Big Ideas #7

OK, I know you are probably going to say that any a..hole can say they had the idea for something after it becomes a reality but honest to goodness, cross my heart and hope to die, I really did think of this (you can ask my wife). Shreveport, Louisiana is the town I live in. My birthplace is Alexandria, LA and I call Lafayette, LA my home. About 10 years ago, when they finished I-49 between Lafayette and Shreveport, it opened up access to areas that previously were practically unknown. At the very first exit south of Shreveport, there was ( and still is) a large amount of undeveloped real estate. Seeing that it is only about 10 minutes south of town, I thought it would make an excellent residential development but with a bit of a twist (for this area, anyway). Since there were no retail services there at all, I thought it would be cool to have a planned community where people could walk to the video rental store or dry cleaners,etc. The houses would be no larger than a certain size which would keep people from building mansions and would insure that the people who bought the houses would be middle class. I hate it that the really cool residential developments like River Ranch in Lafayette are geared toward upper income families and individuals. The rents for apartments are not much less than NYC rents and the houses are priced in the same stratosphere as Los Angeles or San Fran. So, what is everyone talking about today when I get to work? Some developer managed to get an interstate exit built about 5 miles closer to Shreveport and is building a residential development with restaurants, etc. I'm sure it's going to be more along the same lines as the one in Lafayette because everything else out there is beaucoup dinero. I guess my idea is still valid and original because it addresses a different socio-economic class but I hate that I don't have the resources to do things like this. I guess I need to find a money man.

Big Ideas #6

This one really isn't one of my big ideas - It's one of my wife's. She for the longest has taken the regular Tootsie rolls and twisted them together with the flavored ones like strawberry and so on. I was after her for years to contact Tootsie Roll and when she finally did, they told her that they didn't take suggestions from outside the company. Well, I don't know how difficult it would be to do, but I'll bet some enterprising person could manufacture a Tootsie-like product and twist them together to make all kinds of combinations, Chocolate and cherry, orange and pineapple, vanilla and cherry, etc. You get the idea. I suppose that part of it is a big idea of mine. The other day I had what I thought was an epiphany. I'm a Musician's Friend affiliate and I thought I could sell guitars on ebay for about 3% less that they did, collect the commission and everybody wins. The only problem is that ebay charges more than I would make on the commission from Musician's Friend. I might look into setting up a Yahoo Store since it's like $30 a month and 1.5% of the sale. I could break even after selling about $1200 worth of merchandise. The problem is that people have to find you in order to buy from you on Yahoo and I don't know if I have to time to do that.

Big Ideas #5

I've noticed that a bunch of computer geeks have been modifying their computer cases to reflect their personalities and while some of them are pretty cool, I think these guys have way too much time on their hands. The other day it occured to me that I could mount a motherboard, power supply, etc. on the underside of a end table I have and then get a wireless keyboard with a touchpad build into it and a small LCD monitor. After thinking about it a while, I decided the LCD would have to be on some sort of arm that would allow it to fold up under the table out of sight. My boss at my day job does a lot of woodworking and is a bit of computer nerd so I told him about it. He seemed interested so we'll see where this goes. I think there are tons of people that wouldn't mind having a computer in their living room if it didn't look like a computer. I'm going to try to experiment with another identical table I have to see if I can make it work.