether or not a copy is available at that moment in time. Or you can look for a specific author or title and then either borrow it or put a hold on it.

The final step opens an Amazon site and I download the book from there. When I finish reading, I delete (return) it from the OverDrive Media program.

If you never had a card, can you get an account from here using that address? I do not know.

Unless your radio is something special or you are emotionally attached to it, I would not recommend bringing it if it is not dual voltage capable.

I brought a few small 110V stereos over because I had the room to do so and it would not cost me anything.

I ran them on transformers, not coverters, and they still failed. Except for the ones I forgot to plug into the transformer and plugged directly into the wall and just burned up. Transformers ran hot so I always unplugged them when not in use (converters ran hot also). I got a couple of years out of them, but they were inconvenient to use.

Dangerous to traffic if you ask me.

And supports your supposition as accept male and female roles?

We have the accordian screens on every door, upstairs and downstairs, entrance door and balcony/patio doors, and prefer them over sliding or swinging ones. However, there are trade-offs to consider. I will list some thoughts that come to mind, including problems we had that have been eliminated.

1. Expensive (can't be fixed)
2. Take up next to no space -- major advantage -- folding into a 1" - 1 1/2 " channel on the side of each side of the door. The channels are set back so they do not protrude into the door opening on the side or top.
3. On a double sliding doors (say to a patio), the screen come in from each side and close nicely in the middle with a very strong magnetic strip.
4. New visitors have to be taught how to open them as most people have never seen them before. And even just telling them how to open them is frequently not enough as the magnetic strip is really strong and they are afraid to exert sufficient force. I conside that a neutral issue.
5. Channel(s) are a box, 4 sided, with the bottom one on the floor inside the door. That can not be "set back" so you have to get used to stepping up, say, 2 inches above the eye's perception of the floor height as you come in. Otherwise you stub your toes (that has been a painful lesson for me).
6. Orginally strung with gut (like old tennis racquets); now all gut has been replaced with nylong as the gut kept breaking.
7. Nylon lines in the bottom and top channel require periodic cleaning and rubbing with either commercial grade olive oil (installer recommended) or synthetic lubricant (web source says suitable for nylon lines).
8. All screens are guided to the closed position by pulling a vertical metal bar across the opening. That bar has plastic pulleys and rollers on the top and the bottom. Depending upon use and age, the pulleys break occasionally. In 6 years we have probably averaged 1 break per door.
9. Our cat has learned it can leave or enter the house by pushing the screen at the bottom. Has not caused any damage so far. That is good. A stray cat we feed watched her and learned he can do it, too. That is bad (but then it is our fault for feeding him).

We like them enough we will keep them in good repair and even completely replace them if needed.

I thought I saw a sign on the Amari Hotel saying it was being remodeled which makes more sense to me than anything else. It is a good location for a hotel, specially with the new mall under construction.

Soi41

YOU SAID: "But there have to be winners too? People working and have their salaries in baht. People brave (lucky) enough to be heavily invested in Thailand -SET or Thai bonds. For those people the advantages are, that petrol is becoming cheaper, to holiday abroad is becoming more affordable and imported food should be cheaper (if the supermarkets didn't pocket the difference)."

I would agree that over the short time high income people who have money to invest and invested in the right securities have paper profits. They might have real baht profits if they sell. Over the long term, it could go either way, up further or down if foreign capital leaves.

Those high income people also will benefit on overseas travel. But the average person sees no benefit. He/she does not vacation overseas.

If my gas/petrol prices do not go down (and they haven't) and if my food prices have not gone down (and they haven't) then Nit's, Dang, Somjet's, and Noi's petrol and food prices have not gone down.

I buy the same things with my dollar converted baht as my Thai family buys on their baht salaries. Neither one of us have seen any price decrease due to the strong baht.

If anyone is seeing the benefit on the local market, please let me know. Maybe I have just completely overlooked it or miscalculated. It would sure make me feel better abut the dollar dropping if I knew I was getting even a little "discount" somewhere.

My 90 day check yesterday afternoon took 45 minutes but that was because I showed up at 1 pm, some of the staff had already taken off for Songkran, the single substitute "signer" working the 90 days came back from lunch late, and the minions helping took until 1:30 to start cranking them out.

Way fewer people there from 1 to 1:45 pm than I expected before a long major holiday.

Sounds like an urban legend to me.

Howard

The only time city water has been shut off here, it has been preceeded by a notice several days in advance (except when there is an emegency due to pipe breakages). Same for the moo baan. We have had pipes burst and our water shut off. A notice is then placed at the guard shack vice being delivered to each house. Emergency crews come in and water is restored within, usually, 12-18 hours.

When new section of houses is to be added, the developer sends out a notice to each house saying water will be shut off during these hours for connecting new houses to the main.

The same notice comes out when the water dept is making a change that affects our moo baan; they notify the office and the office delivers a notice to each house.

I would expect you should get the same service at K-9, since Koolpuntville is a big outfit.

If you literally do not get any water, some one knows why. Does K-9 have a sales and/or service office open on site? If so, what do they say. They have to know. Is it because 17,000 people ahead of you in K-9 on that line have pumps sucking the city water of out the pipes before it gets to you? K-9 has to know if the city water is coming into the development or not.

If the K-9 office says it not an internal issue, I would suggest going to the water district office and getting the answer. They will know of any water flow issues going to K-9. And, while there, get the telephone numbers to call next time to track down why you have no water on any specific day. The water department knows when there are area outages and why.

It is the old style small pox inoculation where the administrator applies the vaccine and then scratches the skin with something vice simply poking through the skin layer in a small area.

I am playing the song in the background as I type this. The kim (and the piano) is an excellent accompaniment for the soulful sound of the Khlùy (ขลุ่ย) . This is a song I would enjoy hearing any time.

There is a nice selection of other songs showing up after your selection is finished. They all make me I wish I could play the khluy.

Even homes with good termite prevention measures will have these..... if you, Greenside, are referring to the one that, with wings, are about 1 - 1 1/2 inches long. Don't ask me why, but they do seem to swarm at night and look for light: sounds counter intuitive to me but they must have some logical explanation. I must remember to ask them about that.

This year we seem to have a bunch of something that looks very similar but only about 1/8 of an inch long. These are only showing up in the house, maybe 8-10 at a time, and do not seem to lose their wings. They do look like little flying ants. I would lthink they are queen ants but they do not have the long, bulbous abdomen that I would associate with a queen (like the mang maow flying termites have).

Tywais, on 28 Mar 2013 - 07:45, said: Also, the many thousands of returns that are hand written is unlikely going to work well in an automated reader. Suspect there are also many thousands of overseas tax payers that use A4.

I am one of those thousands. Plus I prepare paperwork for 7-10 Thais at any one time for submittal to the U.S. govt and have had absolutely no feedback whatsoever about using A4 paper. And no one I know of has ever reported a problem.

Interesting that none of the replies talked about the 802.11 standard for routers. The version to which the router was built to determines its capabilities.

My investigations after getting True cable internet and their provided Cisco modem router says that most wireless routers are built to 802.11g like the Cisco is. The 11.g spec is old and has limited range plus, when you do get a good connection it is limited to 54MB from the router. Just like with computers, technology advances and performance improves and standards change to keep up and try to form a common baseline for the different manufacturers to work to.

The latest spec is 802.11N though an improved, updated spec 11a/c has been or is in the process of being released. Some early 11a/c routers are available in the U.S. but not here yet that I know of.

I have problems connecting within the house and on the front porch. I want more power and more range, so I intend to bridge my Cisco cable modem/router to a 802.11N wireless router.

For talking purposes, in my local store Belkin offers N150, N300, N450DB, N600DB, and N750DB wireless routers, each of which tout a maximum download speed of that number (e.g., the N150 speed is up to 150MB).

I then down selected the N600 DB because I wanted the dual band transmission and equal data rates on both bands. The N450DB said it rates were 150+300 while the N600 is 300+300. And it has a USB port..... which I will probably never use.

Round about way of suggesting that you get the stongest 802.11N router available if you want the 300 meter range. You may still need the other suggestions for antennas and repeaters, etc.

You can find a sample selection of routers available in Thailand at http://www.invadeit.co.th/search/wireless-router/

Has the aircon ever been power washed? There may be several kinds of gunk in there built up over time that is attractive to them. Yearly power washing is advised, anyway, just to get the mold and dirt build up out and improve their efficiency.

INTERESTING: no rebuttals that the car can only be in one name. Our 2 cars are in both our names. They were bought a year apart from different dealers, so it was not just a one time mistake. The first one was with a resident certificate from immigration and the 2nd one was using my yellow book.

Worked for us.

Both Central and Robinsons have a selection. And I see shops along the north moat that all kinds of tools so I would expect you could find some there, also.

If you want a SSA-1099, that is one issue. But if you just want blank forms, I have gotten every single govt form I have ever wanted by simply Googling it. One of the options always leads me to a PDF file I can simply download.

This doesn't help you, internet in Thailand is all ABOUT location - location - location!

Cloggie is 100% correct. If speed to US and Europe sites is a deal breaker, you will have to accept it will take time to find the right location if you do not have options before you show up.

I could see where someone moving here permanently could spend 6 months finding the optimum combination of location and internet service. When my neighbor moved into his house across the street, the only ISP in our development at that time told him it would be 3-4 months before their equipment upgrade would allow him to connect.

Would the connection be the driving factor, would you accept renting a house where public transportation may not be optimal for a short time visitor or do you have to be in town (i.e., rent an apartment, condo) where you can walk out and get cheap transportation around town?

An option might be to find an agent and tell them to find you a certain type of location (e.g., near BTS in BKK or near the moat in Chiangmai) with fiber optics either already installed or on the pole outside and that you can have a dedicated line run to your house/unit. Do not show up until you have several places to choose from or you will spend your 6 months looking.

Pol

You said: Recently we changed from adsl for hi-speed with cable so we have now a Cisco EPC2325, an old cable modem... Searching with google i find Motorola SB6141. Spec looks very interesting, very fast and new! ... I just wonder if it will work with true?.... Any suggestions and advices are welcome.

First, let me say a cable modem is a cable modem, any brand should work.

I should say all this agrees with what Manarak said. But fiber optics is faster than ADSL. The fiber optics to the pole in front of my house and then coax from there to the modem gives me high download and upload speeds. When I had ADSL with TOT, they checked the line for me and said the best their ADSL equipment would ever give me was 7MB down and 512KB up. So fiber optics/cable was my choice for faster download and upload speeds.

I, too, got the Cisco 2325 when I started with True's fiber optics cable internet/TV. I would say the Cisco is old only in that it is built to 801.11g standards and not 11n. Mine is a new one, not a used/refurbished unit. But I must add that the Cisco is a modem/wireless router and the 801.11 spec only applies to wireless routers as far a I know. Looking at the Motorola 6141 on the web, every site says it is a modem only.

I have my PC hard wired to the Cisco, using it simply as a modem. The performance is great. Speed tests range from 30MB to 40+MB down from the US and Europe on True's 15MB plan (guaranteed minimum). So I have no complaints about it as a modem.

As a wireless router? I would like a stronger one (e.g., a dual band 11n standard). Sometimes I have to walk to almost a line of sight location to log on, but then I can go to the corner of our property and sit in the gazebo and remain connected.

I have done a decent search in Chiangmai and found only one single cable modem wireless router and it was a 11g spec. And that vendor had only one. Not being a 11.n standard router, I could not see any obvious indication it would offer any better coverage of my yard, so I did not buy it.

The other stores' sales people either did not know what one was or had no interest in trying to get me one, they had never had any requests for one before.

If there had been a plain cable modem, I am sure I would have found it so I will say probably (repeat probably) not available in Chiangmai.

BUT: Do you have any complaints about the Cisco that were not apparent in the post?

Sounds like some good reasons were posted to get the yellow tabien baan if you can. If can be a time consuming effort but, once obtained, makes you an "independent person."

It facilitates many activities such as obtaining phone and internet connections in your name, etc.

I let the car registration inadvertently expire one year, got stopped by the police, showed them the registration with my name on it and a copy of the yellow book and they just politely wrote me up and sent me on my way. Did it make a difference? Do not know, but it had to show I was just a forgetful long time resident.

I have used mine numerous times over the years and find it was well worth the time and effort to get it.

I would also recommend Carpets Inter. We have bought several there over time, including one of their cheaper one by the meter off a roll that we then cut to fit the bathroom floor (one that never gets wet, of course). We have also bought a large wool one.