Thanks for the feedback!
I had the chance to sit down and read through my manual and some blogs this weekend and I discovered customer functions! One of these custom functions allows me to use the directional pad on the back of my camera to set the focus points. I played around with this for a bit and I have to say I LOVE this feature. Forget holding the AF Points button and using the wheel...this way is 1000 times better! Now, I can QUICKLY set my focus point focus and shoot; it probably takes half the time as using the wheel.
I also used the CF which changes AF to use the * button instead of holding the shutter button halfway down. I really like for a few reasons:
1. It's more comfortable. I have the battery grip on my rebel which give me more realesate to hold onto (I have pretty big hands). Using the * is just more of a comfortable grip for me.
2. This CF allows you focus and meter at different places. You can focus and shoot which will meter where you are focused on OR you can focus, meter on another place, recompose and shoot. I REALLY like this feature. My 4 year old camera feels new again!
I also tried using the focus/frame method while I was toying around with my camera this weekend. This seems to work well UNLESS you are using a really wide aperture. Images do not come out as sharp as manually changing the AF points and focusing from there. Otherwise this seems to be like a good option if you need to move fast and you don't have time to manually change focus points.