Not SSL, but SSH.....SSH allows for a secure encrypted stream from one computer to another. Ain't no way thery are going to sniff what's going on... unless they have the encryption keys.
In some respects it is like SSL, but AFAIK, SSL is purely for HTTP - with SSH you can tunnel the data to different ports via redirection.
You load up a SSH server on your home mahcine and make sure you haver port 22 opened up if you have a router/firewall.
You then use a SSH client on the machine that you want to call from. An example of a nice windows SSH client is PUTTY.
VNC is a nice progam for viewing a remote desktop. Their are a few variants of it - I prefer TightVNC which has some compression in it and makes for better performance over a slower link. VNC does not require any kind of registery installs, so, in theory, you could run it - and putty - from a floppy.
For those who are interested, I'll post asome links when I get home. Setting up the SSH server on my win2k machine was a bit painful, but there are some links to help you with the madness.