Nothing to see here, Russian hackers..

Good News, Everyone!

As regular readers of the blog know.. there IS no way to regularly read this blog. Unless you like to go back and revisit gems like the one where I spoof the Onion (a parody of a parody site- how meta!) or the bit about Downtown Crossing. That's because I am a lazy person when it comes to anything I should be doing for myself or for the world in general. Yes, I write solely for the world; Nobel committee take notice. Anyway, today I will be letting everyone in on one area of my life in which I am the opposite of lazy. I am a regular James Brown. That area is password creation.

Joe sent me..

Passwords were easy back in the days of Prohibition. Chances are if you went to enough of them, somebody would know a guy by the name of Joe. Boom, you're in. If I had any sense, then I would make my passwords all be "Joe sent me" (I'm not going to, so don't get any ideas about hacking into my twitter and freaking-out my 25 non-spambot followers with admissions of hookercide. Is that a word? It is now.) My accounts are basically speakeasies anyway, in that there has been nothing of value in them for years, due to the ready availability of alcohol. But that's not what I do when I create an account, instead I engage in a little game I like to call..

Let's make a password so good you'll never remember it in a hundred tries!

Here is how it works:

• Pick a number, then another.
• Pick a word. No, not in English! That would be too easy. 
• Spanish, no, that's child's play. Loco69? Come on, you'd remember that one!
• For the same reason, don't use 69. (13, 007, and 666; they're out too.)
• Try Ancient Greek, Latin, or maybe one of those Chinese names from the book next to your bed that you still haven't read called Poems of a Thousand Masters. Yes.. a thousand.. that will do nicely.
• Capitalize some letters. Not the first one. Jeez. Do it to random ones.
• If you use the same word for two passwords, just make sure to change which ones you capitalize for each one.
• Add, like, an ampersand or something, maybe in the middle.

Yeah, Sumerian, that will do nicely..

That's how we play make up a password, WTS style. Oh, yeah, I forgot the most important part of the game..

Don't write it down!

Come on now, that would be cheating! Besides, you know that you'll remember 3nAUtes&7wuLIN the next time you need to access that secondary account that you never look at but think might have a couple hundred bucks that you might need to transfer since you're stuck at an Indian casino enjoying the musical stylings of Steely Dan and your rent check is in danger of bouncing if you use your primary account but you don't know if you deposit a check from the account in question whether or not that will bounce and then you'd be even worse off because now you've bounced your rent check and overdrawn both accounts and you will wonder why you ever opened that second account in the first place and then you remember that you did it to hide money from yourself..

 

Which, Congratulations, you have successfully done!

Thank you for playing. Soon, you too will be on the path to being your own worst enemy. I wish you luck, unlike your enemy self. Speaking of which; that is why I suckered you in with Professor Farnsworth. The good news is I am going to try to make this a weekly thing. Yep, Carlow's Corner is going weekly, rather than bi-yearly or whatever. That might mean that quality and length might suffer, but nobody has ever accused me of either. Wild Tuesday Sandwich!? Hmmm..