Spyware detector? Never use 'em.

I've seen a couple of home routers that pair filtered DNS with time-limited user accounts. The vast majority of what's "out there" gets filtered, and you can set how much time your child spends actively on the internet. Those have an appeal to me.

Peeling off stickers is time consuming. Prying the thing apart and reassembling it is much quicker.

(hangs head in shame). Oops. What I listed, while free, aren't open source. Must get more sleep, or more caffeine.

Freeware antivirus utilities with real-time scanning:

Little things are "neat", but it's bloated and runs slowly on my aging Thinkpad compared with version 6.0.

We also use them at the litter box. We've a LitterMaid automatic scooper. We recycle the plastic bins several times by using grocery bags as inserts. The bags catch the waste and the bin stays clean.

Geekier alert: The gourd-and-straw drinking vessel is technically a mate (cup) and a bombilla. Yerba mate means "herb of the cup". And if you're looking for a stimulant, it's a good way to go.

I've "played" with both Litestep and Ashton over the years, and they've improved to a point that I'd consider them pretty stable shell replacements.

The best presentation tip I ever learned was to get a remote presentation mouse and learn how to use it.

My last boss telecommuted a good deal. But it was a pain because the landlord's IT guys killed our VPN, and we never got the problem resolved. So any files she wanted from the server had to be emailed.

@Pat: you'd do well in rec.food.drink.tea with the rest of us tea geeks.

This method is really for loose leaf tea. The stuff in teabags often is the fannings left over from processing the rest of the tea leaves. The small pieces steep much faster. A tea bag often does not need a 3 minute steep, where loose leaf tea requires it. So the numbers are "off" for bags.

Encryption and tunneling only keep naughty IMs private as long as both parties agree to keep things private.