Huckabee is not a throw-away vote

I was listening to an interview of Mike Huckabee on NPR today and it made me want to stand up and agree with him. As of today, McCain and Romney both may have more delegates pledged to them, but the race is still very early.

There's a great post on Wikipedia that explains all of this very well. As of Tuesday, 1/29, after McCain's Florida victory, only 208 delegates have been pledged or are projected to be pledged. It takes 1191 to win the republican nomination, and no candidate has more than 100 so far.

According to the Wikipedia post, they estimate the score to be McCain (97), Romney (74) and Huckabee (29). RealClearPolitics.com has the score much closer with McCain (93), Romney (59) and Huckabee (40). McCain is ahead by a good margin because he won all 57 delegates in the winner-take-all Florida primary.

There are 2172 republican delegates yet to be assigned. For all of the states who haven't had their primaries yet, why should we allow the 7 states who've completed their primaries already to limit our choice of presidential candidates?!

Custom ring tones for your LG Rumor (LX-260)

What's the best site out there to download cell phone ring tones or games from? And once I download them, how do I get them on my phone?

I blogged earlier this month that I got a new phone. I didn't opt in on the Sprint Vision internet service. So how does someone download to/from my phone without Internet?

Meritline has a deal right now on a Bluetooth wireless dongle adapter for $7.50 shipped. How's that for a good deal?! That should let me connect my PC/laptop to my phone.

To double my pleasure and for a little faster upload/download, I also found a deal at Buy.com on a microSD card. It's pretty easy to copy images taken from the digital camera onto the microSD card and then transfer them to . . .wherever. I assume it's just as easy to transfer with Bluetooth. There's a pretty good post on the SprintUsers forum on how to create and upload ringtones on an LG Rumor LX-260 phone.

What I'm still trying to figure out is how to upload ring tones downloaded from the Internet (to my PC) onto my phone. I'd follow the instructions above, but it would be nice to be able to use a non-video ring tone. That way, the images I've assigned to callers will still appear when my phone rings with the custom ringtone. Maybe I could save them as a voice memo and retrieve them on my microSD memory card? We'll see . . .

UPDATE: Here's a post from Yahoo! Answers that seems to answer my question!

Now, if anyone knows where to get the java/mobile version of Pac-Man or Tetris for free, let me know!

The best cash-back credit card?

What's the best cash-back credit card out there? I've pared it down to 4 choices:

• The American Express Blue Cash card, where you can earn up to 5% cash back


• Citibank's Dividend Platinum Select Mastercard, where you earn 2% cash back


• Citibank's Professional Cash Mastercard, where you earn 3% cash back


• BP Visa, which pays 5% on gas purchased at BP/Amoco stations

Before I get started, please know that if you can't pay your credit card balance in full every month, your best option is to NOT use it. It's really that simple. I'll add a subsequent post that will discuss how to prioritize which bills to pay first.

The fine print:

• With the American Express Blue Cash, you can earn up to 5% cash back for "Everyday Purchases" at supermarkets, gas stations and drug stores, but only once you hit their 2nd tier. "Everyday Purchases" specifically excludes purchases made in departments of superstores or warehouse clubs.
  
  The first $6500 you charge of "Everyday Purchases" only earns 1% cash back. All other purchases earn 0.5%. Once you break the $6500 barrier, you'll earn 5% on "Everyday Purchases" and 1.5% on everything else. Not bad . . .they even offer a calculator to help you figure out what your cash rebate would be.



• The Citi Dividend Platinum Select Mastercard pays 2% cash back on purchases made at supermarkets, drugstores, gas stations, convenience stores, and utilities including cable. (Don't get too excited about the utilities thing. All utility companies charge a processing fee ranging from $1-$3 for paying your bill with a credit card. The process isn't automated, so you'd have to phone in each time your bill was due.)
  
  Purchases netting 1% cash back include purchases made at warehouse clubs, discount stores, department stores, and online/catalog purchases (unless the merchants appropriately identify the transactions).
  
  Rebates are capped at $300 per calendar year. Read the fine print here.
  
  I've had this card for a long time and it's worked out well, but due to the card's limits, I think I'm leaving some money on the table.



• 
  The Citi Professional Cash Mastercard looks good at first glance, paying 3%, but that 3% is offered on a different group of purchase categories. You get 3% on purchases made at gas stations, restaurants, certain office supply merchants and auto rentals.
  
  This time, warehouse clubs, discount stores, department stores and convenience stores are excluded from the 3% tier and earn the default 1% rate. Rebates are capped at $500 per calendar year. Read the fine print here. When you're ready to apply, do a Google search and you might be able to find out how to get a $100 to $150 sign-up bonus.



• 
  The BP Visa earn 5% rebates at all BP locations, 2% rebates on eligible travel (Airline, Auto Rental, or Lodging) and dining (non-fast food) purchases and 1% rebates on all other eligible purchases. Gas at non-BP stations are not eligible purchases.

I've crunched the numbers and I think the best option for us is going to be a combination of the American Express Blue Cash card and the Citi Professional Mastercard. We'll use the American Express Blue Cash card for all purchases besides restaurants, gas purchases and wherever the American Express card isn't accepted.

Getting 3% back on restaurant and gas purchases is a nice benefit of the Citi Professional card. I suppose we could earn 5% on BP gas by adding the BP Visa to the mix, but that's just too much of a headache. I really don't want to carry around 3 cards!

The American Express card really pays once you spend above the $6500 level, which we tend to get to fairly quickly every year. We'll give this a shot for 2007 and if it doesn't work, a back-up plan would be to use the Citi Professional card only.

Does anyone else have any other bright ideas? Feel free to comment . . .

Dave's word on . . .

Here begins a stream of posts that may seem to be out of place. Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to research a lot before I make a decision. I also tend to have very selective memory retention.

Since I've spent many hours becoming literate in a variety of things, I thought this would be a good forum to share that knowledge with others and also use it as a reference for myself.

With this blog, you'll notice going forward that I'll be adding posts on things I have researched in the past or am currently researching. This includes things like personal finance (life insurance, annuities, IRAs, mutual funds, etc.), technology, cooking/recipes and where (and sometimes how) to find good deals. Stay tuned!

The Packers suck!

I'm kinda emotional right now, so I'll try to say it in as few words as possible. Disappointed. That's all. Why couldn't we run the ball against the Giants? And where were our safeties the whole game? Not blitzing, and not making plays helping out on the outside man coverage. Bigby had 1 or 2 good hits/tackles the whole game.

Well, I guess it's a new year next year! I can't wait for September!

I couldn't resist a good deal!

I can't ever resist a good deal. Don't miss out on this one . . .$10 off a $50 order and free shipping from diapers.com. Get the 411 here. Compare $75 (tax included) for 2 gi-normous boxes of Pampers Swaddlers baby diapers at Sam's Club versus $62 from diapers.com. Hurry . . .the deal ends on 1/31.

Sometimes, your back hurts so much . . .

. . .you just have to lay flat on the floor. Ever felt that way? That's what happened here!

Of course, Pacey and Molly (our neighbor's lab) didn't waste the opportunity.

Wanna get away?

Today was my first day back at work after a 2 week winter break. As I was walking down the hallway sporting my bigger belly, some of my former students stopped me to ask a question. I heard them ask, "What did you do?"...referring to my growing my belly. I quickly and cutely responded by saying "What do you think I did?" Then they said, "No, When are your due?" Oh my gosh...was I embarrassed! The worst thing about it was that these girls were not the only ones who were engaged in the conversation, but there was a group of boys interested in what we were talking about as well. I felt like I was in a Southwest Airlines commercial and I was waiting for a voice to come over the loud speaker that said, "Wanna get away?!"

Coming soon: Our baby!

BabyCenter.com says our baby now weighs 3.75 pounds and is gaining at the rate of 1/2 pound every week. We're at 32 weeks now and are due on February 25th.

Wow! It's finally staring to feel real. I got out of bed last night at 11:45 pm and ordered a crib off of Baby Center, thinking their free shipping coupon might expire on 12/31! Wal*Mart was out of stock and Target -- well, their return policy plain sucks! Why not just order the thing and get it over with . . .

What worries me more is that our pregnant friends are all going 3-5 weeks early. The little one might be here in as soon as 3 weeks. Did I say wow?!

Our baby room currently consists of a combination jogging and regular stroller, a dresser that doubles as a changing table and an almost empty closet that has some yellow and green odds and ends clothes in it. Yikes!

As Linda would say, we better "hop to it, frog legs!"

Our new year's resolution

It's the start of a new year, and our new year's resolution is to become better at documenting our lives for the benefit of our family and the little one growing in Amanda's belly . . .

And so we've bought a Sony DSC-W80 digital camera, a Canon ZR800 digital video camcorder, and I've started this blog. There are usually just a few sites that I check out when I'm looking for electronics and technology, and one of them is TigerDirect.com. They're reputable, have very competitive prices and a decent return policy.

While I'm on the subject of technology, I'll add that I also recently purchased an LG Rumor LX-260 phone from Sprint. It comes with a 1.3 MP camera. I just might have to add Internet so I can post real-time!

Where was I? Oh, yes! I'm going to try to add a few older posts, cut and pasted from old emails. Going forward, my goal is to post on a weekly basis. Help keep me honest!