This is announcement that the next Wifflefest will be held July 19th.  Secure the date.  If you were planning on going to a wedding, skip it.  If you were suppose to have a date, bring her.  You don’t want to miss it.

What is Wifflefest?
The magical festivity, steeped in tradition, is the combination of two sports—wiffleball and beer drinking.  It was founded in the early 21st century by four guys in an apartment across from a park.  One morning while pondering the meaning of life, they thought “hey, I wonder if we could combine everything we love about beer drinking, wiffleball, and festivities into a single event”.  And so, on that morning, Wifflefest was born.  It was not but two weeks later that the first Wifflefest was held.  The keg glistened as the sun rose that morning.  If you stood still, you could hear the faint sound of tradition in the air.  As the day poured on, many games were won and lost; and, many plastic cups lay strewn across the field of play.  But, one thing remained certain—the first Wifflefest would not be the last.

Where and When?
The location is TBD, but mostly likely in a park in STC. The date is July 19th, high noon.

What do I need to bring?
Some wiffle balls, a little yellow bat, and your drinking shoes.  Although, the wiffle balls and the bat will be provided.

Can I bring a friend? Yup.

This year’s event will be hosted by the last Achiever Award Winner - Jeremy Krueger.

Update from the host:  You’ve heavily touted the wiffle ball aspect of this event, but there will certainly be something for everyone. Since the event will be held in St. Charles, we are required to have a functioning washers game on site and everyone must have at least one Busch Lite in their coolers at all times. I’m currently working on getting a tattoo artist to set up shop at the pavilion. The down side to this is that St. Charles tattoo artists only know how to apply the “tramp stamp” or cool tribal arm band as these are the only tattoos ever requested in the county.

Rengel requested me to blog about this article, so here it goes.  Rengel, you will have to clarify whether you are pro- or anti-screen savers in the comments.

This is actually a relatively heart-felt article with a lot of good intentions wrapped into it.  The problem is that the majority of the people reading Yahoo! Green already realize that a glowing monitor turned on uses a lot more power than one turned off.  They might even have one of those fancy green power management systems that cuts off any residual power to the monitor, as well.

The main problem with this article is that the type of people with a blazing fire screen saver are not the type of people reading Yahoo! Green.  They are truck-drivin, Busch-drinkin, ECW-watching, cow-tipping suburbanites.  And, they enjoy making love by the fake fire.  So, why does Don Willmott, forecast earth correspondent, want to take that away from them?  Let the people have their fun.

As a followup, turn your computer  and monitor off when you leave work or home.  It makes a difference.

Sportsmanship.  While watching the NBA finals the last week, I saw an event that repeated itself over-and-over again.  When the Lakers attempting a three-point field goal near the Celtics bench, you could see members of their bench yelling at the shooter and even jumping and clapping their hands to simulate a blocked shot.  More often than not, this behavior was done by Sam Cassell—an NBA veteran with 14 years of experience.  Now, to be fair this could have occurred when the Celtics were shooting; I do have a pro-Lakers bias. 

With that said, the fact that this is happening is troubling for the NBA.  This practice demonstrates an obvious lack of sportsmanship and is a poor example for youths competing in leagues around the country.  I personally have lost a lot of respect for Sam Cassell, and it has really cast a bad light on the Celtics franchise, as a whole.  A blog post like this should not have to be written.  Players, organizations, and ultimately the league should self-regulate this behavior.

Now, I would like to say this is an isolated problem for the NBA.  But, with players constantly yelling at refs (Rasheed Wallace) and giving cheap shots after plays (James Posey), this seems like the rule and not the exception for the league.  I think a lot needs to be done in the area of sportsmanship, before I will seriously consider watching it on a regular basis.

This was a busy weekend—went to a Cardinal’s game and a Wedding.  Here are the highlights in list form for my short-attention-span friends.

1.  Bad Luck for the Cardinals - Apparently I am bad luck for the Cardinals.  This is the second game in a row I have been to where the opposition has put up 20+ on the red birds.  I am going to the game on Thursday, so if the Royals somehow muster up 20 runs, I might be banned from Busch (or InBev?) for life.

2.  Barack/The Rock 2008 - There seems to be building support for a Barack/Duane Johnson ticket in 2008.  Duane could introduce Barack with his patented slogan “if you smell what Barack is cooking?”.  And, in debates against McCain’s VP-to-be, Duane would definitely be a formidable force with his raised eyebrow.  What better way to end a debate than with the catch phrase “know your role and shut your mouth”?  I know I would be on board.  All joking aside, I am leaning toward Barack in 2008, if you are too, feel free to Barack the Vote and donate to his campaign.

3.  Total Eclipse of the Heart - If you cannot book the Dan Band for your wedding, I would suggest going with the best wedding DJ in St. Louis - Joe Fingerhut.  He put on a good show at the Alissa-Jarrod (correction) wedding bash on Saturday night.  It was the first wedding where I had seen the dance floor completely full the whole night.  He also did a number of hilarious audience participation skits.

4. Safety Dance - This jam was once again my song of choice for the weekend.  I just cannot get enough of Men without Hats.

5. Ask the Wrangler - On Saturday, the Wrangler tentatively agreed to answer your questions on this blog.  So, Friends of Matt, submit your questions for the Wrangler in the comments below.

1. Bankstas - Possible, the best book cover ever. I might have to buy this for my coffee table. Although, I would have titled it Damn it feels good to be a Banksta. It is more hood hop.

2. Phil? - Why did Phil Jackson go with Jordan Farmer for 21 minutes in game 4 last night. He had 3 points and 1 assist. I cannot think of a better way to blow a 20+ lead than putting in a point guard who can’t play “d” or score. It is like allowing the Celtics to go 4 on 5 for half the game. Phil, this isn’t hockey.

3. McCain won’t be reading this

4. What’s the best nation? Weber Nation. It has classes, recipes, videos, and even some good ol’ fashion grillin’ stories. I might just have to fire up the spirit this weekend and try out a new recipe. Anyone for some beer-basted pizza?

5. Future laptop - This could possibly be my future laptop. I like the small form factor. Sprinkle in a little Ubuntu goodness, and this little engineering marvel could go anywhere—anywhere.

With the announcement of the iPhone 2, I have once again got the bug to go out and purchase a new piece of technology.  With that said, I consider myself a pretty rationale person, so I wanted to do a quick cost-benefit analysis of the purchase decision.  As such, I broke my thoughts on the decision into three major considerations: (1) the value of the new technology - 3G, (2) the two year contract with AT&T, and (3) the opportunity costs of purchasing the phone.  With these considerations in mind, I did a quick cost-benefit analysis and came up with a decision (at the end, of course).

1.  3G - When the first iPhone came out, the decision to buy was pretty easy.  The EDGE network was too slow, and, whenever I am around WIFI, I have access to a computer - home, work, school, etc.  So, the most significant feature of the iPhone - access to the Internet - was completely useless.  3G makes the iPhone really appetizing for me.  It would fill in any gaps that I currently have in Internet access with a tool that provides adequate access to the Internet (although, the iPhone still does not fully support Flash, Silverlight, or any streaming audio format).  But, I have lingering doubts that with 4G (LTE and WiMax) right around the corner, 3G will be slow in comparison to whats around next year.  This leads me to my next major consideration - the two year contract.

2.  Two Year Contract - The second generation iPhone requires a 2 year contract through AT&T.  This contract will lock you into guaranteed rates of $30-45/month (depending on plan) for data on top of the existing voice plan.  This would result in phone bills of between $70-90/month depending on the voice plan you choose.  This contract is great for AT&T, but not so great for consumers.  Essentially, it locks you into paying premium prices for 24 months for a 3G technology that is almost guaranteed to be obsolete within 12 months.

3.  Oppotunity Costs - So, what are the opportunity costs if I decide to go with the iPhone?  I currently pay $5/month for text messaging.  The iPhone would increase my current contract by a minimum of $25/month.  Over 24 months (and factoring in a nearly risk-free return of 3% from ING), the contract alone would cost me $618 more.  Also, when signing a two year contract you automatically forgo the right to shop for better contract and possible future rates.  This is a huge opportunity cost, especially, considering how fast technology changes.

Cost Benefit Analysis - So, the costs in the case are pretty substantial.  The additional costs of the iPhone over the next two years would be at least $818 (purchase price + additional contract), while removing my ability to negotiate for better contracts over that period of time.  The major benefit - 3G data access - would fill any gaps when I currently do not have access to the Internet.  But, at the same time, it does not appear that the Safari browser will provide a “complete” internet experience.  For me the GPS and apps are quite trivial and will not factor into my decision.   As a result, I do not think the iPhone will provide enough benefit to be worth the opportunity costs, and as of today, I will not be purchasing the product.  But, of course, that could change when I see all my friends with one.  Sometimes, you just have to be a little irrational.

Update:  Gizmodo just put up an article on the true price of an Apple iPhone 2. What really amazes me is the apparent increase in the price of broadband from year-to-year—especially if you factor in cable and broadband Internet. Is it just me or does is the price of broadband rising? Economies of scale and scope suggest that the opposite should be happening. Which begs the question:  is the current price of broadband a reflection of true economics or is it the result of monopolies?

A couple months back I was in the market for a Nintendo Wii.  Being that they are short on stock , I turned to the Wii Tracker for some help.  After a couple weeks, I started to notice a pattern.  The Wii would come in stock at retailers, but only in expensive bundles.  This was frustrating because I really only wanted to spend $250, not $400-600 on a bundle.  To me, it appears that retailers are taking advantage of the Wii shortage to boost sales.  While the practice of bundling is sometimes illegal, it does not appear to be so in this case because the products are related.  However, I find the practice troubling, at best.

According to Wii Tracker, here are the list of retailers that are taking part in this practice:  Circuit City, Costco, Toys R Us, Buy, Comp USA, Dell, EB Games, eToys, Frys, GameStop, Sam’s Club, and WalMart.

Deep in the heart of Cardinals’ country, there are still a few fans of the NBA—although, you wouldn’t think so by listening to sports talk radio in St. Louis.  But after the LA/Boston game last night, I might be starting to turn away from the sport.  Last night should have been a great game, but for the most part it was ruined by poor officiating.  When you have a team like the Lakers, who get the majority of their points in the paint, have a -28 free throw disparity, something is wrong.  To make matters worse, the officials have taken it upon themselves to call needless technicals when players complain. 

So, what can be done?  I have a simple solution to the problem:  officials should call the first 46 minutes of a NBA finals game like they call the last 2 minutes.  (1) Get rid of the needless technicals.  (2) Only call touch fouls when they disrupt the nature of the play (we should never see a touch file in the first 14 seconds of the shot clock).  (3) And finally, allow contested shots.  It seems that the criteria for what is a clean defensive play changes in the last 2 minutes of the game.

If the NBA officials would follow this simple rule, I think the NBA would put a more entertaining and engaging product on the floor.  It would shift the focus from the officials back to the players where it belongs. 

Rarely, I am instantly wowed by a technology.  But, it happened last night when I saw the videos for NVidia’s Tegra platform.  The videos showed a device the size of an iPhone outputting 720p video to a TV via HDMI.  The possibilities for such a device are endless.  If you could couple this with wireless HDMI, 4G, and a big solid state hard drive, you could have the ultimate multimedia device.  Check it out for yourself.  Via Engadget.

I am currently in the process of switching my image hosting from my current host to the Amazon S3 service.  I wanted a cheap solution that could offset any potential bandwidth costs associated with high traffic.  I thought the best way to do this was to use my current host for HTML requests and use a more robust hosting solution for larger media requests.  After reading the Coding Horror post, I decided to go with Amazon S3.

I found that along with the cheap cost of using S3, there are also some potential secondary benefits. (1) I can centralize media hosting from multiple sites in one location and (2) my site becomes more portable if I want to change hosts in the future.  The real power here is in using a CNAME in the DNS to point a subdomain to the Amazon service.  It allows me to point media.matthewsmith.com and media.futureexample.com to the same place.  If I want to change hosts, I just update the DNS and I am back in business.

When considering Amazon S3, I also looked at potential alternatives such as Flickr and Google App Engine.  I wasn’t sure if Flickr had any major bandwidth limitations and comments in the Coding Horror article suggested that there might be problems with the TOC.  Google App Engine was just too new at the time and it seemed to be for larger scale apps versus simple image hosting.  As a result, Amazon S3 was a good fit.

If you are interested in doing something similar, there are some tools out there to make using S3 a little easier.  I used the Bucket Explorer trial to get things setup.  I am going to use my full 30 days before deciding to shell out $30.  There is also a Firefox Plug-in and Wordpress Plug-in for S3.  But, I have yet to try either.

Overall, my experience wth S3 has been pretty good.  I put some test images up and they seemed to load fast.  The 3rd party tools make uploading a breeze.  And, Amazon’s tools to monitor cost are well designed and self-explanatory.  So, so far so good.  I will continue to post any positive or negative issues with the service.