Here’s my reply:

Ok, here’s the 3 most important things:

1.  If you get a laptop with Windows Vista, make sure you have at least 2GB of RAM.  Vista uses about 1GB by itself and it’ll suck when you try to run any other programs.

2.  Don’t get a cheap processor.  Intel Celeron and AMD Sempron are the common cheap ones and should be avoided.

3.  Don’t get a Compaq.  They suck.  They’re cheap, and I have never had a good experience with them.

I have a Gateway and personally I really like mine.  Here’s the one I would buy if I was gonna buy one today:

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668194.php

It’s got everything you’ll need and is relatively cheap for a laptop.  It’s available at Radio Shack according to the gateway site.

There’s also a new breed of laptops called netbooks which are much cheaper, and are built to be used online.  They are pretty bare as far as programs and storage, but like I said are cheaper. I haven’t really looked into them at all, but pretty much every major manufacturer makes one these days. Here’s gateway’s netbook:

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668245.php

This one’s actually not too bad, it’s only $380.  The processor is a little slow (which is common for netbooks), but it runs Windows XP, which uses a lot less than Vista (most netbooks use Linux as their operating system because it’s free, but you’d have to learn a whole new operating system).  And this thing has a 160GB hard drive which is huge for a laptop.

I have proof:

07:27 willilance : 50647, there are forums on http://www.businessinnercircle.com which cover starting from scratch
07:27 ustreamer-50647 : thank you willilance
07:27 ustreamer-3057 : willilance you are awesome man
07:28 willilance : thanks!
07:28 ustreamer-23275 : yes willilance is awesome

See? 2 different people said it!

“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”

-Barack Obama

Today, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.  In his inaugural speech Barack reiterated this point which I think is the crux of his run for presidency.  “We have chosen hope over fear”.  Barack ran under the banner of hope and change.  He didn’t succumb to the fear mongering that so often accompanies an election, or the news, or a salesman, or a commercial, or religion.  He relied on the fact that we need hope, not fear.  That people don’t want to be scared into electing a president.  Or scared into starting a war.  Or scared into buying a new car.  Or even scared into being a good person.  People want hope.  We want to hope that there is something better for us and for our children.  That while things may be difficult, we believe that there are bright skies ahead.

Barack’s election proved that people will respond to a positive message.  I hope that others will follow Barack’s lead and stop the fear mongering.  I hope that instead, the marketers and media of the world will learn this lesson and change their tune.  One single positive idea can outweigh a hundred negative ones.  You can get more done thinking positively than thinking in fear.  I know that it seems too simple and that it’s not what has been done.  Fear has sold newspapers for a hundred years.  Fear keeps people tuning in to the news at night.  It’s good for ratings.  It’s good for advertising dollars.  But is it good for the people?  No.  Fear has taken over the country and made it a scary place to live.  But you know what?  We’ve lived here for a long time, and we’ll continue to live.  And our children won’t be kidnapped.  And they’re not going to die from playing with a toy.  I don’t need to detail all the fear out there, you know what crap is stuffed down your throat.

My point is, there is hope out there.  And people will respond to it.  And they will respond even better than they respond to the fear.  This President has proven that.  So thank you Barack Obama.  Thank you for showing the world that hope will always prevail over fear.

Here’s the commercial:

Of course this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me. In fact it happens quite often. And I know it happens to lots of other people as well.  I had a friend who wrote a pretty kick ass screenplay and started shopping it around.  He told me at one place he went they showed him 5 or 6 other scripts that were essentially the exact story he had written.

So, my question is:  Are there truly unique ideas?  Or is it just that some people act on them and others don’t?  It seems to me that the odds are against someone having the same random ideas as me, however I see them too often coming back at me for it to just be coincidence.  I like to joke that there’s a satellite trained on me to hear my great ideas and then use them for marketing or inventions.

I’m sure there’s some mathematical genius out there who could come up with some crazy formula to figure out the odds of 2 people having the same thought, but I’m definitely not that person.

I guess what I should really take out of this is that I need to start acting on my ideas and not just sit on them.  Sounds like pretty good advice

I’m also getting to play around with Flash and JavaScript a bit too.  I’ve put up a Flash gallery page that converts all the pictures so they look like polaroids thrown onto a table.  It’s pretty cool.  I’ve just got some dummy pictures in there now, but once we get some pics of her clients, we’ll put them in.  It’s got a bug in IE though where it only works the first time you visit.  If you refresh the page, or go to another page and come back, it doesn’t work.  Kinda pissing me off on that one.  I’d like to be able to make some changes to it though and I’m working on some ways to do that (of course I need to learn a bit more about Flash first).  I’ve also got a pretty cool flash gallery where I can show before and afters in a book-like format where you can actually flip pages.  It’s really cool, but that’s not live yet.

I also just today found a pretty cool mootools FAQ script, so I got to play with that a bit too.

I really like having this site to learn and play with, which will also (hopefully) be something we can turn profitable by driving business to Gina.

Anyways, thanks for stopping by and check back often!