<p>Thought I'd post this for fun, seems like something y'all would get a kick out of. Anyway, I was accepted to my safety, The University of Texas at Austin... As the next step in the application process, I was required to change my password. Apparently since I'm accepted, my account info is taken more seriously. Fair enough... new rules: </p>
<p>-Password is 8-20 characters in length.
-Contains at least 1 capital letter, 1 number, and 1 "special character" (i.e., any character that is the second command for the number keys across the top of the keyboard, such as !@#$%^&).
-Contains no spaces
-Contains no reference to my name or birthdate or any of my biographical information in ANY form, including **writing any of that information in l33t speak<a href="-.-%20really..%20has%20that%20been%20a%20problem%20in%20the%20past?">/b</a>
-Contains no dictionary words or proper nouns of 4+ characters.</p>
<p>Seemed easy enough. They wanted random characters, nothing that those malicious UT-Applicant-Saboteurs could guess; however, I refuse to make random passwords– they must mean something to me. So I started reeling off names of scientists and mathematicians that I'm fond of. As it repeatedly refused my entries for various reasons, I went from amused to irritated. </p>
<p>I got a lol when they denied IsaacNewton for containing the word "acne" (see the middle? :P). I even understood them denying CFGauss, because gauss is a common enough word, no biggie. But they went too far when BlaisePascal was denied for containing "Aise". From what I can tell, (according to Wikipedia) I must have been denied because...</p>
<p>"The Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (Italian for "External Information and Security Agency"), commonly known as **AISE..." </p>
<p>... wow...</p>
<p>So I became obsessed with finding a working one. I went through all of the mathematicians and scientists that I am fond of. After 30 minutes of failed attempts, I entered...</p>
<p>By the way, don’t worry about me posting my password… Our UT usernames are randomly generated for us, so I have no reason to believe they can come up with the right one for me.</p>
<p>Oh my god, I had this problem with CSULA passwords, except the issue was a THREE LETTER WORD!!! <em>fume</em></p>
<p>Yeah, MIT just expects us to know how to make a decent password and leaves us alone :)</p>
<p>(OK, not exactly true. I think there’s a minumum character length and you need two classes of characters [ie, a letter and a number]. But still.)</p>
<p>The National Institutes of Health requires me, as a grant applicant, to change my password something like every six months, and they have similar rules. So I can never actually remember what my password is, and am constantly having to reset it to something else random that I won’t remember the next time I need to log in. It makes me crazy.</p>
<p>Yea, it’s absurd. My mom saw how frustrated I was getting and tried to offer me suggestions, but it became a personal battle, haha. I seriously can’t believe I spent 30 minutes trying and failing to come up with a working one that was meaningful.</p>
<p>The trick when you need to change your password regularly is memorize whatever random thing you can think of and make sure it ends in a number, like tyzqrl119. Then every 6 months you just increment the number by 1, so your next password will be tyzqrl120, then 6 months later tyzqrl121, etc. Then whenever you have to guess your password you’ll probably have a ballpark idea and can just keep guessing how many times you’ve changed it since you first made it. =)</p>
<p>^Actually, that won’t work on my employer’s website. I tried. You’re not allowed to use anything even remotely close to any password you’ve used in the past 2 years!!!</p>
<p>I’m totally in mollie’s camp on this one! Every 6 months we must all change our passwords … on TWO different employee sites, actually – one for my specific work group, and one for the company as a whole. And I require access to BOTH sites to do my job and access my employee benefits and pay statements. So you can just imagine the confusion for this old person! (parent)</p>
<p>I loved your little anecdote, michael! Entertaining! :)</p>
<p>@michaelwiggins: Here is what we did. Initials of your first, middle and last name followed by the initials of your mom or dad’s first, middle and last name followed by your birthyear and exclamation point.</p>
<p>One remark to passwords that need to be changed regularly: Try using the months as numbers, possibly include the year, eg. 1002 for Feb in 2010, etc, combined with your initials (or your parents)</p>