SpaceKadet

We have a cat, and that monster animal is spoiled silly by my wife. He will only eat Japanese tuna in jelly, and Korean kibbles at 90 baht per small pack per day. As an advantage though, he keeps the house free from rodents, squirrels and snakes, and have been known to attack dogs and trespassers. To the point that everybody around is scared <deleted>less to step into our property

You are lucky. I'm a city slick and not a farmer. Even my attempt to grow some Ganja failed, and the plants all died.

Nearest Tops is 2.5 hours drive, one way. Makro is closer and I spend 5000-6000 baht every time we go there. They don't have everything I need though. The well stocked Makro is again 2.5 hours drive. That's the whole day gone, just for shopping.

It's up to their personal liking, but I would not like to live in a 12m2 room with fan and no furniture, and all my computers and guitars and books stacked along the walls. And all my clothes in plastic baskets. I do still have other interests beyond subsiding, and like to maintain them. Besides, I am not very keen on local spirits, except perhaps Sang Som, and local industrial beers make me puke, and not much of a wine drinker. The beer situation is improving recently though. Top shelf vodkas and gin are expensive, and my car/motorbike expenses run to 5000-6000 average per month. The car is needed where I am.

Maybe up in Issan, I'm very far from there. And to be totally honest would never consider moving there. Just rice paddies and buffalos and crap food. 1 million will get you maybe 1 rai of land where I live. And a small house, as you suggest 120m2, maybe another two million. Just for the record, I'm not in any tourist ghettos, but still like to stay close to the beach.

Sorry, brainfart on my part. It was Libya, not Syria.

Yes, living in a one room apartment with fan, eating the local food from the street vendors, and having a few Chang for entertainment. I would not call that living, more like subsiding. I'm spending about twice what I calculated for a family of two. And we have own house. I'm blaming it all on UK politics that made GBP lose over 40% just one year after I retired here.

Obviously you are not aware what JAS stands for. It's Jakt (fighter), Atack (attack) and Spaning (reconnaissance). The role can be changed by the press of a button, more or less. And that's what Thailand needs, a modern multi-role military jet for patrol and defense. After all, I don't think Thailand is posed to attack any neighboring country just yet, AFAIK ... JAS-39 has proven itself over and over again in the reconnaissance role in Syria. Yes, I know, much undocumented but very true. And by 50+ year old airframe, I mean it was designed over 50 years ago. Sweden might as well upgrade and offer SAAB 37 Viggen (contemporary airframe to F16), the only fighter jet that got a lock on SR-71. Far superior to any contemporary Russian design. Swedish war tech is far ahead of that of US. Just like the small diesel Swedish sub that "sunk" Ronald Regan (CVN-76) multiple times without ever being discovered.

Can somebody please provide a recent link for HUA HIN immigration online appointment bookings. I did go the Immigration main site, but it's very confusing, and even after selecting English language most of the site is in Thai. I think that Hua Hin is in Division 3, But clicking on there, there is no online reservation link. Perhaps a suggestion to mods/admins. Could we have a pinned topic with the current links?

It was was not loss of control. That's the official version to save face. It was because the pilot was confused flying inverted at a very low level, pulled the stick up instead of down to ascend (inverted action). And RTAF didn't want to spend the money on SAAB software that would prevent that.

I do understand how the "blocks" work, but it's still 50+ year old airframe. Dinosaur age in technology terms. And with the requirement for proper airport runways, and 1-2 hours turn around time by a bunch of highly trained mechanics, totally outdated. Why do you think Russia is bombing all the airport in Ukraine? Compare that with J39 that can turn around fully fueled and armed in 15 minutes, and can use normal roads as runways. Thailand already have the best fighters in SE Asia. A squadron of Grippens at Surat Thani Airbase.

What is it that makes US pushing this old airframe so hard. Need to get rid of old stock, or just need money for new hardware?

And this is the true reason for US to push this outdated 50+ year old airframe..... It's equivalent to Sweden offering J37 Viggen with updated electronics.

What works for me is a Bloody Mary first thing in the morning, and a lot of protein (meat) for lunch/dinner. Problem is, if you start your day with Bloody Mary, you'll be drinking the whole day. Been there, done that.... No hangover following day though.

So, it's more like Rayong international airport with 3 flights weekly to UAE, Singapore and Malaysia.... Very international. And BKK international is still almost 2 hours away....

Did not know Pattaya had an international airport. Is it just newly constructed?

25 years ago, I would say 1-2 weeks. Now, I must agree with the other posters here. Zero days! Happiest day of my life when I sold my business there and moved out. Been back twice just for a few days, and verified that it's a <deleted>hole place. Go visit Krabi, or Trang. Much nicer and not just a tourist ghetto.

You do know that Julian is not and American citizen, right?

He had little choice in the matter. The US were ready to (and did) force the airplanes down just on a suspicion he was onboard.

Yes, I know, but why would I want to buy from JIB on Lazada when I can buy directly from the JIB store and have it delivered within 24 hours anywhere in the country. Thus far they have been very prompt and responded very quickly on a warranty claim I had once with them.

Personally, I would never buy a computer on Lazada for several reasons. Here are two suggestions based on your budget. A all in one desktop, and a laptop. http://i.nvade.it/isl http://i.nvade.it/iqR

Maybe you should educate yourself on the definition of "sovereign state". According to Wikipedia: "A sovereign state is a state that has the highest authority over a territory. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined territory, a government not under another, and the capacity to interact with other states." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_state Unless, of course, if you're Chinese and subscribe to CCP propaganda.

And how would it be possible if "neocons" were not calling the shots... Please do pray tell... Ukraine will never accept ceding any currently Russian occupied territory, and want to join NATO for protection. Putin will lose face big time if he would agree to that.

5555, far from it. Several blinks would be required. Interesting question. When I was designing my new rig I expected it to be my last build. Therefore, I was keen to chose future proofed components as much as I could. I don't think I have any bottle necks apart from the current state of technology. Namely SATA III and HDD speed. SATA III transfer speed is rated at 6Gbps, which translates to around 550MBps with SATA overhead. I'm using Seagate SkyHawk HDD's, the fastest spinners for SATA. Sequential read up to 250 MBps, which is almost half the speed of SATA SSD's. However, if I knew then what I've learned empirically from running my rig at extremes, I would probably have chosen Ryzen 7 (probably 7950X) CPU instead of Intel i9-13900. For two main reasons. 1. Windows 10 does not support, and is unlikely in the future, Intel Thread Manager. This make some applications confused about how to use P-cores and E-cores. By default, is seems, the workload is dumped on the E-cores, which are slower, even if there are more of them. And, like I have mentioned before, I will not upgrade to Win11. 2. When I'm using all cores/threads to 100%, the processor hits 100 degC and Thermal Throttling very quickly. Even while using top Corsair 360mm AIO liquid cooler, and undervolting the processor by 85mV. I can contain the Thermal Throttling somewhat by undervolting further to 110mV, but then run into stability issues. I have always overclocked all my builds by at least 25%, but in the case of the i9, it's just a nogo. To answer your last point, my last main rig was over 10 years old when I build this new monster. Here's some performance figures from that build. https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/17889690 This is Intel Gen 5 processor. I have build several rigs for friends since, with much newer Intel processors, but they still couldn't beat my old rig in benchmarks. So definitely more that 10 years to become the bottle neck, if you chose your components right. Should mention that is was overclocked by 25%, and when running at 100% for several hours never went above 75 deg C. It has since been relegated to running my NAS when the new rig was built. Having a dedicated LSI SAS/SATA Host Adapter and RAID configuration, it will easily saturate the 10Gbps Ethernet backbone.

It is well known that every second Windows version is crap. Excluding Windows 3.1, let's recap: Windows 95 - The first real Windows GUI, had it's quirks. Windows 98 - Much improved. Windows ME - Crap. Windows XP - Nice and working, but had limited support for new hardware unless you're running 64 bit version. Windows Vista - Disaster. Windows 7 - Now we're talking, the first real 64 bit OS from MS. Windows 8 - Crap, what a disaster. Windows 10 - Pretty much OK once you get used to it and disable all the spyware. Windows 11 - Crap. Windows 12 - ???