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.

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.

Web browsers take entirely too much room on the screen. I've seen tips for putting Firefox on a diet, but nothing that frees up as much space as my bag-o-tricks.

So let's go.

I used Google Chrome this week while I waited for Firefox 3.5.1 to come out. I like both browsers but still prefer Firefox by a slight margin. But Chrome is nice to have for those times when Firefox has unpatched vulnerabilities.

I had my first brush today with counterfeit software. I guess I'm not surprised that people fall for it (or maybe some don't care), but if you know what you're looking for, it's possible not to get suckered.

Since pretty much everyone thinks my love of SSDs is insane, I'll throw another insane idea on top of it: using data compression. It makes sense. Doing it selectively, you help performance, while saving space. At a much higher cost per gig, that saved space is very nice to have.

I'm taking a class for Security+ certification. Today one of the topics we covered was buffer overflows. The textbook explanation was confusing. For that matter I think it was wrong, but I was so confused by the end that I'm not sure.

I'm going to give a simplified example and explanation of a buffer overflow, similar to the one I gave to the instructor, and then to the class.

Best Bait-n-Switch is offering a service where they'll remove crapware from a PC for 30 bucks.

You can offer to do the same thing for 30 bucks, but do a better job. Here's how.

I saw an article in Information Week today about Firefox in the enterprise.

The fanboys on both sides took offense, of course.

I'm a longtime Firefox user and an IT professional, but yet I agree with the premise that Firefox will always have trouble in that environment.

I downloaded and installed Firefox 3 today. I didn't try any of the release candidates, so today is the first I've seen it.

So far, I like it.