No more hi-octane ethanol-free gas in Mahasarakham

This photo was taken back in March.
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This was the last gas station in Maha Sarakham to sell 95 octane gasoline with no ethanol added. It greatly surprised me to find them selling it because all of the other stations had gradually phased it out by the end of the previous year – PTT and Petronas were the first to go, then Esso, then finally, what I thought was the last holdout, Caltex. But I stopped at this station (I even forget what company it was!) on the way back from the road to Borabu, a neighboring town, and got a full tank of the good stuff – unadulterated 95 oc (and it may very well have been the last tank my car will get, ever – it’s VQ30 is running fine on 95 gasohol, tho).
The problem is, this station is too far away and off the beaten path. When I went to the labor office (located on the road to Borabu) to renew my work permit a few days ago, I looked at the pumps when passing by and saw that they had finally switched to the ethanol crap like everywhere else.
Sad.
Note: The VQ30 in my A33 Cefiro is running on 95 gasohol. The RB20 in the S60 Crown is running on regular (non-eth) 91. They are both running fine, but I’d still prefer to run them on non-eth 95 because it runs smoother, gets better mileage, and isn’t robbing food from people’s mouths.

lost in the ether

I did something today I’d never done before: I lost a chunk of my photo archives. The last 200 photos or so, including the originals of the ones used in the last two posts. The ones on the blog are all that remain… I did this because I was disk juggling and creating backups while I was too tired, overwriting data and formatting a disk that I assumed had been backed up already. Oops. I only write this here as a future warning to all: DON’T FORMAT DISKS WHEN TIRED!!
That is all.

Almost crawling

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He can lift his head quite high, and he can propel himself forward with great force, but he can’t yet do both at the same time. He has a lot of fun acting like a human bulldozer, though.
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We are greatly enjoying these days of limited mobility – he can move to one side on of his crib while sleeping and even roll over occasionally, but he basically stays put. Also, he can cry and sigh and burp and laugh and coo, but he can’t tell us, “no.” All in all, newborn to five months is a pretty great age.

Pimp Ghost Riding (Sky on Fire)

The other day we went to nanny’s village to see the flooded rice fields. The Chi River has overflowed into the fields, and huge invading catfish are happy to feast on drowned field mice and other flood detritus. Unwilling to take Mr. Max out on a flimsy boat, we watched the villagers go spearfishing for dinner.
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It sure is a good thing we took the trusty old Crown out on the muddy roads instead of our pretty car.