This one has to be the scariest, and in my mind one of the funniest, Christmas carols ever recorded. True, Cartman's rendition is pretty special, but when it comes to O' Holy Night, nobody's got this dude beat.

Be sure to listen all the way through. Right when you think it can't get anny better (worse?), the song goes to a whole new level.

And don't drink milk while listening to this. You have been warned.

Click the button to play the music:

Each year, NORAD keep and eye on Santa as he makes his Christmas journey. You can track Santa's progress on Christmas Eve with the kids at the NORAD Track Santa web site.

On December 24th the kids can call the tracking service toll free at 1-877-Hi-NORAD anytime after 9AM Eastern Standard Time (7AM Mountain Standard Time) to find out the status of Santa from NORAD. Or, even better, check out the NORAD Track Santa web site (available in several languages):

NORAD has been doing this for 52 years now. I remember listening to the radio updates when I was a kid, and now you can get even more interactive online. Enjoy!

Every good (and bad) geek child needs a fast, efficient and electronic way to send that proverbial  letter to Santa. And good geek kids, of course, procrastinate along with the rest of us. So, for those of you still needing to send that letter and can't stand the idea of paper, pen and licking sticky stuff, here you go with some Internet Santa resources:

• Santa's Mailroom: According to Biff, the Mailroom Elf, it usually takes a couple days to answer letters, which you can submit online, no need for a stamp or that pesky snail-mail service stuff.
• EmailSanta.com: Send an email to the jolly red dude and get an instant response, print it out, or whatever.

My friend and coworker, Brent, is working this weekend so he can tie up some stuff and go on a real vacation time with his family. Brent does QA, which means he's a bit uhhh twisted at times (and I say that in a respectful, caring way of course, with a friendly smile on my face). Since running QA tests these days often means clicking a button and waiting the automated tests run (quickly, accurately and efficiently, I might add), Brent has short gaps of wait time. QA people get bored quickly these days. Darn that test automation! Between .NET and automated testing systems, our software engineers are becoming the next big population of ADD, MTV-style, video-game-attention-span, immediate gratification victims.

Of course, they already play video games and uhhh, never mind.

But that's not my point. Brent spent one of his while-the-test-is-running gaps goofing around on the Internet and just came up with this:

Click the pic to see the whole thing. You can also upload your own photos and make your own video. Or one of someone else you know (preferably someone who isn't too proud and won't be offended, angry or whatever - but I've already been victimized).

Wow, scary. Heh.

Google has released its Google Patent Search, where you can search more than 7 million patents issued by the USPTO:

Today, we're excited to be releasing the beta version of Google Patent Search, which makes it easy to search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you. Start your exploration at www.google.com/patents or visit the Advanced Patent Search page to search by criteria, including patent number, inventor, and filing date. You can view images of original patents online.

Good stuff.

OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is a new release from - yeah you got it - IBM and Yahoo! that companies small, medium and large can install and use for free to enable enterprise search of intranets, file systems, and public web sites.

Looks like a partial answer to the SharePoint capabilities offered by Microsoft. I haven't tried it yet but will probably take a closer look. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a trend - offering free software to business customers.

• More info: http://omnifind.ibm.yahoo.com
• Download from: http://omnifind.ibm.yahoo.net/register/form.php
• Flash demo: View OmniFind Yahoo! Edition Demo (very IBM-ish presentation style but stick it out and you'll see how it works)

Have to say, this is pretty enticing at first glance. They say it's designed to install in five minutes, with three clicks or less.

Might just have to try that.