Go in a couple of weeks early while it's still 2010?

Probably ought to drop by and ask them. Maybe before the ACS visits in October - if they come in October this year.

The transfer fee for land is 2% unless it's been held for less than 5 years, in which case there's another 3.3% added. Here's a link to the land office page with the transfer costs. It's in Thai but Google Translate does a reasonable job of translating it to English. Your wife can probably do a bett...

My visa extension date is in July so I wasn't sure if Immigration would accept a letter from February and passed on the opportunity.... I'm in the same boat except that my extension date is Sept. So when ACS came in Feb. I went by and asked immigration if they'd accept a letter dated in Feb. when I...

It will depend on whether you have any insulation in your walls or on your ceiling. I have a corner room that's a little over 5m x 5m that gets full sun in the late afternoon and a 9,000 BTU works fine. But, I have well insulated walls and fiberglass on top of the ceiling. If you have the standard T...

Ngee Soon supermarket, at least the one on Nong Bua Lamphu Road, has 1-2-Call cards. And at a discount. The 300 baht cards are 295 baht.

My wife replaced the screen on her Nokia N70 for around 300 baht in the mobile phone area of the second floor in Central Plaza.

Here are a couple of sites that helped me get a handle on the aluminum foil/radiant barrier thing when I was trying to decide what to do when I built my house. The first one is a short PDF that gives a good overview of how it works and some things to think about when installing it. The second is a m...

Glad the pics were useful. Sometimes those floor drain cups in the shower get full of hair (especially the long black ones :D ), soap scum, etc. and slow down the water. Since that's under the drain cover you may not notice the crud but if the water starts backing up try lifting the cover off and se...

Here's a cutaway drawing of a bottle trap I lifted off the web. Basically the tail piece from the sink extends far enough into the wider "bottle" to stay under water and make the seal. You should be able to unscrew the bottle to get back your engagement ring if you throw it down the sink instead of ...

I guess I've always been lucky with the houses and condos I've rented because they've always had traps. But the traps are so different from what I was used to in the states that it took me a while to figure out what they were. The traps that have been in the houses I've rented are like the bottle tr...

For the sewer gas smell pour some water in the floor drains in your bathrooms and maybe in the kitchen if you have one there. There's a cup like ring inside the drain pipe around the top that acts as the trap. It needs to have water in it so that the flange in the top grate sits in it to stop sewer ...

Just stumbled across another DNS evaluation tool - Namebench . This one's from Google. Since they're doing their own public DNS I guess they want to convince you it's faster. It's a bit heavier download at 8.5 MB vs 176 KB for DNSBench. I haven't tried it yet so I can't tell you how well it works. I...

There's a nice tool available from GRC, DNS Benchmark , for testing several aspects, including speed, of alternate DNS servers and comparing them to the default ones setup in your system, usually from your ISP. The utility doesn't have to be installed and has a built in list of DNS servers, includin...

Speaking of Thungsi Muang Festivals, does anyone know when they'll have the big plant fair?

No, don't know Kovichai or Low Oi. We're halfway between Phang See Gao and Phang Saam Mai - about 6 KM due west of the red light and then about 4 KM north. Along a very tenuous electric feed. I've thought seriously about rigging a car battery to the UPS. Maybe before next rainy season.

I bought the last one at Amorn, downstairs from Big C. They've got a couple of different brands including Panasonic. I bought an off brand because it had a higher amp hour rating than the Panasonic. I suspect it won't last as long but the power goes out so often, and so long, here 10 KM west of Kut ...

Leonics have worked well for me. I have a 500 watt I've been using for nearly 10 years and a 750 watt I've been using for 6. I've had to periodically replace batteries as they failed of course. Generally the batteries will last 2 or 3 years before they start to significantly weaken.

We had our well water tested through the water department in Udon. They charged 1,200 baht and sent the sample off to Bangkok to the government lab. They checked for iron, manganese, copper, zinc, sulfate, chlorine, fluorine, nitrate, total hardness as calcium carbonate, non-carbonate harness, total...

Interesting and worrying topic. In the house I built last year I used drywall for the ceilings so I thought I ought to look into it a little. I found the case document PDF for the class action suit in the US and it has a section on how they're identifying damage caused by that drywall. If you're wor...

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