The peaceful internet: BugMeNot

You should be well aware of bugmenot, which provides usernames and passwords for all of those annoying sites that want you to register for absolutely no good reason. (Yes, I'm looking at you, New York Times.) The best way to use it is via the firefox extension, which allows you to simply right-click in the username entry field.

The peaceful internet: Ad-Block Plus

If you have not tried the internet sans ads, you may find yourself oddly disconcerted at first by this firefox add-on. So much white space. So little clutter. You'll be okay. The important thing is to hit the options and get rid of the little tabs it puts on flash items to block them (let someone else do the work), and then to disable the annoying little stop sign it likes to put in your toolbar. You can still get at the settings from firefox's Tools menu.