April 1, 2016
Dear Everyone:
Donald Trump will be the next
President of the United States!!!
OK.
April Fools.
(One hopes.)
Seriously, what’s the Republican alternative,
Ted Cruz?
Can you just imagine Ted standing in the
Rose Garden, reading
Dr.
Seuss out loud for hours?
Not a pretty picture. That
leaves the forlorn, dim hope of
Governor Kasich, the only adult left in
the race.
In other news…
The other day I suddenly realized that March was nearly over and I
hadn’t even started on my
Income Taxes.
Yikes!!!
So a couple of days ago I dug through my files, found the
CD and
installed the tax preparation software on my computer.
It only took two days to answer all the questions and complete
the process. Then the system
asked me to log into the software manufacturer’s site to finish.
Quick! You used that
login
ID only a year ago! You
can’t have forgotten the ID and
password already, can you?
Actually, I have a document that contains all the login IDs and
passwords that I have accumulated over time, from
AAA to
Wells Fargo.
It is six pages long.
Last year, around Christmas time, I acquired a little gizmo called a
“Password Vault”. It is a
little larger than a smartphone and can contain all the sites, login
IDs and passwords you could ever hope for.
I spent a number of hours inputting all the information from that
six-page document, with
CNN
droning on in the background.
So when the tax preparation software prompted me to log in, I picked up
the Password Vault and turned it on.
Naturally, it immediately asked for the
PIN to unlock all its valuable
secrets. For anyone who
might need the information, the PIN is the last four digits of the phone
number we had while living in
Lake Oswego, Oregon.
After that it was only a matter of remembering which site I needed and
scrolling through the 80 entries to find it.
Yes, 80. So far.
And yes, it does have a “search” feature, which doesn’t seem to do
anything, so I just scroll through the list until I hit the right one.
You could argue that looking through six pages would be quicker,
especially since those entries are cross-referenced by subject, such as
“Banking”.
Come to think of it, a
spreadsheet, with its
filtering feature, would
probably be even faster.
Particularly since today is the first of the month, a date on which I
change the passwords on nearly a dozen sites, like
email and
banking.
Now, in addition to changing the password online, I will need to go into
the Password Vault, scroll through 80 entries to find the correct one,
then change the password recorded in the helpful gizmo.
Of course, that’s nothing compared to when I worked in “Livermore” a
couple of decades ago. Then,
on the first working day of every month, I would go around the facility,
logging into every computer that I had ever used, and change the
password for each one. With
about three dozen computers on site, it typically took around 45
minutes.
So, on the first day of each month, change all the passwords.
On the second day, forget that you had changed the passwords and
try to log in with the old one.
Oops.
Love, as always,
Pete
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