joekicker

Just a quick look but I have never seen anything like Shilo's find. Excellent, excellent recommendation. I tested on an obscure show I like and it came through gangbusters. I still don't like watching TV on my computer, but I'm squirreling away this fine URL for emergencies. Thanks Shilo. p.s. the geeks who run this site have the arrogant "I use Firefox, you peasant" mentality. If they think lamely and wrongly that you are using MS browser, you have to enter a code to make their site work. hahaha very in joke the problem being they can't even identify that you are NOT using Microsoft IE, like most such idiots trying to force you to use their sainted Firefox. It's okay. They run a good website. Everyone is stupid in some ways.

One of the other statistics was that Clinton is winning Kentucky because Arkansas is closer to Kentucky than Illinois. Actually, Illinois is attached to Kentucky. That statistic was by Barack Obama, who is from Illinois. I haven't got the slightest idea what high school completion has to do with basic geography, though. Basic outline world geography isn't taught in later high school or college in the US so far as I know. How many white voters does it take to know geography?

The only music the girls consistently like is luk thuong (northeastern country music). Second would be some Bangkok bubble gum. They "like" it because that's what they hear and heard most of their lives. They really don't give a xrap what is played in an outdoor bar where they're not dancing. They're as cool with Pete's music as anything else.

GMail Drive accesses whatever Gmail account you're logged into, as many as you want. 7 gigs is enough for me so I don't have much experience switching, but I set it up originally on each of three accounts,so I know you can do it. YMMV indeed. I don't put the stuff that can send me to jail there, heh. I do keep archives of very boring stuff on it, that any Customs agent would be welcome to if she were unlucky enough to come across it which would be unlikely in the extreme. My problem isn't with GSpace, it's with browser-specific stuff. God didn't invent the Internet with that in mind. Sometimes, all you have is an Apple and Safari or Unix and Lynx, or your Mom's Windows and IE. On the Net, everything should work with everything. The desktop, we have lots of choices. They are PERSONAL computers. On the Net, everything should work no matter what.

Oh, I know you people are so proud of your Firefox, but actually GMail Drive is ... well the word "better" is subjective, but well, it's better. GMail simply seems to make another drive on your computer that is actually your Gmail account. You just drag files into it or out of it like any other drive. You can make virtual folders as well. http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm You don't need Firefox. You don't need anything at all apart from Windows.

mykl Exactly. You can do anything with Gmail - collect other accounts into it, collect all accounts from it, use it with or without a client, use it for SMTP only.... really, truly up to you! Plus 6.8 gigs of space and growing daily. Everyone needs choices and no software suits all people all the time, but Gmail is a dynamite app.

fisherman, Hotmail is the worst of the available choices. Yahoo is good and in my opinion Google mail (Gmail.com) is far, far better. Open a new account with one of the above. Heck, try them both and see which you like better. Tell your email correspondents. Send ALL your new mail from your new account. After a while, close the Hotmail one entirely. It's kind of like moving house - it's annoying to change addresses and phone numbers and so on, but once you settle in, everything is okay. The other good advice is to type out your email in, say, Notepad or even Microsoft Word first. THEN, you can copy and paste it into the email program and you never lose it. Another trick is to "CC" yourself - so you know if the mail went out, anyway.

Probably, but only once. Then, the next morning you'd be SOL. Whether it's their 24 hours or your 24 hours, it's still 24 hours.

Good eye. I think they made it out of scale like that so they would have enough room to print the names of the other places. Actually, it's not all that easy to find a map that shows the US in proper scale. This one from the 1980s is pretty accurate for its day. There is a map key here: http://tinyurl.com/57g5p6

I thought that was Guam and the Whatchamacallits and they gave Hawaii the full respect over on the left side of the map???

My times in Hawaii I never had any problem finding islanders willing to help with that. Sometimes you give a good exchange rate, but not often enough considering the severe case of Rock Fever you throw in on about the second day.

Oh, there could well be a machine limit, but you can just stick your card back in and do it again, or if it's empty go down the street to another machine. That's different from a limit of what you can take from your account in a 24-hour period. Almost all accounts/banks have such a daily limit. I put mine higher than yours because it's handy when I'm abroad to take a bunch of money at one time and not let the foreign ATM firms dig into my otherwise free Thai transfer. But although it's quite high, I still have a daily limit. THEN I have to find a machine that will let me take it all in one go, for one fee.

As opposed to... ?? Thais who can find Thailand? Germans who can find France? That old joke-map comes from the USA, by the way, where some people can laugh at themselves. Lots of similar ones from people who can't, though, such as: http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/strip.asp...52-b4923c42e1f2 Reminds me of the scene in The King and I where the prince is furious that the world map shows Thailand to be such a small country and Anna says, "Not as small as mine". You either have a chuckle about this stuff or fly into a rage, doesn't seem to be anything in between.

Skylar. Are you in Pattaya? If so, look out the window or door. See that weather out there? Tomorrow it will be almost exactly the same. One of the few really truly boring things about living in Thailand is the weather, which is unbelievably predictable. Even the odd Bengali cyclone remnant, once every 10 years or so, is known a week in advance. Pattaya weather prediction is even more boring than that. The biggest job sinecure in Thailand is chief meteorologist.

Hard to believe that map. If coffee comes from down there, wherever that is, why do they have coffee machines in Safeway, huh?

The daily amount is entirely between you and your bank. However, the main reason for a limit is for your protection - to avoid someone stealing your card and draining your account. So you might talk to your bank, explain your're going to be spending a lot, and ask them to up your limit. Generally speaking, you cannot use a card "in the bank" i.e. like a withdrawal form with the cashier.

I don't like Zonealarm any more. It's bloated and the free version is more nagware than freeware. I don't often recommend, but although I realise that no piece of software suits all people all of the time, I do actually recommend Comodo Pro firewall at http://www.comodo.com/ They have other security software which has got good reviews. I like Avira and AVG, I like Ad-Aware and Spybot. All of them are free, as in beer. All of them are equal or better than anything you'd pay for. As far as Norton and Symantec, I'd rather have hackers invading my machine than use them. I have never, ever seen a virus as bad as those alleged so-called "security" programs and I have researched really bad viruses including those that delete personal data and one that actually totally hosed my hard drive. None was as bad as Norton Anti-Virus. If there was NO alternative to those programs, I'd use nothing. I'm serious. They are that bad, that intrusive, that arrogant and that expensive.

Pretty well any decent money changer has a sign advertising it. A lot of jewellery shops are... there's no rule who might be a money changer, really. Money changers are licensed and there way, way more of them than banks. Never heard of getting cheated, ever - repeat, never HEARD of it. I would never use a bank to change money, and have found them universally reliable up and down the country. Of course beware of the ones in hotels and tourist-infested malls, where you probably will get LESS than a bank. But out on the street they're very good. Shop, check the bank rate to be sure you're getting better.

If you have a lot of steel implants you could rust. Trying to think of other problems, and I can't. The rainy season is pretty malleable, but it actually starts in July on average. You may go a lot of days without rain at the end of June, although this year is shaping up as a little wetter than standard, probably because of the global cooling.

If you stop using banks and go to money changers you will do even better.

Some call it a fine. Others think of it as a licence fee. I'm sure that by July, enforcement will be rigorous, just like the seat-belt laws.

And don't forget to cancel the newspaper delivery, and turn off the gas before you go out the door. Also phone your Mom, you're not that busy.

Thai Airways says their direct flight return is 2,300 baht from Don Muang. What THAI calls their "flexible" (change booking, get a refund, etc) cost 3,700 and 4,100 baht, approx. I don't think there are direct flights by budget airlines, but maybe someone else does. Book THAI direct on their website for 2,300 return if you want www.thaiair.com

There are some very nice beaches in the Pattaya area. I prefer just below Jomtien,but as the pictures immediately above indicate the beaches just above Pattaya are quite nice. And there are hotels of varying quality in both those areas.

Joe... great name!! Joe, if you are going to put her in a Thai-langauge school, your price range is very do-able indeed for a very decent urban school. You may spend a little more than that for English-international, though. As far as that goes, don't be put off by the prices at the toney schools that advertise a lot. You can do pretty well in the high five-figures.