There I was, paging through tiny bits and pieces of paper frantically turning them over, peering at them and discarding them as fast as my eyes could focus early in morning.
Nothing was what it seemed, I couldn’t read my own writing, the ornate scribbles may or may not have been A or a W, or just a doodle.
Frustrated by my fruitless search I wanted to toss them all up into the air.
Bootsie sat at the bottom of the chair, next to my bare feet, plaintively meowing for breakfast.
His I’m a hungry cat voice escalating from soft as a kitten to the growl of a tiger in accordance to my anxiety levels ramping up.
Meows didn’t help me find the password that I was searching for any faster, but they did get him fed, and that’s all he cared about.
Shuffling more papers and trying to ignore the roar of the lion under my feet, unfolding, and fluttering through pages of multiple books nearby on the computer desk but no solution was found there.
“Shhhhhhh” I told him as a particularly noisy meow startles me from my search reverie.
I gave up, thought maybe a break would help.he chowed down happily.
I resumed my search among the pieces of paper.
And realized I was in big trouble if I couldn’t find this password.
Dialling for what?
Remember rotary dial phones… if you are a certain age you might remember misdialing a phone number, hearing the recorded voice telling you to “ please check the number and try again.”
There was little that you could do to make a mistake other then plunk your finger into the wrong equally spaced plastic circles and dial the wrong number.
Our technological advances are supposed to make life easier, but it’s more complex now.
Long streams of passwords are not easily memorized, with 2-step verification, hacking, and other computer worries a far cry from the old check the number that the disembodied voice used to intone.
It all started with Picasa
Since I’ve been using Google’s Picasa to bring order to the many thousands of images in my computer I’ve found it’s easier then scrolling through my other editing programs, I like the format, everything is nicely lined up and organized.
Only problem was, Picasa wasn’t updating properly.
And neither was Google Auto Backup…
The last time photos were added was in early June, it is now late July.
Since then I had taken, oh… about a thousand more photos, which weren’t showing up, and that meant I would forget about them. We all know that the first step to blog post inspiration is finding the appropriate image to trigger something in our brain, and it all flows from there.
It was on my 2 do list… no really it was
Problem was I needed to sign into Google again.
And the real problem was, I couldn’t remember my Google password for the life of me. Which meant I would have to change it… again.
It’s a complex phrase just like the experts tell you to use. Or how to turn something easy to remember like “My Dog Has Fleas Since He Went Into The Garden In 1970 into:
Example: MDHFSHWITGI70
You end up with a long convoluted password that you have just created to deter nasty hackers from getting into your accounts, and it’s easy enough to remember that you won’t have to write it down.
Take the first letter of each word in your phrase, add some punctuation, throw in a numeral or two… fill out your password form, and voila… a password that they tell you will be much harder to hack.
And hard to remember, especially if you forgot to write it down, thinking, oh, of course I would remember that, who’s not going to remember “My Dog Has Fleas… ”
Me, that was.
Not that my password was “My Dog Has Fleas,” that would be akin to having 1234 as a password… which apparently is one of the most popular ones out there, next to “password.” I can’t blame anyone for doing that, after all, if your dog had fleas, would you want to remember that every time?
This is not your Grandma’s polka
So in comes 2 –step verification from Google, and it’s not some kind of fancy polka dance, it’s meant to make it harder for everyone, hackers or even you, to get into your account.
It requires a verification code sent to your cell phone before you can sign in.
Only problem was, it was 5 am, Bootsie was hungry because I was up early, and the other phone was using the charger.
Bootsie is a cat, we don’t have a dog, fleas or not.
My cell phone was dead.
I needed to change my password to get to my photos, because if I can’t find my photos.
I can’t write a blog post without…
We all know that fresh photos are what trigger new blog post ideas.
After I changed my password I could get to my photos but I also needed to change the password for Windows Live Writer to write a blog post.
Which also required 2-step verification.
But I couldn’t get verification because my cell phone was dead.
Welcome to technology.
I think I need a flea bath.