It's Official!

Adobe completes aquisition of Macromedia. See Press Release.

Im now an Adobian :)

Spy Sweeper

I just bought Webroot Spy Sweeper 4.5 for free after rebate (FAR) last week. It's an anti-spyware removal and protection software. I purchased it because it has excellent reviews, won many awards, and cleaned out over 90% of spyware (and did I mention that it was FAR?). Compared to like 60% with other programs like adaware and spybot. A lot of times I have to use multiple programs to remove spyware. Anyways, my take on it the internet these days is that its not safe anymore, unless you are SUPER careful. I've been SUPER careful and Spy Sweeper still found some spyware on my computer. And trust my I've cleaned out many machines already to prove it. I know its not me to suggest buying something that's not free, but Im going to do it anyways. Buy this program, you wont regret it.

Black Friday Ads

Click here for a listing of black friday deals.
Click here for actual ad scans.

Happy Shopping!

Best Black Friday Deal Ever - $200 laptop

Black Friday is the nickname for the Friday sales and deals after Thanksgiving.
This is the best deal I've ever seen for a laptop.

$200 for:
Toshiba laptop
Intel Celeron M processor 370
DVD/CD-RW
512MB
15' screen
60GB hard drive
Internal Wireless G
Instant $600 discount - no rebates

PLUS
Free Wireless G router
Free All-in-one printer

**UPDATE - I zoomed into the ad scan and it looks like its only that price with signing up with AOL for a year (which will cost like $180). WEAK! AOL stinks.

$1.50/0.99 DVD rentals

I just rented Jet Li's "Unleashed" movie DVD at the Safeway at the 16th and Portrero Center using a DVDPlay kiosk. I just selected the movie I wanted and swiped my credit card and the movie came out of the machine. Pretty slick. The rental fee is $1.50 and you have to return it the next day otherwise, its another 99 cents. On Monday's the rental fee is only 99 cents. They had all the new releases and they come out with new releases every Tuesday. Also, the first rental is free :)
Not too many locations in SF, but check out there website for more info.

Aloha!

Just got back from Hawaii. We really had a good time. I wouldnt say it was easy with Caden, but with enough teamwork, we managed. I miss Hawaii already so I had to create a slideshow for the memories.

Aloha!

19 inch laptop!?

Is it me or are laptops getting bigger and bigger? I dont understand why people get large laptops. It kinda defeats the whole purpose of laptops which is portability (unless you use it as a desktop replacement). So Samsung is coming out with a new 19in laptop which weighs about 10 pounds. Who wants to carry around a 10 pound laptop? Anyways, the cool thing is that the screen detaches and presto..you have an lcd.

I've been Phished!

Im extremely careful when it comes to junk mail, phishing, pop ups, and spyware schemes. But 2 days ago, I fell for a real sneaky phishing scam. I was talking to a coworker on AIM and suddenly he sends me this URL. I click on it and the yahoo photos page loads. I thought he wanted me to check out some pictures hosted on his yahoo photos account and in order to view the photos, I would need to sign into my yahoo account to view the pics. I was totally not thinking and I just went ahead and logged in. Lucky I used my dummy yahoo account. Phew. Well basically, this dummy yahoo photos page is a fake copied page that is hosted on a free geosities website. So basically, they just basically know my login and password. I cant believe I fell for it. But the reason I fell for it is because i didnt know that spyware that was on my coworkers machine can send out these bad IM's to people. Yowsers. This one was real tricky. More details on the yahoo photos phishing scam.

Reunion

Oh no! Another good tv series! Reunion is a mix of 90210 and Lost. Martha Stewart and Apprentice is tonight too! My Tivo is working overtime.

Macromedia Studio 8 Now Available

The newest versions of our products are out.
Macromedia Studio 8 which includes Flash Professional 8, Fireworks 8, Dreamweaver 8, and Contribute 3.

Free Opera browser

The Opera browser is now free, meaning no more ads. Its another alternative to Internet Explorer or Firefox. It has some pretty cool features and is very fast.

Prison Break

Prison Break is a new mini series on fox. Its AWESOME! Doesnt the lawyer look like Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years?

100 free prints

Dotphoto has 100 free prints for joining and $4.99 shipping and handling. So its about 5 cents per pic. This is the most that I've seen a photo site give out for free. Dont know when it expires.

rogerchew.com redesign

I felt I need to redesign and reorganize my site. Let me know what you think.

rogerchew.com slow or down?

My web hosting has been experiencing problems this week. They are trying to fix it. Sorry for the incomvenience.

Google Talk and Google Desktop

Google continues to make cool free software.


Google Desktop 2 is now out. I must say its pretty cool. You can search for files on your computer and it will show up like a google search. If you use outlook, it can search your email, especially since outlook's search stinks. With this version 2, it has a sidebar which does amazing things. Instead of you going out to the internet, you configure it to grab content you want.


Also, just out but not really public yet is Google Talk. But like other IM clients, your friends also have to be on the same IM client network. Ive been using AIM, but since most of my coworkers are on YIM, I use Trillian which connects to both networks and then some. But with Google Talk you can connect with someone and literally talk using a microphone from anywhere in the world. So can somebody sign up and talk with me? hehe. Oh yeah, BTW, you need a gmail account in order to sign up.

Another one bits the dust...[recall]

Doh. Looks like the spyware/viruses are not fully cleaned out. The machine has 5 multiple users and I thought that by cleaning out 1 user it would clean out the rest. But I guess some of the spyware/viruses are specific to each user. Now I have to run scans Adaware, Spybot, Ewido, and Microsoft Antispyware on EACH user :(

Another one bites the dust...

I just cleaned out another one of my relative's computer that was infected with Spyware and viruses.
I must say that spyware is getting harder and harder to get rid of.
I had to use almost 8 different types of software to get rid of stuff. Not to mention multiple reboots, scans, deletions, etc.

Here is a good article that helped me out a lot especially the software they mention.

Last time it was cool web search spyware that gave me a hard time.
This time it was pacimedia and aurora spyware. Bleh.

Get outta here sms.ac!

After finally moving over to gmail, I thought Id be free from spam. I still do get spam, but gmail's spam filtering is excellent and pretty much ALL my spam goes into the spam folder. But sometimes, I do check my spam folder in case I have a real message in there. Low and behold, I see a familiar name, but the message came from sms.ac asking me to join on behalf of the sender. Though the sender did NOT know that the email was sent to me. That really chaps my hide. This company is sending out email invites to everyone in the sender's buddies list without the sender knowing it. That's just rude. And why do I have to sign up for their sms text service when I can go to my verizon wireless or email and do exactly the same thing! Sorry Im just very careful with my email address when signing up for things so i dont get spammed. But the question is...how do you prevent others from adding your email addresses to such services that abuse? Thats cool sms.ac, my gmail account knew you were junk. haha.

Fantastic 4

Sorry, havent really been posting stuff on my blogger. That's because I've been busy updating Caden's website. Cant wait to teach him to update his own site. Anyways, I saw a sneak preview of Fantastic 4. Its a good movie. Havent seen a good movie in a while. The movie focused on how they got their powers and how they dealt with it. And only in the end of the movie, you see how they really use it. At the end of the movie, I know ppl wanted to see more action fighting, but they'll probably have to wait for the sequel. Surprisingly, the movie was pretty funny. A lot of witty one liners by the human torch dude, and funny uses of their powers.

SBC Yahoo DSL $14.95

They just lowered their prices to $14.95 for DSL! This is only for new customers...but for existing customers, you can get them to rerate you to $14.95. I just did it. Follow the instructions in this thread.

Caden Joshua Chew

Hello everyone. Nice to meet you all!

Stacie is in labor!

Read more

Town Hall

Stacie took me to a restaurant called Town Hall. I must say that Boulevards is my favorite fancy restaurant, but if I ate at Town Hall one more time, I'd probably choose Town Hall as my new favorite. It wouldnt be fair to judge Town Hall as my favorite based on one sitting. The atmosphere is much more casual than Boulevards, but Im basing everything on the food quality. It was soooo good. I ordered the Beef Short Ribs and the meat just melted in my mouth. Stacie ordered the Ribeye steak. For appetizer we ordered stuffed calamari with sausage. And for dessert, we had the huckleberry and apple crumb cake with vanilla ice cream. Yum. Now Im motivated to create my favorite sf bay area restaurants on my site. Stay tuned.

Online Blockbuster Stinks!

I recently subscribed to online blockbuster dvd rentals and I must say that their service stinks.
Reason #1 - Bad Service. Within a time period of a week, I received a broken dvd, an incorrect dvd, and an unplayable dvd. Also, for some reason they are only shipping me 2 dvds when they are suppose to ship 3 dvds at a time.
Reason #2 - Bad Customer Service. They only compensated me a measly 1 free ecoupon for all my troubles. And 2 weeks later, I still have yet to receive it.
Reason #3 - Bad Site. Everytime I choose a different movie category it displays the SAME movies. Its slow and I always have to keep logging in. Their site is down right now as I write this.
Reason #4 - Small Inventory. I have about 50 dvds in my queue, and only 2 of them are available now.

My Advice: Pay the extra $3 a month and choose Netflix.

Lasik video

As promised, stacie created a short video of my lasik procedure.

20/15!!!

I survived lasik surgery and now I see 20/15 (that's better than 20/20)! I wasnt really scared until I actually got on the surgery table. Overall I spent 3 hours there, but the procedure itself was less than 15 minutes. I didnt feel the laser at all, but I did smell a burnt smell. I did also feel some pain and pressure when they opened up my cornea flap, but for only like 5 seconds.
After the procedure, I had to keep my eye closed for 4 hours, so I took a nap.
When I woke up, I couldnt open my eyes because my eyelids were glued shut from all the medicated eye drops. So for those asking if I saw perfectly after I opened my eyes, Id say no because, its still a little hazy. They said it will be a little hazy for a couple of months as my cornea heals. But I have no complaints. Every night before I go to bed, I always think I have to take off contacts since I've been doing it for so long. Stacie videotaped some of my lasik procedure experience. Hopefully, she has time to edit it and Ill post it up here.

LASIK Surgery

Im getting Wavefront LASIK with intralase tomorrow! Im not nervous, but more anxious to get it done. I decided to get the surgery because I didnt want to be fumbling around for my glasses when I have to wake every 2 hours to take care of the baby. Also, I didnt like wearing glasses or contacts. Im getting the surgery done at Pacific Vision Institute. See if you can find Stacie's pic on their website :)

Final Vacation

Stacie and I took our final vacation last week before the baby. We had lots of fun, so we might take just one more before the baby. We went to New York and did pretty much the same things as last time - eat, sleep, watch shows, shop, site seeing.
Click here for some pics.

"Son of the Mask" Free Advance Screening

Free passes for Friday, Feb 18.

Ong-Bak!!!!!!!!

I just watched a sneak preview of "Ong-Bak" by Tony Jaa. The movie was AWESOME! This guy does some CRAZY stuff. At the end of the movie, HE WAS ACTUALLY THERE! He performed some stunts and martial arts for all of us on stage. And then he signed autographs. I gotta watch this movie again.