My heart pounded, my mind raced, my fingers hovered above my keyboard. And my memory was...empty. The cursor blinked impatiently in the "Password" box, taunting me. All I could remember was that I'd been pleased with the creativity of my password on the day I created it.
Which is the problem. My creativity, that is. It loves to show up when new passwords must be entered. I think it's the revenge it exacts after having sat mute while I filled in the requisite membership information on whatever new website I joined. I'm enough of a rule-follower that I stick with true answers to things like name and address. Practicality demands simple usernames, too. But I get to the password box, and the world is my oyster -- or so my creativity thinks.
Ah, it suggests. I have a perfect, obscure combination of movie lines or painting titles or animal words written backwards, all relating to this website in a bizarre way, that will be hack-proof and even a bit snarky. It will bring a secret smile to your face every time you type it in.
My mind agrees: of course! Who doesn't want a password which pins an invisible badge of coolness on you at each use?
The only problem with an invisible badge is that once you drop it, it's difficult to recover...
Thus, my mental fumbling around once again tonight. That happy memory of feeling clever -- well, it turned out to have no relation to the memory of the actual password. Guess I'll have to move on, abandoning the old one in favor of one I can actually remember.
Take that, creativity.
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I had used the same 3 "creative" passwords for years, until my account got hacked. Now I have totally random combinations of numbers and letters - one I can remember if I just let my fingers type and don't think about it, the other is written on a sticky note stuck to my laptop. :)
ReplyDeleteSNARKY!! love it.
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