P to the Assword

When I logged into my computer at work this morning, I had to change my system password.  I swear it took about 15 minutes to come up with something that uses a capital letter, a lowercase letter, a number, a symbol (from an approved list—not any symbol!), is at least eight characters, and has not been used in the last 24 passwords.  Eh? What?

I’m a girl who totally keeps a password family.  I have several variations of basically the same two passwords.  Work?  Is having none of that. 

After lunch, the computer froze.  And I couldn’t remember the new password.  It was ridiculous.

A very similar thing happened over the weekend, when I changed my wordpress password: I think I was seduced by the “password strength” box at the bottom, and so kept coming up with outlandishly ridiculous things to get the rating higher.  Only it took me a lot of self-guessing to remember what I finally settled on.

I’ve been locked out of voicemail, kicked out of my online health benefits, and blocked from “privileged” information on our network because I have to keep changing the @#$%& passwords every 60 days or whatever, and I just can’t keep them all straight.  I have a post-it that’s grown onto a larger piece of paper in my drawer with hundreds, probably, of passwords scratched off and reformulated, and I can’t ever remember where they all go. 

I appreciate security and all, but I can’t help but feeling like we’re crossing over into some pretty high extremes.  I do not work for the CIA.  The work I do really is not that sensitive.  And these security doors that force me carry my card every time I want to run to the kitchen, the bathroom, etc.? So not needed, especially since I waste a lot of time hanging out in the hall because I’ve left my keys on my desk.  Sigh.

New to the ridiculous security measures scene is the  “inappropriate content” block that the intranet keeps slapping across my browser when I’m on the blogs.  I got booted from my own blog today—I checked in in the morning, but then I came back and was met with an “Access denied, no inappropriate content on company time” label.  Um.  What?

I couldn’t access most any wordpress blog today from my office computer, which was vexing in the extreme.  Those that I could see would cede to the “inappropriate” content screen once I tried to comment.  Boo.

Hypersensitivity might be the end of us all, seriously.  Till then, I’ll hang out in the hall, thinking up comments to make once I’m home on my own uncensored internet, on a computer that remembers all of my passwords for me.  Yay.