Greenishyyyy!!!

Well, my goal was to stay late at work tonight to get work done. I ended up staying late at work and redesigning my entire website instead. It was worth it. Less shininess, more sleekness. And more greenness.

Oh, clear your cache and refresh to see the sexy new favicon.

Yup.

5 Comments / Posted in: Design, pointless

An open letter to Steve Jobs…

Dear Steve Jobs,

Please release new iMacs soon. My Dell is dying a slow and painful death. I would love to spend my year end bonus on one of your sleek, sexy machines.

Also, I <3 your mock turtleneck collection.

Respectfully,
Mike Leotta

8 Comments / Posted in: Tech

Date selection calendars, what not to do…

Do us all a favor. If you place date selector calendars on your site, make them appear as a dynamic page element, not in a separate window. Separate window date selector calendars usually load slower, mess up my window focus, and occasionally open up in new tabs. That’s really annoying. I don’t want to be switching back and forth from windows or tabs just to pick a date.

More importantly, if there are two calendars to select a date range, populate the month of the second calendar based on the month input of the first one. That’s really simple and useful. Unless airlines start offering time travel services, I don’t think I need to be selecting to travel back in time.

Who Gets it Right

JetBlue – Calendar is on the page as a fast dynamic element. Month of July in the calendar is populated based on my previous selection. Hiyooo!!

Who Gets it Wrong

American Airlines (no surprise) – Calendar opens in a new browser window, booo!! I selected a July date for my first selection, but AA is still showing me February when I clicked on the second calendar icon, ugh!! How long have they been installing 757s with flux capacitors?

6 Comments / Posted in: Design

Space is awesome when things explode!

An unnamed coworker of mine recently blogged about my displeasure with the current state of our space program (it’s boring). But if we keep doing stuff like this, you can sign me up for the NASA newsletter.

So I guess I’m hoping for more failures from NASA so that we have excuses to blow things up.

1 Comment / Posted in: Cool, Tech

There was something floating in my beer…

I’ve been living in California for about a year now. I’m still slightly angry at myself for not venturing into a Bevmo store until only a couple of months ago. If you enjoy beer that has taste and has an advertising budget that can fit on a calculator screen, then this is the place to go. It’s also the only place I can satisfy all my New Belgium Brewery cravings, specifically the 1554 Black Ale. (And if you ever find yourself in Fort Collins, CO, you have to tour this brewery — see some amazing stuff and drink a lot for free!)

So a few weeks back while perusing the craft brews aisle in Bevmo, and finding myself indecisive as usual, something caught my eye at the far end of the shelf:

It’s called Chili Beer. Yes, those are chili peppers floating inside. And they’re not just for looks — the beer has a distinct chili pepper taste. And despite the incredibly annoying website, the beer is delicious. Once you get past the initial moment of surprise when a strange, slimy object tries to slide into your mouth mid-gulp, you’ll be hooked. I’ll definitely buy some more next time I go to Bevmo.

Why can’t more products in other stores I go to be more like Chili Beer? It’s not that hard, just make something different and intriguing, and I’ll buy it.

And then I’ll blog about it. And then people still stop bugging me to write blog posts.

6 Comments / Posted in: Beer, Marketing