An annoying and very CPU intensive service called dashboardadvisoryd keeps eating at my CPU on my workstation. This thing has been around for a while but it only spikes every once in a while (probably when trying to connect to Apple’s servers for the Dashboard Advisory stuff but I have Little Snitch denying it access). Anyways, there’s no reason to have it steal any CPU at all (I don’t use the dashboard so could care less about whether the widgets are authentic or note). Some quick poking found me this Macworld article about it and how to stop it. In short:
$ sudo mv /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch.plist \ /System/Library/
will do it. That will keep it from restarting willy-nilly. (Note the backslash in the above command; it’s actually one line line)