Crotch bulge sold separately

Saw this ad on Facebook today.

Just one question Bonobos: is the crotch bulge included with the trousers? Or do I have to provide my own?

And to answer your question…yes, I am getting a little tired of jeans.

1 Comment / Posted in: wtf

More Intrade fun: election prediction map!

Intrade has launched a new feature for me to waste time with. They’ve opened up prediction trading markets for individual US states for the upcoming presidential election — and also provided this nifty map to visually translate how those predictions would correlate to electoral college votes.

For some reason the defualt view is the “Average” of electoral votes for each state based on the market values. This really doesn’t make much sense since you can’t split up electoral votes, so I prefer to view the “Leaning” view where votes per state ore given in full based on market values.

I’ve already noticed some significant shifts in just the past day. It’s pretty cool to follow.

OK, I’m wasting even more time writing about this.

No Comments / Posted in: Cool, politics

The web, if sketched by me.

Based on a recommendation from Matt Cutts, I went ahead last night and created a font from my own handwriting. It’s really easy. Took me about 20 minutes.

Sow now that I have my own childish handwriting in a font, what to do with it? How about view the web as if I drafted it myself! Here are the results:

What you’re looking at

Google

Yahoo

Amazon

NY Times

Digg

My favorite website

Wasn’t that scary/fun?

Would you also like to view the web through the hand(?) of Mike Leotta, or would you like to pass off love letters as if they were written by me? Then download my font! It’s free!

5 Comments / Posted in: Cool, Tech

Latest Internet Guilty Pleasure: Intrade.com

Ask someone who they think will win an election and you might get a biased answer. Have them put money on it and you’re bound to get a more honest answer.

This is why I recently have started monitoring intrade.com, an online predictions market.

Here’s a look at today’s presidential prediction graphs. Looks like some activities at the Republican National Convention created a short spike tonight, but things quickly returned to previous trends after.

Of course you can expand graphs over weeks, months and years. It was very interesting to see how the Palin announcement last week effectively reversed DNC gains made the night before.

I’ll often keep these graphs open all day long, set to auto-refresh, and compare with current news events. It can be pretty interesting at times. (cough cough Google News mashup, anyone?). You can also follow a traditional stock ticker.

Of course you can also bid on or monitor important issues like the Emmy Awards or Britney Spears chances of entering rehab, but I tend to stick with politics.

How is betting on current events legal? It isn’t! Well, not in the US. This company is based in Dublin.

4 Comments / Posted in: politics

Also heading east

I’ve been planning on writing this blog post for a few weeks now, Wysz just beat me to it.

Pretty much everything he said is true for me as well…everything except the living alone part, but I still don’t have any ties here except my job. I’ll just elaborate on a few things specific to me:

Location

My entire family (with the exception of one of my brothers) is on the east coast. Traveling back east for holidays, weddings, graduations, etc is just a pain in the ass — usually a pain involving two full days of traveling, several vacation days, multiple flight connections, and $tupid ticket prices. All of that in conjunction with my current financial situation means I can’t make it back for everything. I missed my brother’s graduation. That was lame. I miss my grandfather’s birthday every year, also lame.

Perhaps, if I lived in particularly cool east coast city, I wouldn’t be too far my family, yet far enough away to have some much needed space. Plus, I could watch a lot more baseball games from a certain team. To be honest, my recent trip to Boston was a personal test to see if I could picture myself living there. It passed the test after the first Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast sandwich.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome here in California. I’ve had an amazing time and met a lot of incredible people. But I’ve determined it’s just not of me. Coming out here, my plan was to stay out here as long as I had a reason to do so. Almost two years now and I haven’t found a reason (although an endless supply of avocados was the closest I got).

But at least I tried it. No regrets.

Weather

Can you find my parents house in this picture? Look closely, it’s there somewhere.

I grew up one of the snowiest places in the US (Fulton, NY) and spent my entire life complaining about snow. But now that I live somewhere where the weather is pretty much constant all year long, I kinda miss the stupid cold stuff. Maybe it was just 4 feet of snow overnight that I didn’t like…and that only happens in Upstate NY.

Nonetheless, I like the changing seasons. Autumn is just something that cannot easily be described in words — and never really should be. Winter certainly has it’s “I can’t feel my face, is my nose still attached?” moments, but it can be quite beautiful the rest of the time. Spring just smells alive. Summer is humid, but rolling thunderstorms sure make it worth it.

Timing

The sooner the better. My goal is to make the move in less than one year, two years absolute max. Google NYC wouldn’t be my first choice, but that could be a possibility with my current job, and I really want to stay at Google.

As Wysz said, it’s been fun, California. But I like making big changes, and I think I’m due for another one.

I think the Pontiac has another cross-country voyage in her.

6 Comments / Posted in: Uncategorized