This site was totally helpful when it came to explaining how to add a progress dialog.  Using threads and handlers is totally the way to go:

http://www.helloandroid.com/tutorials/using-threads-and-progressdialog

But I had a problem because, like this other guy, I am an idiot, too:

http://www.anddev.org/override_handlerhandlemessage_-t8782.html

I was relying too much on Eclipse when I had this error.  I tried to use the code from the first website but kept getting an error about not being able to override handleMessage().  It kept telling me to remove the @Override clause.  But doing that causes the progress dialog to never go away because the handler method never gets called.  I had to import the “Message” library just like this other dude did.  I was relying too much on Eclipse.

gb