Pinned down and passed out
Everything has a password or a PIN* these days. I have PINs for bank cards, my house alarm (and three neighbours’ alarms), one to reset the car radio, a PIN and a PUK for my phone. I’ve go a PPN (which used to be a PRSI number), a student ID number and one for online banking. I’ve got six email accounts with different usernames and passwords. Logins for a few webservers. A login for my ISP’s account server. A login for Google, Statcounter, Polldaddy, about ten job sites, WordPress, Blogger, Irish Independent and more. A WEP key for my home network. A voicemail code. And on top of all that, there are account IDs for clients’ machines.
All of these, we are warned, must never be written down. We must memorise them and eat the slip of paper they came on and possibly shred your crap, just in case. You never know what geek has hacked into your pipework and hidden a poo-cam in your loo.
My fear of forgetting one of these, passcodephobia, (not to be confused with passcodaphobia which is a fear of going to the toilet after eating fish - the bones you know) has been getting gradually worse.
Passwords are not too bad. I tend to use about ten base ones in a variety of combinations which gives me about 50 unique codes. Numbers I remember by directions or shape. 9713 is a square. 0856 is up, up, right. Get the idea? Try it on your phone.
Yesterday I cracked. For the first time. I could not, not matter how hard I tried, recall my phone PIN. Having exhausted everything from isosceles triangles to down, outside, left-a-bit, I had to resort to getting my PUK from the website and resetting the PIN. No big deal. No harm done. But now my passcodephobia is worse than ever. If I forgot a PIN I use frequently what about all the others.
My head is just too full of codes. It can’t take any more. Now what’s my WordPress password so I can post this?
*Have you ever noticed how we all say PIN number? Personal Identification Number number. And we say Automated Teller Machine machine.
Very clever, trying to get us to tell you our codes or that we have them written in a little book that sits beside the monitor or VDyou to you.
Sneezy, you know what this means, don’t you? I’m afraid it means you’re a pin-head, m’darling. The psychiatric community battles to have this pejorative term about passcodephobia expunged from common parlance but even sufferers’ relatives call them pin-heads. Radical surgery is your only option.
Did you race yesterday P?
Young Knudsen - Well I got Sweary’s home address out of her yesterday. Always one for a challenge me. I’m going mountaineering on The Curragh next weekend.
Sam - Stop with the big words will ya. Knudsen’s listening.
FMC - Nope. I was off my feed.
Poor old sausage, next time, there’s one in June I think.
What? Relatives?
FMC - Are you doing the June one, now that you’ve gotten the bug?
Sam - Mention of anything big and Young Knudsen gets the H. He’s only 16, by the way. Did you know that? Yep, just 16. Lads that age are impressionable.