Passwords are Strange Things
It took me 4 days, but I finally remembered the password that unlocks all my other passwords. I think I startled a few of my coworkers with my screams of delight.
For the record, my password was wlb1tK!) — an acronym for “Work-Life Balance is the Key”. I have to change my password every 3 months as part of the work Information Security policy, so I try to base my password on a phrase that will beneficial for me to mentally recite a number of times every day. When I set that current password I was spending too much time at work, so I needed to remind myself every day that it was important to disengage from work activities and spend some quality time at home.
It got me to thinking: passwords are pretty strange things. Last year I had a colleague assisting me with some software at work and I needed to type in my username & password to gain access to a system. I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing, and I accidentally typed my password into the username field in plain text for him and me both to see. I was astonished how embarrassed I was, it felt exactly as if I’d accidentally brought up a naked picture of myself on the screen. (For the record, there are no digital naked pictures of me in existence — of which I know). My colleague was quite flustered too, he lost his train of thought and took a while to recover from having seen my most intimate secrets on screen.
Bill Gates predicted the death of the password in 2004, but evidently that was a little ambitious. I expected by now that we’d see a lot more people going down the path of Amal Graafstra and getting RFID implants in their hands. Once again I’m left waiting for technology to catch up to my expectations.
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