Password Purgatory

Various versions of this meme were all over Facebook during the past week. It seemed like I was in good company: just tired of it all. And now I'm even tireder of it.

I've downloaded the damn dratted app to pay for parking. But I'm scared to use it (don't ask me why; I've no idea) so when I go to the section of Near Philadelphia where the little grocery store is, if the free parking spots are taken, I go back home and try again later. I don't work hard to see a secretive menu; I just ask the person I'm with what looks good. And as far as providing feedback, all the negative input I give them doesn't seem to change a thing, so I've given that up.

At this point, though, I'm feeling overly saturated with passwords. Because I'm apprehensive about the "strong" passwords that are a bunch of hyphenated mumbledygoop, I've created my own and recorded them on a list that I keep . . . well, never mind where I keep it. Last count there were twenty-six of them. Twenty-flapping-six! Most of the time my thumbprint gets me into whatever site/app I'm trying to enter. Most of the time.

And here's where the trouble began. A couple of months ago my husband's phone gave up the ghost and he had to go replace it that very day because heaven forfend we should miss some Republican get-out-the-vote spam call. His 16-E is really nice and has a couple of covetable bells and whistles, but I know my SE model which is more than I can say about a lot of "modern conveniences" (my new-during-the-pandemic wall oven has a convection mode that I've never considered using, not even once). But I'd become aware that this phone experiencing sudden death was likely to happen to me, too, at some point because we usually get new phones at around the same time. 

Trying to stay ahead of a potential nightmare, on Tuesday I ventured to the mall, debit card in hand. I met with Mohammed, the Apple guy assigned to me, and by gum he was nice, considerate, thorough, helpful; he didn't talk down to me, he found me a decent chair, and he didn't try to sell me a more expensive model that I didn't need. The 17 was going to be just fine. So I bought it and Mohammed moved everything over and sent me home to make friends with it. He told me, though, that if I returned within two weeks with the SE, I'd get a rebate of perhaps $40. So far, so good. 

But you can already see there are more paragraphs to come. Paragraphs of woe.

I played with the 17 for a couple of days and decided all was well except that it didn't seem to want to be friends with my watch. So on Friday I returned to the store to (a) claim my $40 and (b) ask Mohammed to be a yenta and get the phone and the watch to play nicely together. Turned out I was actually going to get $42 back (whoopee) and the snag arose when for some reason I had to enter my password to make it happen. Used to the phone's recognizing me by my thumbprint, I paused. For a long time. And the first password didn't work and when the second one didn't work either, I was locked out and told I couldn't try again nor could I change my password until the next day. And on a different device. Okay.

The Genius Bar guru that Mohammed passed me on to for the phone/watch nuptials started by saying he thought the watch was too old to be compatible with the 17's technology but he would try. Unfortunately, however, he was scheduled to go on break immediately and he turned me over to guru number two who appeared to be about old enough to have shaved for the first time that very morning. And he was hesitant, despite my long-standing belief that if one has technological trouble, one should look for the nearest 12-year-old for assistance. Guru #2 was optimistic that the wedding could happen, but part-way through the ceremony the 17 lost her nerve, claiming the watch was much too old for her and she wanted to leave and we could see that it was futile but to cancel the ceremony we needed -- you guessed it -- my password.  At this point I was starting to go into some sort of panic mode and the supervising agent at #2's elbow -- who I'd not really noticed before -- stepped in and talked me down and explained very, very carefully how I was going to change my password the next day. At home.

So I came home, knowing I'm going to have to go back again to claim my $42 and get a new watch. Himself could see that I was beyond frazzled and made me a really nice grilled cheese (cut diagonally) and that helped. I also dumped via Messenger my woes on my good friend who did the Messenger equivalent of patting my hand and saying, "There, there." And I got on with my life.

A few minutes ago I went and looked at that password list. Of the 26 password-protected whatevers, in addition to the scary, unused parking meter app, there are at least four that as of now are completely unfamiliar to me. But dare I delete them? 

Not a chance.