Of all the things the Internet has wrought, the obsession with passwords is one of the most interesting. Not that passwords haven't been used and abused down through all the ages of mankind's natural inclination for privacy and/or exclusivity. Spies use them. Secret societies use them. During prohibition, all those lovely dens of iniquity used them. And who can forget the hapless soul who didn't have the password that would allow him to go through the Green Door in that catchy fifties tune?
Nor can I forget a childhood project wherein a group of us, having fallen heir to assorted cardboard boxes and scrap lumber, spent all morning cobbling together a most excellent clubhouse. We were hot and grubby and, as the building efforts drew to a satisfactory conclusion, I was sent back to the kitchen for food and drink. As the littlest, it was a given that I got the KP detail.
So I made a successful raid, scoring a couple of tubes of Ritz crackers and a lidded plastic pitcher of Koolaid and started back. Halfway there, I realized I'd forgotten paper cups. Back to the kitchen I went and then started once more for the clubhouse, now struggling with all the assorted elements of my plunder, sweaty and hungry and thirsty. I stood at the door of the clubhouse yelling, "Let me in!"
And my evil companions demanded, "What's the password?"
Fortunately, in that world, she who had control of the plunder didn't need a steenkin' password. Such is not true now. The longer we're on the Internet, the more passwords we need. Adding insult to injury, many of those password protected doors require you to regularly change the darned things. Security purposes, don'cha know? I now have more passwords than Carter has liver pills, to borrow a phrase from my checkered past. It is not surprising, therefore, that an occasional password glitch burps up from the tangled web, as it recently did for me.
I have mentioned the sudden dearth of notices when folks leave comments here. I also began to realize there were other email missives that normally come in on a regular basis and they were also AWOL. What was going on?
Today enlightenment struck. A couple of weeks ago my ISP nagged me to change my password. So I did. And I forgot completely that I needed to edit that change into my email clients because, without that little detail, mail going to the ISP-provided account would not be forwarded to the Gmail account. Awwwk!
Needless to say, once the editing was in place, the problem was solved. I know this because almost before I could blink my eyes, my Gmail inbox was slammed with a backlog of 90-some emails. Guess I've been let into the clubhouse again.
Next time they ask me to change my password, though, I might have to hurt somebody.
Nor can I forget a childhood project wherein a group of us, having fallen heir to assorted cardboard boxes and scrap lumber, spent all morning cobbling together a most excellent clubhouse. We were hot and grubby and, as the building efforts drew to a satisfactory conclusion, I was sent back to the kitchen for food and drink. As the littlest, it was a given that I got the KP detail.
So I made a successful raid, scoring a couple of tubes of Ritz crackers and a lidded plastic pitcher of Koolaid and started back. Halfway there, I realized I'd forgotten paper cups. Back to the kitchen I went and then started once more for the clubhouse, now struggling with all the assorted elements of my plunder, sweaty and hungry and thirsty. I stood at the door of the clubhouse yelling, "Let me in!"
And my evil companions demanded, "What's the password?"
Fortunately, in that world, she who had control of the plunder didn't need a steenkin' password. Such is not true now. The longer we're on the Internet, the more passwords we need. Adding insult to injury, many of those password protected doors require you to regularly change the darned things. Security purposes, don'cha know? I now have more passwords than Carter has liver pills, to borrow a phrase from my checkered past. It is not surprising, therefore, that an occasional password glitch burps up from the tangled web, as it recently did for me.
I have mentioned the sudden dearth of notices when folks leave comments here. I also began to realize there were other email missives that normally come in on a regular basis and they were also AWOL. What was going on?
Today enlightenment struck. A couple of weeks ago my ISP nagged me to change my password. So I did. And I forgot completely that I needed to edit that change into my email clients because, without that little detail, mail going to the ISP-provided account would not be forwarded to the Gmail account. Awwwk!
Needless to say, once the editing was in place, the problem was solved. I know this because almost before I could blink my eyes, my Gmail inbox was slammed with a backlog of 90-some emails. Guess I've been let into the clubhouse again.
Next time they ask me to change my password, though, I might have to hurt somebody.