To All My Democratic Friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.

To All My Republican Friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 2010.

Windows only: Free application DropboxPortable makes the popular file-syncing application thumb-drive friendly, so you can access your synced bucket from your thumb drive no matter what computer you’re using.

It’s great that Dropbox allows you to access a synced bucket of files on your several computers so you know you’re always working with the latest and greatest, but if you’re using a computer where you can’t install Dropbox permanently, this portable version lets you enjoy the benefits without hassling with Dropbox’s web-based access, where the process of editing and syncing files is much more clumsy. The application isn’t perfect, and requires an attentive installation process, but if you can get it up and running, it’s a great option for getting more from Dropbox. Thanks Mike!

Ed. note: Reader Harsha Kotcherlakota wrote in to our tips box with a very detailed, very cool guide to how he uses a few Firefox extensions we’ve featured to create dedicated, always-available-yet-unobtrusive tabs for Gmail and Google Reader. Here’s how.

So here’s the deal. I like having my Gmail always open. (Who doesn’t, right?) It’s literally the first thing I go to in Firefox. But I don’t want it to be my homepage, and frankly, I don’t like the fact I have to always leave a full sized tab open just to keep an eye on my inbox. I am a fan of minimal, yet functional and attractive interfaces.

So I went searching for the perfect setup, and I’m happy to say, I found it! Using Gina Trapani’s Better Gmail 2 add-on (specifically the Unread Count Favicon feature) and two other extensions, I found an extremely easy and attractive way to keep an eye on Gmail and have it open all the time without taking up a lot of space.

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Windows only: Portable system-fixing bundle Computer Repair Utility Kit puts 57 recovery tools into a single package. That gives you easy access to important system utilities without the fuss of building your own toolkit.

The launcher can be run directly from the folder or copied to a flash drive for access from any system, with a system tray menu for quick access to the included tools—which can be tweaked to add your own favorite portable applications. Most of the included utilities are familiar to Lifehacker readers, with well-known utilities like reader favorites CCleaner, PC Decrapifier, and Process Explorer along with dozens of other utilities that perform tasks ranging from killing spyware to system tweaking—and a copy of Portable Firefox is even included for good measure. If you haven’t taken the time to build your own flash drive toolkit, this download might be worth a look to get you started.

Computer Repair Utility Kit is a free download for Windows, though readers should be forewarned that some of the actual download links on the home page purposely take you to ad-ridden, pop-up crazy download sites—getting to the actual download is more than a little annoying.

You’re zooming down the information superhighway getting things done when your usually-trusty browser throws up the dreaded “Server not found” message. Argh! Now what?

Roll up your sleeves and get troubleshooting, that’s what. When your internet connection goes down or starts acting up, here’s what to do.

(First: save this article to your computer’s hard drive. It will do you no good out on the internet when you can’t get online.)

The best way to resolve ANY computer problem is to use the process of elimination. Narrow down a wide field of possible problems to come up with the right solution. There are two types of connectivity downage: when you can’t get to ANY web site or online service at all, and when you can’t get to a single specific site or family of sites.

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