The thing is, I have a bunch of passwords I remember to conform with various policies. I've only got so much brainspace! Also, if I log on every day or so, okay. I'll remember. But if, as seems likely, it's once a week if that...

(But I've gone ahead and done it. I used the password I came up with to use in places where I feel the policy is stupid, and made the relevant changes, e.g. Ri0icu|ous. It's pointless and petty, but it makes me feel better.)

Having had to call the support staff and have my password changed about fifty times, I have finally given up on being overly clever. Now I just cycle through Schoolhouse Rock titles. Capitalize the first letter, number the number, throw a punctuation mark at the end and it's done. Usually I doodle whatever number it is somewhere unobtrusive on my desk or bulletin board or address book or calendar, with the date I changed it. To anyone else, random number. To me, password in plain sight.

Save Firefly it is!

But I'd still like to record Minearsest and Dearest, as it's fun to look back on how I felt at the time, and the embarassing hero-worshipness thing I can't ever seem to kick.

And bon? Thanks for da words of wisdom.

I've taken to leaving my work password(s) taped to the front of my monitor. I figure if they can get past security into my cubicle to read it, they're either authorized or they've worked so hard they deserve it.

I have my passwords on a sticky-note taped to my monitor. Really, if you can break into the building, and sneak past the security doors on every floor, and get into my cube, then you deserve to be able to look at my hard drive.

EDIT: OMG, practically verbatim laisse-faire x-post with Theodosia!!

Even so, I cycle through four words, with the numbers/letters added in as necessary. For a while, I had every password on the same cycled word, but it turns out the financial people require a new password a lot more often than the basic logins screen.

Even so, I cycle through four words, with the numbers/letters added in as necessary.

Our system won't accept any password that's the same as any of your previous 24 passwords. It's a huge PITA.

I sit next to Information Security. No post-its for me. And we're not just defending against people who come in from the outside, but from people inside who a) shouldn't be seeing what other people have access to (everyone's limited to the least they need to get their job done) and b) might pretend to be you for nefarious purposes.

We have a, IIRC, 24 month cycle on passwords, changing every month. It was about that much, I think, before I could use my first one over again.

Luckily they've changed the systems so that everything other than e-mail uses the same password. That's another layer of security.

The school password system is fairly rudimentary -- you have to change it every couple of months, but they don't care what it is as far as characters go. Every so often my boss has me go into his email for something, and his password is always his name with 666 attached somewhere. Makes me laugh.

And bon? Thanks for da words of wisdom.

I hope it works!