It's nearly time to turn out the lights on 2004. What a hell of a year! Catch y'all after the ball drops!

Love & Luck, y'all!

• How To write Efficient CSS
• Make Firefox Faster at Forever Geek

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The Tree - 2004,
originally uploaded by kevindonahue.

I think I forgot to upload this one right after Thanksgiving. Red & gold were the colors this year. Merrin did a great job with the 9' tree. It'll be coming down this weekend.

Co-worker: "What were you thinking when you agreed to that?"
Me: "Dude, I was so wasted when I did that…."

Hey, hey. Quite a crowd-pleaser.

One of the computers at Chez Donahue is quite old in the tooth, an old PII with just enough memory and a teeny little hard drive. Sometimes that little hard drive is too small for it's install of Windows XP, so here's what I do to free up hard disk space on Windows XP:
[Read more →]

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• Using a Media Center PC through your Xbox

The American Red Cross is accepting disaster relief for the tsunami victims directly from Amazon.com. So far, they've collected $451,121.95 today, including my $20. Can we get that total up over $1 million tomorrow?

Mohammed Ali Abtahi, noted blogger and former VP of Iran (now an Iranian committee member), is reporting details of a meeting his government committee had with bloggers who have recently been imprisoned & tortured for turning a light on life in Iran. (Rough English translation here)

The last time bloggers brought this to the media's attention, a blogger was released from prison.

21 people cram into a Cooper, setting a new world record. I wonder what the old record was? Josh? Camille? Anyone?

• Proxy your Gmail Atom feed with Python
• Microsoft kills the utility of "Blog" as a search word

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• April 13, 2029: Armageddon?

Did you join the Tivolution for Christmas? Santa brought you a shiny new Tivo? Awesome! Here's some resources:

PVR Blog - all the latest Tivo news

Tivo Community Forums - the BEST unofficial resource out there. A little searching will provide every answer to every question. Seriously - it's like a freakin' zen temple for Tivo.

Tivo Hacks - Got a Tim Allen-esque need for power? Tivo Hack it, baby.

Register your Tivo - Use this link to register your Tivo. When you do, please, please, please mention that I referred you to Tivo service. Just mention my email on your referral line (kevin.donahue@gmail.com) If you do, I get a few points towards some free stuff in the Tivo store. C'mon, I need all the help I can get!

• Why December 25? - Christian History
  For the church's first three centuries, Christmas wasn't in December - or on the calendar at all.
• Use DirecTV Dish as a wireless networking antenna
  Josh - here's our holiday project
• Surplus Primestar Satellite Dishes from eBay

Six words caused me to switch from Google Desktop this week. When the Google Blog posted "your machine has been automatically updated", I immediately reached for the uninstall. Automatically updated? While that may sound like a 'good' idea at some level, who knew that Google would push down an unattended update without any user confirmation?

I've since switched to MSN Desktop Search. In comparing the two, there are three big advantages to MSN Desktop Search:

1. The first is, quite simply, Microsoft isn't going to auto update anything. When updates are available, there will be a little pop-up that tells me about said update. None of this auto download behind my back thing.
2. I really enjoy that fact that MSN Desktop Search can scan network drives. That was a big pain with Google, and I'm really happy that MSN has the network capabilities. While that may be irrelevant for some, if you've got your photos/mp3s/documents on a remote location, I personally think it's nice to be able to locate/search them. Call me a simpleton.
3. Finally, there are some pretty handy add-ons for the search beta already. For example, one add-on I've really got a lot of use from at work is Search Inside Adobe Acrobat Files.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I've switched.