I received my PayPal Money Market Fund dividend for the month of August a few days ago (on the 30th). I love it when the dividend comes early, which, from my experience, isn’t very often at all.

This time, I received a dividend payment of $13.38, up slightly from the $12.94 I earned for the month of July. The stated 7-day yield is currently at 2.34%, a tiny improvement over the 2.32% rate the last time I posted about the dividend.

As usual, I don’t think $13 and change is nearly enough of a return on my money, but I have been way too busy to research other money market funds. I’ve got a prospectus from the Hodges Fund that I’m currently going through, but there’s a lot of stuff that I need to check out before sending them my money.

So for now, PayPal is the only MMF I participate in — despite its low rate.

Now that I’m exercising regularly, I’m going through cross-trainers faster than ever. I was looking around today for something to replace my old pair when I landed on a website that sells MBT shoes, a brand I’d never even heard of before. But once I started reading about MBT shoes, I was immediately intrigued by what this kind of product could do for me.

MBT shoes are called “physiological footwear” by the manufacturer, which essentially means that they are designed to promote extra muscle and circulatory functions in an effort to improve posture or what have you. Because you’re unstable while wearing the shoes, your muscles have to work harder to maintain balance, thereby giving you more of a workout than when you wear regular shoes alone.

In fact, the manufacturer of MBT shoes claims that you increase the use of certain muscle groups by up to 19% just by wearing the shoes. Think about it: if I could get an even more benefits from walking simply by changing my shoes, that would obviously be awesome!

I’m definitely intrigued by MBT shoes now. I’m off to do more research about these things and to see if I can try on a pair somewhere.

From now until the end of January, a majority of my posts will probably focus on football and/or fantasy football. I’m playing in six fantasy leagues that encompass both the college and pro ranks, and of course I’ll be recapping the Bears games every week as well. I’ll likely also add a weekly post recounting my fantasy results too, so if you’re not into football, consider yourself warned!

My QBs this year:

Tony Romo
Peyton Manning
Drew Brees
Marc Bulger
Carson Palmer

My top RBs this year:

LT
AP (x2)
Brian Westbrook
Marshawn Lynch

Receivers:

Anquan Boldin
Wes Welker
TJ Houshmanzadeh
Santonio Holmes
and a bunch more that I can’t remember.

This is going to be a fun year!

The Cincinnati Bengals have cut running back Rudi Johnson, thus bringing to an end the seven-year relationship. Johnson had been hampered by injuries and was performing so poorly in the pre-season that it didn’t take sophisticated budgeting software to figure out that his projected yards-per-carry wouldn’t be worth the money he would cost the team.

I don’t know how desperate other teams are, so it’s hard to figure out if Johnson will land with another squad for the ‘08 season. He used to be such a solid performer and such a big part of the Bengals offense that put up tons of points a couple seasons ago. Now it looks like his career might very well be over.

I’ve been meaning to write about these NFL.com Fantasy Files commercials for quite some time now, but kept forgetting about them. Anyway, I think these commercials are awesome — event though they’re obviously fake. It’s hard to choose just one favorite out of all of them, but if pressed on the issue, I would probably go with Chris Cooley catching a ball through a sheet of drywall. This is sooo cool! (Again, save your emails telling me that’s it’s not real. Well, duh!)

I had a bit of a scare earlier this afternoon when I couldn’t find my Cartier watch. The thing is more than 10 years old at this point, and is probably not worth anywhere near the $3500 retail price anymore, but it has a lot of sentimental value for me still, so I was freaking out.

The problem is that since I don’t wear that watch every day, I was having a tough time retracing my steps trying to remember what I did the last time I took it off. As far as I knew, I might not have even been at home when I lost it.

Fortunately, after several hours of frantic searching, I found my watch behind a stack of CD cases on the stereo cabinet. They were Jerry’s CDs, so I have to assume that he put them there without bothering to move my watch first. Nice. But I need to shoulder some of the blame as well. This wouldn’t have happened if I had put my watch back in my jewelry box where it belongs.

Anyway, I’m just relieved that I was able to find it. Sure, I’m now way behind on work for the day, but I’ll take that over a lost watch!

The last exhibition game of the season is tonight, and I just realized I haven’t posted much about the Bears during training camp. That could be because I’m not at all encouraged about the way the team looks right now. I don’t think they’re going to do much during the regular season — especially now that they’ve officially named Kyle Orton as their starter.

Orton is fine as a game manager, someone who can go in there and hand the ball off 50 times and not screw up too much. But he doesn’t strike me as a true field general, the kind of guy who can lead the time 98 yards with less than two minutes to play in the fourth quarter for a game-winning touchdown.

Don’t get me wrong, Grossman certainly isn’t that guy either and I wouldn’t feel any better about having him helm the team again. I guess I’m just disappointed that this is going to be another year with a crap quarterback and a crap offense. And from what I’ve seen and heard, the defense ain’t going to be anything to write home about either. Sigh.

Oh, and I love how the first picture that comes up when I google Orton’s name is the one I’ve posted above. Fantastic.

I don’t know what’s going on around here, but I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the number of stray cats in the neighborhood. It might have to do with the bad economy (I’ve read where people have been forced to abandon their pets because they just don’t have the money to buy dog and/or cat supplies anymore), or it could just be a case of a couple of strays turning into dozens after the mating process runs its course.

Whatever the reason, I’m kind of at a loss as to what to do here. I’ve never really encountered stray animals to this extent, and I don’t know what the proper procedure for handling them is. Should I put food out there so these little kitties don’t starve to death? I’d love to, but I’ve heard that this is something that I definitely should NOT do.

Should I call animal control and hope they come by and try to round up all the strays? I know for a fact that one of my neighbors down the street has already done this, but there’s been no noticeable change yet.

With the weather set to get colder soon, I can’t help but worry about how these poor guys are going to fend through an entire winter outdoors. Do any of you have experience with strays? What can I do about this?

Last month when I bought my Kindle, I also ordered a 2GB Kingston SD card to go with the device. I figured I’d want to load the Kindle up with books so I’d never be without anything to read.

But then I remembered how tiny book files are compared to other file types. I have tons of books on the device already and haven’t even put a dent in the standard storage.

So I decided to use my SD card in my PDA. I often carry videos (full-length TV shows, etc.) on my PDA to watch when I’m waiting at the doctor’s office or whatever. Having a 2GB card would obviously be better than trying to cram a couple of shows on the 1GB that I’m used to.

However, this morning as I was trying to load up my SD card, I kept getting errors saying that there wasn’t enough memory left. I’m currently using only about 360MB and yet I can’t put another 360MB file on the card — which is supposed to be 2GB.

Clicking on “Properties”, it tells me that there’s 540-some odd MB of space left. Huh? What the hell? This is a 2GB card, it says so right on the damn thing. Those fools at Kingston better not have just slapped a 2GB sticker on a 1GB card!!! And even if they did, that doesn’t explain why I can’t get my damn file on there.

What am I supposed to do now? I bought this thing at the beginning of July, it’s opened, it’s been formatted, there’s stuff on there. Do I really want to go through the hassle of returning it or whatever? It was just $10, after all.

Ugh, not a good start to the day… !

We’ve had zero extra money to spend this year, what with buying a new car and all the stuff that’s happening with the economy, so it’s been ages since I last went to a casino. I used to go to the riverboat at least once a month with a group of friends for a night of blackjack and craps, but that hasn’t happened since late 2007. Needless to say, I’m ready for another junket!

I’ve always wanted to go to Las Vegas, of course, but after checking into prices, I don’t think that’s going to be a feasible option. I mean, I can’t really do much about airfare right now, but I know there’s gotta be cheaper accommodation out there.

A friend of mine mentioned that Laughlin, NV is a very nice place to go for a quick gambling junket. It’s off the beaten path so it’s not as crowded with tourists as Vegas is, but it still has all the fun activities you’d expect for Nevada. Plus, laughlin hotels are much more reasonable than their Vegas counterparts, which is a huge benefit because I could put that money towards gambling instead!

And Vegas is only about 70 miles away, so an hour’s drive would get me there and allow me to have a look around.

We’ve got some vacation time coming up in October. Who knows, maybe we’ll end up in Laughlin!

I swear, this ALWAYS happens to me. Whenever I finally save enough money and work up enough courage to purchase a tech gadget, a new, improved generation comes along in just a couple of months.

I just read an article today saying that Amazon is getting ready to launch two new versions of its Kindle ebook reader — a $359 device that I purchased at the beginning of July. These reports are unconfimed by Amazon, but have been rumored for quite a while now.

Apparently, one new version of the Kindle will be 8 1/2 x 11 sized and will be aimed at business and student users. The larger screen size is designed to handle textbooks, contracts, etc. The other design is probably just going to be a 2nd gen rendering of the original, with an improved user interface and perhaps color capabilities.

I know that these are still rumors at this stage, but I can’t help but be a little anxious about this. I would be royally pissed off if a newer, better version comes out within a couple months of my buying the first one — especially since Amazon kept saying that they had no intentions of redesigning the Kindle so soon. I definitely would have waited if I’d known that a color Kindle would be available or whatever. As it is though, there’s no way in hell I can afford to replace this device within the next, say 4-5 years or so.

Caveat emptor, indeed.

Barack Obama has officially named Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware as his running mate, bringing to an end weeks of speculation as to whom Obama would select as the VP candidate.

It doesn’t seem like that many people care, though, as the Most Emailed Yahoo! News story remains the one about the North Carolina man who snagged a record 21-pound catfish with a Barbie fishing pole.

The Biden announcement was a distant second at the time of this posting.

Figures. Political apathy still runs rampant around here — and I’m just as guilty as anyone else!