zzSleepyJohn

I'm an old-fashioned codger brought up in the bygone days of post WW2 thrift,  so I really hate the present day western world's throw-it-away-and-buy-new culture.    One of the things I love about Thailand though, is how shops can often  fix broken TVs, washing machines, video players and even laptop computers in their back rooms for a song.

But my problem is just a bit more specialised.  I want to get my laser printer drum fixed.  Now a laser printer's drum is just a glorified plastic roller with a fine and delicate coating of special electrostatic sensitive selenium material on the outside,  and if they are damaged they can be touched up or recoated by someone with a bit of experience with the aid of expensive solutions and tools.  A US-based firm Rotby Laser Images, Inc. shows exactly how it's done and sells all the tools to set up a business to do it on their pagehttp://rotby.com/purchase/    This isn't a d-i-y kit for a once-off user though,  a business would need to repair quite a few drums to make it worthwhile.  

Now buying a complete new drum assembly for my Fuji Xerox Docuprint 203A costs 75% of the price of a new printer,  and buying a new toner cartridge costs 50%,  so buying these items new just isn't an economic option.  Repair or 2nd-hand refurbished replacement drum is what I need.

These laser drums are in photocopiers as well as in laser printers,  so there must be thousands and thousands of them around in Thailand with a fair proportion of them wearing out or getting damaged,  and I just can't believe that when they get into trouble their owners have to  replace the whole machine.   There must be repair businesses around who refurbish drums at a price less than the cost of a complete new drum assembly.

So my question is who are and where are these repair businesses,  and how could I get in touch with them?      Anyone got any ideas or experience with a bad drum on their laser printer?

Hi,   I normally live in Chiangrai,  but I'm in England now,  booked to arrive back in Bangkok on 8th December.

I normally go back to Chiangrai on an overnight bus from MoChit,  but  have been hearing reports of floods still causing havoc on the roads and to the buses just north of Bangkok.

Can anyone give me an update on the currenrt situation and how it's affecting bus services north?    

I'm guessing that the floods must be receding now,   but does that leave MoChit still a muddy quagmire,  and are buses still having to take long circuitous deviations before they can get to Nakhon Sawan and easier roads north?

I won't be doing this bus journey until probably 9th December,  so hoping to get  an idea on whether to expect things bus-wise might be largely back to normal  by then.

Big C were doing a special offer on Acer Aspire One 522 netbooks last week,  and as I was in dire need of a backup computer and it was a cheap deal,  I got them to put 2GiB RAM in one and bought it.   It came with no operating system except text-based Linpus Linux,  and I didn't really want  the hassle of Windows,  neither legit or otherwise,  so I took at as it was and installed Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) on it myself.  

I was expecting the 1.0GHz AMD processor would make it feel slow,   but that hasn't been my experience at all so far.    Natty does tend to freeze up during initial loading when it's cold (but strangely not if I've warmed it up with a short session in Linpus Linux first).   However,  once warmed up and logged in it's stable and doesn't freeze.    Maybe this could be a processor issue;   I'm not sure.   It has a 320GB HDD,  built-in wifi and webcam,  and on the whole seems great considering the size and price.

But I do have a few problems with it's sound.   There's just a single (left) built-in speaker  and an earphone socket,  but when I plug earphones in,  the speaker continues to play and there's no sound in the earphones at all.  I haven't got the sound system muted anywhere as far as I know,   and I'm using the same Natty sound programme and same pair of earphones on another laptop without any problem.   On-line radio and video clips only play silently,  so there's clearly something wrong,   but I can't tell whether it's h/w or s/w or some kind of compatibiity between the two causing my problem.       Also,  neither can I detect any sound from the built-in mic nor from an external  mic in the mic socket.    

Before taking my netbook back to Big C and telling them sound doesn't work,  I really ought to try and find a way of proving whether there's a h/w problem or not.    

The netbook comes with an Acer DVD full of Windows based utilities,  including a Conexant audio codec,   but AFAIK none of this is of much use to me.

Wondering if any Linux users here have tried an Aspire One netbook,  and if so,  with what result?        Appreciate any comments.

I have a retirement visa and multiple re-entry permit both normally valid for one-year  and both issued in March 2010 stamped in my old passport,    but because that old passport was going to expire in Sept 2010,   the immigration office in MaeSai shortened the validity of both the retirement visa and the re-entry permit to 6 months to coincide with the date my passport was going to expire.

OK, so now I'm overseas where I've got myself a brand new clean passport  with nothing stamped in it at all,   and I also have my old cancelled passport with the original annual retirement visa and re-entry permits available to show.

On the face of it,  I would expect to be able to show the stamps in my old passport to Thai immigration when I arrive back in Thailand and hopefully they will let me in until March 2011 which is the date when my annual retirement visa  expires. Or I suppose they might just give me a 30 day tourist stamp and tell me to go to MaeSai to sort it out. Either of these possibilities would be OK.

But I'm worried on two possible scores:

1.   When I return to Thailand,  it will be within the original 12 month validity of  my visa and re-entry pemit,  
but it will be after the September 2010 expiry date now showing in my  old passport, so it will appear as
    if they have both expired.

2.   I plan to return to Thailand on a one-way ticket,  and it may be hard to convince the airline  check-in
      staff to let me board because they have rules saying travellers must either have a return ticket or be
     able to show some kind of residence permit for Thailand.  

Not sure if I'm worrying unnecessarily on these two points,   or if I ought to try and sort it out somehow,  before I travel back to Thailand.

What do you think?   Any suggestions? Any similar experiences?