Holy passwords, batman!

I'm a bad blogger!

It was another busy weekend for me, so I decided to take the day off of work, and instead, spent the day doing domestic things, like changing my name (ahhh!) and getting groceries. You know, the stuff that single people dream of doing!

I've put together a post for tomorrow on how to make delicious enchiladas, but that's for another day.

Today! I want to rant! What is WITH passwords?!

Is it just me, or are you made to feel completely incompetent whenever prompted for a password?

It's starting to give me anxiety.

Seriously. Between work (which requires me to change my passwords every 3-4 months - depending on what program it is.. so of course they can't all line up at the same time), epost, email, google accounts, facebook, ebay accounts, paypal accounts, Amazon, Ricki's, Old Navy, Canada Revenue, OSAP, food.com - I totally have a gazillion different passwords.

It used to be easy. You could just type a word and have one password for all technological places. But then they introduced rules. WHY CAN'T THEY STANDARDIZE THEM? Seriously! Some places are like "oh! You have used too many characters. You can only use three." Some places are like "oh, that password is weak, like you are." Other places are all "You used a password containing similar characters and numbers last time", and others are all "there are too many repeated characters in your password." Others say "you have to use a capital letter and a number for your password." Again others say "You are not allowed to use a special character in your password" and then there are those which demand your first born child as your password.

And that's just for SETTING a password.

The amount of times I have been locked out of specific accounts because I used the wrong password too many times, or because my user ID isn't correct or whatever.. it's a nightmare! And you're not supposed to write your password down anywhere, people - it's supposed to be a secret. So then why do I feel like such a dink when I call to unlock my accounts and say "I don't know my user name or my password, and I'm going to call you back in two days because I will forget again."

Ugh. The computer world. I understand that there are password apps where you can store all of your passwords on your phone.. but I have a feeling I would just forget my password.

I suggest that they get their act together. Make user ids be email addresses - that's easy enough to remember. And then, passwords should all follow the same format: a combination of uppercase, lowercase, number and special character. Then we could just come up with one and we'd be done like my dinner is!

What is your strategy to remember passwords?

Ciao!