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"Disclaimer: This blog is not responsible for those of you who start to laugh and piss your pants a little. Although this blogger understands the role he has played (in that, if you had not been laughing you may not have pissed yourself), he assumes no liability for damages caused and will not pay your dry cleaning bill.

These views represent the thoughts and opinions of a blogger clearly superior to yourself in every way. If you're in any way offended by any of the content on this blog, it is clearly not the blog for you. Kindly exit the page by clicking on the small 'x' you see at the top right of the screen, and go fuck yourself."

Friday, August 21, 2009

It's My Masonic Apron's 200TH BLOGDAY!

Praise be, my little darlings-- I never thought we'd get here.

Certainly not together.

Today marks 200 posts on this here bloggy-doo, and I'm grateful to you for sticking it out with me. Some of you have been with me since the old Pudd'nhead Nathan days-- you dealt with the abrupt cancellation of that blog, and you dutifully tied on your masonic apron and followed me along this path.

You've waded through countless posts about anxiety, personal incompetence, home ownership, dead cops, lost friendships, home ownership, suburban inferiority, a nice, chunky sampling of some Dear Apron ire, and the sporadic rant.

You've even continued reading after I made the decision to stop spending hours of my time searching for funny hyperlink pictures.

Well, shit-- you're all kinds of swell.

Funny thing is-- my 200th Blogday almost didn't happen today-- because I couldn't remember my blogger password for a minute or so there. No password? No post.

Actually, it's kind of a good thing that this happened, because I didn't know what I was going to write about until I forgot my password, then remembered it, then realized that this minor event underscored a uniquely 21st century dilemma that I have no doubt a lot of us are having-- and what better way to celebrate a 200th blogday than by bitching about something that affects not just me, but you, too? Here's the dilemma:

I have too fucking many usernames and passwords.

I mean, Jesus Christ. What the dick?

Here's a short list of all the institutions/websites I frequent with at least moderate regularity that force me to keep track of a username and password:

Auto Insurance website

Credit Card website

My bank's website

My cellphone company's website

Health insurance website

Student loan website

Online class website

PayPal

Ebay

Photobucket

Shutterfly (yes, we do both-- one for business, one for pleasure. Yowza!)

Email

Work email

Facebook

Amazon

And, of course

www.blogger.com

And Icerocket, the blog tracking software I use so that I know when I am visited by Guelph, Ontario or Fishers, Indiana or Elmhurst, Illinois. Hi, y'alls! I see you!

And that's just a sampling of websites that require username and password entry. There are at least eight or nine that I have to use for work purposes that I can frequently never remember. I just had to ask my boss how to log into the Theatre Alliance website because I couldn't remember the username and password. Pretty sad.

But, seriously, how's a brotha supposed to keep track of all his skeez like that? Are we supposed to write it all down, every username and every password for all our websites-- even our financial institutions and such, so that any petty pilferer or day laborer who happens to be working in our house can access anything and everything online? I know we're not supposed to make all our usernames and passwords exactly the same, because then, one someone has one, they have them all.

Right?

This isn't just me, right?

So, I make them slightly different, but then I can never remember which variant of which username or password goes with what website. And, of course, the credit card website is the one I can never remember, and it's one of the few websites that, if you get it wrong three times, sorry! You're locked out until tomorrow. Try again, please.

How did it come to this? Sure, usernames and passwords are good ideas in theory, but sometimes all this security blows up in our faces when we try to pay our credit card bill online. We ought to be rewarded for "going green" and getting paperless statements-- instead we're forced to commit to memory dozens of usernames and passwords until they start leaking out of our ears. I mean, yeah, we're young and virile now, but as Generation Y or whatever the fuck we are ages, we're never going to be able to remember all this shit.

Will "Password Retrieval Services" start springing up all over the place, created by some enterprising bastard wishing to capitalize off the graying of America's online generation? Will websites start charging you a dollar every time you can't remember your password, like your R.A. used to do when you couldn't find your dorm room key?

Speaking of higher education, I think the first online password I ever created was in college. This demonstrates how old I am. My freshman year, I was shoved in a cramped dorm room with a shoulder-tufted leviathan who grunted instead of speaking, showered in Aqua Velva and possessed a remarkably cro-magnon forehead. The dorm building was one of the oldest on the campus, the windows only opened a crack, there was no air conditioning and the floors were movie theatre sticky. The dorm's name was Walz.

My online password for all of freshman year?

ihatewalz

5 comments:

  1. Happy 200th Blogiversary! Wow..did THAT go by fast.
    I hope you never stop writing the blog and that one day you compile them all and make it a book and then become famous and then despite your fame you keep writing the blog and that Meredith Vierra interviews you and we can watch the awkwardness unfold live on Good Morning America. THAT would make for good t.v watching!
    But for now just keep writing!
    Cheers!

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  2. You need to get yourself a 200th blogday present! How about one of these?

    http://password-management-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. happy happy. i can't live w/out yr daily snark

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  4. I got a shout out! Woot! Woot! I'm the Fishers, Indiana lurker. At least I think I am...I don't exactly live there, but close enough. Makes me wonder how that program works.

    My solution to password dilemma is to have an Excel spreadsheet that is password protected for all user name/password combos. Yes, I realize that anyone could probably hack into that file, but at least it's somewhat protected and then I only have to remember one password.

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  5. Happy 200th; sorry I missed the day itself, but I'm still here, congratulating you!

    I have about... hm, let's say, 5 passwords. Each one varies in complexity. The more important/valuable the service, the more complex the password.

    So for shitty things, forums, forgettable stuff, it's usually a very simple password. For Paypal it's a very long and complex password.

    ReplyDelete

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