OMG, you guys, I just hit the secret information jackpot. I often need to know salaries for my job. Usually, I get them one by one from the #2 finance guy. Well, he and the CFO are both out, and I need some info. So I go to this other woman in finance, and she handed me a list of everyone's salary. She said to destroy it when I'm done using it. Yeah right!

...I can't let anyone here know that I have this, so you guys get to know. I didn't know my counterpart makes more than I do!

Basically an attack now has to try all password options against multiple username options as opposed to just iterating through possible passwords.

I cannot contest that. However I think the viability in the field is weak--people are already post-it-noting their passwords to their monitors. I mean, I know my username here is firstnamelastname. At my last job it was the first eight characters of firstnamelastname. That's what I memorised--the structure, not the string itself.

I don't know how the rest of the world works in that respect. But in all my years as a network admin and a user on many corporate networks I've never encountered a policy that mixes it up on the username side--they emphasize the passwords instead.

Today I woke up late, had to take the car in to the shop, participated in a conference call on the shuttle back, and am just out of phase.

I hope your counterpart is not male (nonprofit gender salary bias rant). But now you know what to negotiate on your next review if you are still there.

She is female, and in retrospect, I think she got the (small) bump when review time came around last year and They decided I hadn't worked here long enough for an increase.

I can understand companies standardizing. The corporate usernames I've had don't change, but they aren't always uniform across the system. Some users have firstnamelastname, others have lastnamefirstname, etc. Basically an outside attacker wouldn't know which particular structure any user has, but for the user, it's an apparently consistent setup that they just learn once.

I didn't know my counterpart makes more than I do!

In my former former life, I produced various financial reports for most of the colleges and universities in the country. One thing I did was survey presidents and CFOs on their salary, from Harvard on down. I often felt like I should be telling some people, "Dude, you need to ask for more money!" Of course, I don't think they would have been very happy hearing that from a 23-year-old.

I got the Bill & Ted's soundtrack for Xmas this year

Random: my co-worker went to high school with Bill. And another co-worker saw Ted making out with his co-star from the Replacements when it was filmed here. True facts!

Discussion of which led me to find out that all three sort of manly, athletic co-worker guys who I was having happy hour beers w/ on Friday watched Melrose Place regularly back in the day (since Keanu's co-star from the Replacements was on MP).

And another co-worker saw Ted making out with his co-star from the Replacements when it was filmed here.

dude. what about Ted nekkid in the Henderson's Wharf pool.

Our sysadmins get to make up our usernames. Friends of mine have ones like 'isped' and 'royalty'. And then there is mine, which so many people use in place of my name....

Lord. I just forwarded an email inquiry from my dad (about work stuff, legitmate) to a coworker who is covering for my friend on mat leave, cause she usually handles this stuff for me. Except I neglected to notice dad'd used a pet name for me in the email. If it had gone just to my friend, that would be one thing. But this is to a former boss's husband. cringe

I forget how quiet my street usually is - I keep having to remind myself not to walk by the front window while less than fully dressed