Password day, the antithesis of pay day at work. Just a miserable day of trying to synchronize all 83 or so of your log-on's you've accumulated on one single day per month (or in my case every 45 days, which makes no sense). Perils abound at every turn.
What if you forgot to change one of your passwords the previous month? That access is probably now locked, big decision to make there. Do you call the help desk (India) and wait an hour to have your account unlocked? Or do you decide to go on with out it, you obviously didn't need it for the last month, maybe you won't this month either?
Then there is always that one access point that changed their security parameters on you to something ridiculous like "need two upper case, one lower case, three symbols, and a six digit number." This always throws me off, especially when this happens after you've already changed a couple of passwords. Now I've got to go back and change all of those again to match this phrase that I have no chance of remembering and will undoubtedly tack onto my cube wall, thus defeating the purpose.
Password day also leads to more lockouts than any other day. Once I change my desktop's password for the day I'm guaranteed to lock myself out a minimum 2.6 times. No one remembers on the first day. I'll sit there punching in my old password a couple times then it'll dawn on me that I changed it, except I had to change it to some overly complicated Morse code like sequence and I miss type it on the third frigen time.
Now I'm stuck calling India again, answering things like "what street did I grow up on" and "who was your childhood best friend." Who came up with these standard security questions a pedophile? Why not "do you like candy little boy?" or "do you want a ride in my windowless van"? Before you know it I've wasted an entire day on the phone with Mumbai and haven't gotten to type one blog, never mind do my real work. Exhausting.
