While mashing the keyboard (as I often do when debuggin poorly written outsourced code), I stumbled upon a very useful OSX hotkey.
⌘-option-d
This command will cause the Dock to go in and out of auto-hide mode.
Not the most useful, but very helpful to geeks like me who rearrange their desktop every day.
If you read this far, you should consider subscribing to the RSS feed.