Why the Button Fly?

I swear that the last 5 pair of pants I bought were button fly. WHY?! I hate button fly. What's wrong with the zipper? It is suppose to be more "fashionable"? You cant even see it. I googled this topic and I found an interesting blog about it that I totally agree with (see below). I dont know anyone who would prefer button fly vs. zipper. If you do, please let me know. Otherwise, I think we should get rid of the button fly.

As I was putting on a fairly new pair of pants today, I wondered why the clothing company had decided to use a button fly instead of a zipper fly. Three of my four newest pairs of pants have button flies on them, and while I like the pants for other reasons, I can't stand having to button them up. What exactly do people find so compelling about button flies, anyway?

The way I see it, zippers have several advantages:

They are easier to use: Grab the tab and pull vs. find the slot, hold the button just right, insert the button through the slot, repeat.
They are quicker: They take less than a second to use, compared to five or more fumbling seconds with the button fly.
They are less visible: One simple flap easily covers the zipper, as opposed to a second flap that bulks up the fly area and can be seen from the right side.
Now, I suppose some may view the third bullet point as an advantage for the button fly, but I'm guessing most are with me on that one.

So why would anyone prefer button flies? Do they last longer? Are they less likely to come undone? Are they part of a larger trend toward 19th-century style?

Can somebody enlighten me on this one? If anyone out there prefers the button fly, please post a comment explaining your rationale.

Check out the comments on this post, they are hilarious.

Free AVG Antivirus no longer free

AVG antivirus was the free program I used on all my computers. Starting January, it is no longer free.

So I found another free antivirus program that I've been using to replace it.

Its called Clamwin.



UPDATE: Looks like AVG was trying to trick us into upgrading to a paid version with all of its warning pop up messages. But in fact, AVG will still be offering a FREE 7.5 version.
Available at www.free.grisoft.com
For more info, check out the forums

Black Friday Deal - 1GB Sandisk Micro USB Flash Drive

Lots of deals this past Black Friday. Nothing I wanted except for a USB flash drive. The 42 inch Panasonic Plasma for $999 at Best Buy was a good deal though. Anyways, I got the Sandisk 1GB Micro USB Flash drive for cheap. Too bad I had to wake up at 6am to buy it online at Staples. Staples Easy Rebates are the best. No need to submit the receipt and the upc code. Everything is done online. This is how all rebates should be done.

$39.98 - $25 (instant coupon) - $7 (easy rebate) + tax = $9.

The Perfect Laptop Mouse

My pursuit of finding the perfect laptop mouse has ended. But before I tell you which mouse it is, let me give you some history.

A couple of years ago, I wanted a mouse for my Dell 700m laptop. My laptop is very small and has 12 inch screen. So I wanted a very small mouse to match. It would look ugly with a regular size mouse.

I found the Kensington Mini USB pocketmouse. I chose it because it connected via USB, it had a retractable cord, and it was extremely small.


Then came wireless usb mice. No wires...cool. But with wireless mice, you need to bring 2 things along, the mouse and the usb adapter. Thats just silly. Why do I want to bring more things along. So I got a mouse that had the usb adapter that seamlessly fit inside the mouse. COOL!


Then I started thinking to myself. I still have to carry both my laptop and mouse separately. Wouldnt it be cool to have a PCMCIA mouse, that way the mouse is always inside the laptop? Low and behold came the PCMCIA mouse. And last but not least, the ultimate laptop mouse. A bluetooth, PCMCIA mouse. Why is it cool?

1. No usb connection whatsover
2. No batteries needed because it charges inside the laptop.
3. No need to carry it around since its stored inside the laptop.
4. No wires.

Nuff said. Stop drooling. Introducing the Bluetooth MoGo Mouse:


Too bad I dont have internal bluetooth on my laptop :(

Free AMC/Loews Movie Tickets

If you try on American Eagle (AE) jeans at participating store, they will give you 1 free AMC/Loews movie ticket. The movie tickets will work at any AMC and even the Loews Metreon. The tickets dont have any restrictions and even work for special engagements. Just try on the jeans and bring the jeans to the cashier. But make sure you have some feedback on why you did or why you did not like the jeans. 1 per person.

Click on the image to find out more info.

Thanks. No.

Have you ever received an email from a friend or family member and really dont care too much for the contents of the email? Are you on a mailing list that someone that you know put you on without your permission? How do you tell a person, especially a family member or friend not to send you anymore weekly jokes or stuff that you dont really flooding your inbox?

Nowadays, I think we all need to be educated on email and internet ettiquette. Have you seen what teenagers are posting on their blogs lately? But that's another story. I want to talk mainly about emails that you dont want to receive.

There really isnt a way to tell the person that I dont want to receive your emails without offend them. So most people just ignore the emails or set up a filter. I found a "nice" letter that might help a little.

So let's turn things around. What if you want to send out email to a bunch of people that you think might be interested in what you have to send?
Bad - You send emails out to them, without any capability to unsubscribe or subscribe.
Good - You make sure that people can unsubscribe to the mailing list anonymously.
Better - You tell them that you want to send out stuff to you, and if they want to receive it, they'll have to subscribe to the mailing list.

So in otherwords, use a list server to manage your mailing lists. There are plenty of free ones out there. Please repect others privacy.

Video on the Web

As you may have noticed, video on the web is exploding. There are websites popping up left and right (ie. Google video, YouTube, ourmedia, vsocial, sharkle, clipshack, grouper, vimeo, revver, videoegg), where you can store and watch videos. Im currently looking for a place to store my videos of Caden. Its too much work managing and handling videos on my website on my own. Why do so much work when I can let a third party site do the work for me? All of the sites have many different restrictions, formats, rules, etc.

For my videos, Im looking for 4 key components:
1. Flash Video - the format of video when played should be using Flash technology. This makes a clean experience. The video should load and play right into the browser. There is no need to download or open a separate player.
2. Quality - The quality has to be somewhat decent.
3. Sharing - I need the ability to embed the video right into my blog. And I also need the ability to share my library of videos publicly on that site.
4. Free - Of course and no upload limit.

The sites that I really like is videoegg and sharkle. Videoegg is really easy to use and the quality was good. The only thing they did not have is the capability to share a library of videos. Im only able to post to my blog.

Still testing out sharkle. But check out the music video below.

Nintendo Wii

The new Nintendo game console is coming out is called "Wii". Its pronounced like "We". It was named like that because they are gearing the console for more team-like and multiplayer games. Also, the two i's is suppose to represent two persons.
Anyways, I dont get too excited about video game consoles because I dont play that many console video games. But this video got me excited just because of Wii's controller. It takes video gaming to a whole new level.

Super Mario Brothers Live

Im getting addicted to watching videos online. Here is a good one that we'll probably use for puppetry some day.

rogerchew.com version 3.0

As you may have noticed I redesigned my site once again. I think I over complicated my previous design by having too many sections and having 2-tier navigation. Now I combined my entire site into just 3 pages. The design is completely done using CSS. There are no html tables whatsoever. Let me know what you think, while I try to think of more things to add to my site. Im also still trying to figure out what kind of blog content I should post. Should I post deals or some of my thoughts or computer news or daily life stories?

One Red Paperclip

Another amazing and ingenious internet idea. This guy starts out with one red paperclip and tries to trade up until he gets a house. He currently has:
-One year free rent in the heart of downtown Phoenix. (If needed, the apartment can also come fully furnished.)
-roundtrip airfare for two from any major airport in North America.

Read his blog


Here is another genius who accomplished his goal and is a millionaire.
The website of Alex Tew, a 21-year-old entrepreneur, who hopes to pay his way through university by selling 1 million pixels of internet ad space for $1 each.

Tivo Lifetime Subscription Ending :(

Tivo is ending their Lifetime Subscriptions. They have extended it through April 15 only by calling to activate. I still have my Tivo Series 1 w/ lifetime and it still works great. Cant live without it.

Free San Francisco Wi-Fi

Looks like we're going to get free Wi-Fi in San Francisco thanks to Google.
I wonder what the catch will be. Gmail has those smart ads on the right hand side which are related to your email's content. Ingenious. But it doesnt bother me, though it does capture my attention sometimes. I think when connecting to the free Wifi, it will probably direct users to some google portal before surfing, which is what most hotels do. I dont mind that. As long as its FREE!

Hyper-Threading?

I just installed my new 300gb Seagate Serial ATA hard drive on my Dell Dimension 8400 computer. I had to change some settings in my BIOS in order for my system to recognize the new drive. However, while playing around with some settings, I discovered that my "Hyper-Threading" is turned off, which is no real surprise because that is the default setting. So I had 2 questions:
1. What is Hyper-Threading?
2. Why is the default BIOS setting off?

I remember always seeing the Intel w/ Hyper-Threading in the description of Dell Desktops. So I did a google search and found it that its suppose to increase performance using that technology.
"Hyper-threading enables multi-threaded software applications to execute two software threads in parallel, thereby improving system responsiveness. Intel Pentium 4 Processors enabled with HT Technology deliver performance and multitasking gains that result in increased productivity and efficiency."

So if this is a good thing, then why is it defaulted off on my computer? Well supposedly according to a forum, it doesnt work well with some software. So Dell didnt want more customer service calls.

So anyways, I turned it on noticed that when I loaded my photoshop elements or premiere elements that the loading start screen now says multiprocessor instead of single CPU. Hopefully I'll see an increase in performance.

So in summary, turn on your HyperThreading!

Jet Li's last movie!? - "Fearless"

Noooooo! If I had to pick a person that is my idol, it would be Jet Li. You would know why after watching one of his Hong Kong movies. Dont watch any of his US movies because they are horrible. Anyways, Jet Li is coming out with a new movie called "Fearless".

Dell Super 600m Notebook Deal

I just got a REALLY good deal from Dell. I heard from a Dell Rep that they getting rid of their non-widescreen laptops. All of the Dell laptop you see now are widescreen (rectangular vs square) and silver. The only laptop that Dell was stilling selling but wasnt widescreen was the 600m. The 600m is a very solid laptop. Its surprisingly only 5.3lbs which is pretty light. My 700m is 5lbs because of my extended battery. So I got the laptop below for $506 TOTAL including tax and shipping. Did I mention the 1GB RAM and dvd burner?! The cheapest laptop on Dell.com is the B120 which is $449 PLUS tax. This deal is currently expired and lasted only about a day.

Dell 600m
# Celeron M Processor 360(1.40 GHz/400MHz FSB) 14.1-in XGA 32MB Video
# 1GB DDR SDRAM 2 Dimms
# 40GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
# Integrated Modem and NIC Internal 56K Modem and Integrated Network Card
# Combo/DVD+RW Drives FREE 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW)
# Wireless Networking Cards Dell 1370 Internal Wireless (802.11b/g, 54Mbps)
# Primary Battery 6-Cell Lithium Ion Battery (53Whr)

Closing Stores...

Wow. Lots of major stores are closing. Good guys recently closed. ToysRUS is closing. The cashier lady told me the closest one will be in Santa Rosa. I just heard Radio Shack is closing. And Mervyns be closing some stores too.

Geez, Target and BestBuy must be killing off all the competition.

But really... when was the last time you bought something at Radio Shack or Good Guys? I think the last thing I bought at Radio shack was batteries.

SBC Yahoo! DSL $12.99

Price drop! SBC Yahoo! DSL Express regular prices are now $12.99/month for new ONLINE subscribers at 384Kbps-1.5Mbps/128Kbps with 12 month term. Free activation. Pro $17.99

Whoa! Now there really is no excuse to get off dial up and go to dsl.

Mac vs. Windows

I bought an imac G5 last year mainly to do videos. But I just sold it last week. I gave Mac a chance, but it just didnt cut it for me. Dont get me wrong though. The machine itself is nice. Putting an entire desktop into an LCD screen is pretty amazing. So when it comes to hardware, I think Mac wins. They must spend lots of R&D. But when it comes to software and operating system, windows wins. So now Im set up to do videos on my PC after getting a firewire card. Im going to post more videos of caden, but now I need to find a good video hosting site. Still researching that. Ill let you know.

Gmail contact groups

Gmail finally has group contacts. Now I dont have to copy and paste email addresses anymore. Hallelujah. Took them long enough.