ChiFlyer

With regard to the cost issue, I use IPT to download videos. This gets me all sources at no per video charge. Several of us who live here in Thailand use this service. I do pay a few hundred USD a year for VIP service. I am a heavy user. It is up to any user what kind of commitment they want to make financially. IPT (a bittorrent supported service) is probably technically illegal in some countries, but nobody seems to give a shit. If anyone has interest in trying IPT, please PM me. IPT requires that you are invited by an existing member in good standing. That I am and I receive no financial benefit from inviting other users. I have over 50 invites to share. Please be aware that if I do not know someone through board interactions, I will be unlikely to share an invite. My account could be jeopardized, if I invite someone and they stir up shit.

Good show. I have one episode left in S03. The Gary Oldman character (Jackson Lamb) is great. I first noticed Oldman in his roled as Sid Vicious in "Sid and Nancy". In Oldman's words -> The 1984 production of The Pope's Wedding had been seen by director Alex Cox, who offered Oldman the part of musician Sid Vicious in the 1986 film Sid and Nancy. He twice turned down the role before accepting it, because, in his own words: "I wasn't really that interested in Sid Vicious and the punk movement. I'd never followed it. It wasn't something that interested me. The script I felt was banal and 'who cares' and 'why bother' and all of that. And I was a little bit sort-of with my nose in the air and sort-of thinking 'well the theatre—so much more superior' and all of that." He reconsidered based on the salary and the urging of his agent.

I have watched the show through s06. I agree that it fell off after S04. I will give S07 (last season) a try. I hear that the Bobbie Axelrod character (Damian Lewis) returns for half of S07. That character was not part of S06 (he needed a break for family time). I did not care for S05 or S06 all that much. Love the Wags (David Costabile) character.

I would suggest contacting one of the PA Admins. They tend to be pretty good to work with.

Noted and disagreed with. 🙂

The Thai government fees (I could have said this better to start with) are the bill for the annual Accounting work related to the company that owns the house we live in. You probably know this already, but a Farang can not own a house or property directly. The way around this is to form an LLC that owns the house and we in turn own shares of the LLC with myself appointed as the only shareholder with voting rights. A Thai LLC must file annual accounting reports with the government. I considered putting the house in the Mrs name, but in the unlikely event that I outlive her I might end up living in a cardboard box under the overpass where Thappraya meets Second Road and Phratamnak. The druggie who has been living there for years might not send over the welcome wagon. 🙂 The association fees cover everything you mentioned as well as Garbage service, very good security teams, a fitness club, a very large common area pool with lots of kids stuff, and some other things I am probably forgetting at the moment. I just looked up the Association Payment and it was actually 18,900 for the entire year. They give one the option to pay monthly but that ends up costing about 2000 more, so I just pay it for the year.

I am going to give you a solid NO to that q. I would probably break a leg just trying to get out through the window, not to mention where things would likely go from there. 🙂

Early Day 3 for the Pool Work Well they certainly came with enough manpower. They actually tried to come out yesterday (Sunday), but Security would not allow them access to the overall property. Evidently there is a no work on Sunday rule that I was unaware of.

That is a possibility. I will get back to looking at this in the fall. I really do not need a pool heater until Loy Krathong or so and it is only needed through Chinese New Year of so.

I have to say that it has been a somewhat expensive month to be a homeowner out our way. The association has had some water supply problems that they are blaming on PWA. We have had to buy 1500 THB of water to keep out tanks operational. At the same time both the pool and house water pumps went out. Cause and effect? Maybe and maybe not. The house is over 10 years old and these pumps have never been replaced before. 12000 THB. We had some light maintenance done with regard to some electric work. 8000 THB. Due to changing our internet service (had to do) we had to replace two of our CCTV cameras. 4000 THB. Like I already said the pool work is 50,000 THB. Annual accounting costs for home ownership with Thai government 12,000. Annual association fees 18,000. That's over 100,000 of unplanned to some extent expenses. The message is -> if one wants to become a house owner, be prepared to cover a buffer. The upside is that most of these fees should not be recurring, except the annual ones. A downside is that the estimated cost for a pool heater unit is 200,000. Not sure if I am going to do that and would not need until after Loy Krahthong. Also need to start thinking about a new car (probably about 2M). Other people are worried about getting food on their family table and I am bitching about my budgeting problems. Shame on me.

I really do not follow college basketball that closely, but have enjoyed March Madness over the years. The brackets will be set tonight (March 17th) at 6 PM EDT. Any interest in having a pool here? I would be willing to help out with the admin. I would suggest a minimal entry fee of say 1000 THB, with winner takes all. If this goes against board policies, all apologies.

I would suggest taking a look at Google Maps. Their direction screen will show one where the congestion is.

My experience was very much like what FBW described. It took a couple of minutes and I was on my way again.

Yep, I think the Southbound off of 7 onto Suk flow should be fine. Actually it will probably be better than usual because the traffic on Suk from the North will be severely constrained. Yeah, I am wondering a bit about how bad the Northbound backups will be on Suk. I come out of Little Walk and do a u-turn before Pattaya Klang and the underpass. If this gets too annoying, I can just stay on Southbound Suk most of the way home. The backups at Boon Kachana and Chiyapruek are not nearly as bad as they used to be.

Good info in general all. Prior to buying our house, where for some reason there is not much of a pigeon problem, we lived at VT2A for 7 years. VT2A has a lot of pigeons. Lots of talk on their board on how to combat them. In general it was thought that: Fake owls etc are a waste of money Keeping a balcony clean of pigeon poop helps some. Nothing attracts pigeons more than pigeon poop. Spraying some cockroach spray on the balcony rails may help some as well as WD40. The smell and slipperiness for their feet may help. In general I liked tossing water at them. I would try and nail the ones on the ground in the parking lot. Got 2. 🙂 I hate eff'n pigeons.

Smiling sitting out here in the burbs having a glass of late night wine. I read a Pattaya News article yesterday saying that Suk is going to be partially shutdown near Pattaya Nua for an undetermined period of time. I know you live not all that far from there. Hope the North bound backups are not too big of a pain for you. I like taking 7 from our place to do our weekly grocery shopping at the Little Walk Villa Market. The way I read the article the Southbound exit from 7 onto Suk should be relatively unaffected. The Northbound entrance onto 7 from Suk should also be ok. In both cases if the other directional backups become severe enough it might block access to the access points that I described. We shall see.

Well we finally located a crew to do the Swimming Pool work that I have been going on about for over a year. Actually, the Mrs found the crew through our regular pool maintenance guy, who is quite good for the 3 x a week cleanups and minor repairs. We had talked to him about what we wanted to do, but he said that was not a job he could take on with his equipment and resources. He became aware of the crew that we have engaged and gave their number to the Mrs. We had the company owner/manager out to describe what we wanted to do. He came back with an offer for the work at 50,000 taking one week. Basically, we are not replacing the tile, but rather getting everything cleaned up and re-grouted. The main item is the cleanup of the tile on the reflection wall. If this works out well, I will post contact information for the crew that does this. One would need a Thai speaker to communicate with them. I have a live in translator. As far as effort goes I will give them an A+ so far. They showed up at 8 AM and worked straight through to about 4 PM. The owner/manager stopped in several times to see that things were going as they should. Hard work. Here is a pic for the beginning of Day 2. Day 1 was mostly getting the pool water emptied.

For me the downside of a hack is not necessarily the data immediately being accessed, but the chance that there is some additional personal info obtained that could be used as part of building an identity theft attack.

I do not enjoy changing my passwords, but do so on a regular basis. I was a consultant for the US IRS for 5 years. The rules on password changes were insane, but it did goad me into developing a complex system of passwords that are memorable.

Agreed and I have changed mine to a much stronger one.

The @Stillearly promotion was obviously my misunderstanding. All apologies, especially to @Stillearly who is probably not looking for additional work. 🙂 I think I will change my password, just to feed my security paranoia, which has benefited me a few times.

@tommy dee, @Stillearly and other admins. I believe that a significant percentage of the 24x7 BMs are also PA BMs. PA is requiring that their members reset their passwords due to an increase in recent hacks and other security concerns. I believe that I have read that PA and 24x7 are sister brother organizations and there is some overlap with regard to tech support. I am not advocating to do the password reset process at 24x7, but I wonder if it makes some sense. 24x7 has a smaller user base, who tend not to be the same type of young Turks that make up much of the larger community at PA. Assumption is that young Turks tend to engage in more dangerous internet activities (security wise) that might lead to hacks etc. At the same time 24x7 could be regarded as a prurient interest site that could attract hackers for various reasons, especially since our fraternal organization has obviously been hacked. I am not advocating one way or the other, just looking for others opinions. I do not want to push for what might be useless work by anyone. tia, CF

Myself as well with regard to the heat, but I do enjoy picking off a piece or two just to sample.

I am actually pretty decent with the BTS routes. Rusty for sure, but they do not seem to have changed all that much. I am thinking that the Mrs would enjoy Wat Po (I have been twice), as she is a practicing Buddhist. My understanding is that the Royal Palace is not that far from Wat Po and we could probably grab a taxi and see both the same day. My understanding is not always correct. 🙂

Thanks. That is some excellent looking Som Tom (the Mrs favorite). We will try for sure.