Special treat: Giant Bug Village.

I admit to a bit of hyperbole. It's actually just Bug Village and not Giant Bug Village. But still... Many of these bugs are large enough and scary enough to give you a heart attack if you were to suddenly encounter them in the wrong situation. An interesting exhibit. I might go back for a closer look on a weekday, when the mall is less busy.

20230827

Lots of nice cloud days these days...

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แม่น้ำมูล / Mun River at ท่าช้าง / Tha Chang: The final, final stop.

ท่าช้าง / Tha Chang is the "elephant pier," where a herd of thirsty elephants used to come down to drink water from แม่น้ำมูล / the Mun River. So I'm told.

For me, Tha Chang represents the final, final stop. You die. There's a funeral ceremony. A cremation. Some fireworks. And then, a couple of weeks later, the family heads over to Tha Chang. There's a going away ceremony. Then you all get on a boat. You go out onto the Mun River. At the right time and place, you pour your family member's post-cremation bone fragments into the water, and they sink down to the bottom.

Rest in peace, my departed-too-early brother. (Not my actual brother, but a member of the brother/sister-hood, for sure.)

Back home, where life in this world goes on--for now.

20230820

Found two treasures in one day. Today was a good day.

I found the FM antenna for the soon to be up-and-running Pioneer TX-9500 II stereo tuner. And while finding it, I found my backup disc for Microsoft Office Pro 2010, which might seem old to you, but which is just fine for the old Windows 8.1 laptop I installed it on. It gives me Microsoft Word and Excel, which I would have otherwise had to pay for--again.

Regarding the FM antenna, I have low hopes. It's for a concrete room in a concrete house right next to a concrete carport. We shall see...

20230813

A snail's pace is not that slow. I'm just saying.

The old expression "at a snail's pace" seems not entirely fair. I have observed several snails recently, and they are not that slow, especially in view of their method of locomotion. At least, that's how I see it.

20230813

Better than no technician at all, but sometimes not by much...

There they sat on top of a cabinet for over a year, left as a project for the hot season when I'm stuck inside.

• Sansui AU-D9 integrated amplifier
  
  
• Pioneer TX-9500 II stereo tuner
  
  
• Technics SL-QL1 direct drive turntable

The task? Switch them all from their U.S. 120V voltage settings to Thailand 240V settings.

Sansui AU-D9 Integrated Amplifier

山水電気株式会社 / Sansui Electric Company

Maybe they lost money on almost every piece of equipment they made through the mid-1980s, but so be it. All the people who worked there can be proud of the excellent equipment they produced.

Great design by Sansui, as evidenced by the excellent voltage selector, which was readily understood by the technician seeing it for the first time.

Pioneer TX-9500 II Stereo Tuner

パイオニア株式会社 / Pioneer Corporation

If you observe a machine for 65 years, you learn a bit about its inner workings. So it is with my brain, which is not a bad brain. I have never desired to exchange it for a different brain. 

And yet, I have a significant brain defect, a serious failure in thinking approach. I'll describe it as hyper fixation on a particular idea/theory. Or as a kind of limitation/failure to adequately consider all possibilities. I sometimes stay with an ultimately wrong idea/theory for way too long. I do this even though I've caught myself doing this throughout my life, even though I've conducted post-mortem analyses of several serious scenarios wherein this defective thinking has occurred.

So it was with the voltage selector change project for this Pioneer TX-9500 II tuner. I will spare you the technical details. There was nothing pretty about the bull-headedness of wrong ideas and errors along the way. And there is nothing pretty about what remains of the voltage selector switch. 

The only good thing, and perhaps the only reason why you might still want me as the radioman on your ship, is that the input voltage selector was successfully changed to the 240V setting.

Technics SL-QL1 Direct Drive Turntable

パナソニック / Panasonic Corporation

The Technics SL-QL1 is not what you think of when you think of a turntable. The tone arm is attached to the lid, and it moves across the record as it plays. I think I remember it not skipping in some instances where standard-type record players skipped. But the only way to know for sure is to test, which I may have to do given that my digital files have all been lost due to my backup failure. The only way for me to listen to my remaining 30 or 40 albums is to play them on the turntable. Maybe that was meant to be...

20220814

The Moth

Life is short for a moth, no longer than six months apparently. I hope this one was okay. It was lying down on the stairs to the fitness center. Hopefully, like my own self, just a moment of disorientation?

20230816

The addict's syrup...

I recently took four or five days off of coffee. I'm back on it now. If caffeine were not a drug, it would not be listed in all the drug handbooks used by medical professionals.

I haven't brewed a cup of coffee in months. For now, it remains ice coffee, and ice coffee only. Forget about those little cans of UCC Black I used to purchase. I found a more economical way to get my twice or thrice a day fix. 

A drug addict I may be, but a thrifty one. If Benjamin Franklin is looking down on me from above, I hope he approves.

UCC Artisan's Coffee - No Sugar
USD 3.70 for 900 ml bottle

20230810

กิ้งกือ / The Great Millipede.

WARNING: Do NOT play this video if you are sensitive to earthy things like large crawling bugs and worms.

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A millipide the size of a small snake!!! It was heading towards me fast as I filmed. I stayed with the shot as long as I safely could. Country boy safety protocols were followed...

Estimated length: 15 to 18 cm

20230804

แห่เทียนโคราช / Korat Candle Parade.

2023 annual แห่เทียนโคราช / Korat Candle Parade. As indicated by the word "candle" in the name of the parade, the floats are made of wax. They have to hose them down with water during the day to keep them from melting. They should hose me down too because I'm melting like so many others in so many places. Hot!!!

20230801