In this screencast, Laura Rogers shows a quick way to create your own blank web part page using SharePoint Designer, which allows you to KEEP the Quick Launch on the page

Just like eBay, I wanted to display the time remaining on auction items. I figured this would be a calculated field (based on a date the user chose for when the auction for that item ended) but having to calculate date differences based on the current date doesn’t work in SharePoint (the elusive [Today] problem). I thought jQuery would help and it did. Here’s how.