It wasn't what I set out to do, and it definitely wasn't what I expected to do. But genealogical breakthroughs rarely are either, it seems.

My mother and I have now collected more than 9,000 relatives in our genealogy. Needless to say, you literally need a computer to keep track of all of that. There are three families I feel the greatest affinity for. Two of them are Scottish, and Highlander families at that.

Myth: Nobody wants to get into my computer because I don't have anything important saved on it.

Fact: I don't care who you are or what you do with your computer, security is important. Do you want the Russian Mafia using your computer? The North Korean military? Al Qaeda?

If you're OK with that kind of vermin using your computer, then do whatever you want. I hope you don't have problems sleeping at night. If you don't want that kind of vermin using your computer, I suggest you read on.

I tend to lean to the right. For as long as I understood what it meant to be conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, I called myself a conservative Republican. In college, I wrote a newspaper column for 3 1/2 years brashly titled "No Left Turns."

In last year's primary, I voted for Ron Paul for a couple of reasons. One, a lot of things he said made sense. Two, at least he sincerely believed in the things he said that didn't make sense. And three, he's a doctor. When Ron Paul predictably didn't get the nomination, I voted against John McCain and for a Democrat, Barack Obama. The main reason was health care.

One of my monitors died this week. It doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, which is a good thing. Flat panel LCDs are more reliable than CRTs were. The dead monitor is an LCD, but it was a cheap and nasty Dell 15-inch made in 2001. I bought it used, and for much less than it was worth (even if it was made for the modern-day equivalent of Packard Bell), so I got my money's worth out of it.

This weekend I went monitor shopping, with a budget of one hundred bucks.

Today was the first Patch Tuesday in nearly four years that I didn't have to worry about professionally. Since Microsoft released 13 patches today and Adobe released two, my former coworkers might be wondering if I knew something. (I didn't.)

But I still patched my machine at home, and I recommend you do too. Macintosh owners, you're not immune, so I have some homework for you too.

On Sunday, we took our son to the Indianapolis Children's Museum, the oldest and one of the largest--if not the largest--establishment of its kind. I didn't really know what to expect, so I picked up a brochure and had a look.

The brochure recommended either starting or ending the day on the 4th floor, with a carousel ride.

On Saturday night we stopped at Wendy's for dinner. It wasn't an intentional choice--we would have preferred something more distinctly Indianapolis, but the St. Louis area Wendy's franchisee went bankrupt, so there are only a couple of Wendy's left in St. Louis, none anywhere near our house.

I just downloaded Microsoft Security Essentials, and, depending on your situation, I recommend you do it too.

MSSE is free antivirus software, from Microsoft. It's not the best thing out there, but it's far from the worst. If you don't have any antivirus software, go get it.

OK, so I didn't work for Initech. I couldn't resist the Office Space reference. But as of 4:08PM CST yesterday, I am unemployed. Fortunately this time it's only until 8:00AM CST on Monday.

I pretty much intended to just go in, clean out my desk, work as much as possible like I would any other day, and stay until someone came and told me it was time to leave.

But of course it wasn't quite that simple.

So I'm filling out 401(K) paperwork. I don't like everything I see, but can live with it. I guess it's what I don't like that's important. Or why I don't like some things I see, that is.

Then again, some people may be wondering why I'm even investing at all.