my name is clio and I'm having an existential crisis

[jlh]

I don't really like posting when I'm having an existential crisis, but I'll lay out a few thoughts that have been swirling in my head over the past 24 hours:

1. There's been a spate of LJ hacking, shoebox being the latest. I would rather that my email and LJ not be hacked.
   
2. Later in folk's journal it seemed that what I have to do is memorize 40 strings of

Comments

[heinous_bitca]

BTW, I've found the easiest way to have a password that is complex, but easy to remember, is to take a phrase that you know well enough and take the first letters of each word in it. Say, "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog." That becomes a password of "tqbfjotld." You can mix up o's for 0's, throw in capitals, and then just say the phrase in your head to remember it. I have actually started using foreign word phrases from one of my favorite comedians as a base for my passwords.

I know I exist because I can touch myself. ;)

[ecwoodburn]

Hack-worthy or not, you are awesome. *squish

[ecwoodburn]

Argh, YES. I remember people in choir cornering me on this in high school. Sorry, no primal wound here. I'm all for open access to original records, but personally, if my birthparents showed up on my doorstep one day? I'd have to find a polite way to tell them "sorry, not really interested, have a nice day."

[sistermagpie]

Really? I find it weird and confusing that they don't just take what you say about your feelings at face value! I mean...why should you care? I get why some people do but it makes just as much sense that you don't. If I were adopted I honestly don't know what I would want to do. My instinct says I wouldn't want to find out that much.

[soupkills]

I will give you a *hug* for the existential part, but also actually have password management advice...

Write your passwords down on a small piece of paper.

This sounds like the exact opposite of what everyone tells you to do, but actually you're already quite good at tracking small pieces of paper. Think of your credit cards, drivers license, etc.

This way, your passwords can be arbitrarily complex without you having to remember them.

You could also look into one of the password vault programs out there that encrypt your passwords so that you only have a single password to write down on your piece of paper. This won't work well for things you need to log into when not at your computer.

[folk]

Absolutely. There's no reason why I have to remember that my Amazon password is like &jU94s**op, because I type it in maybe once a month. (I remember it; I'm good at passwords. It's a flaw.) It's on a piece of paper somewhere safe, with a couple of the digits or letters changed.

The slightly less secure but more memorable option is to use parts of non-dictionary words, then some numbers. Like klE555-1212ptO, remembering that your vowels are capitalized and your phone number from when you were 5 is in the middle.

(Sorry if I freaked you out with the password security, Clio. ♥)

[soupkills]

Also, use letters out of a phrase, surround it with a phone number or other significant number, and tadah!

ladies and gentleman, elvis has left the building. -> lAg,Ehltb.

is pretty damn secure, and not hard to remember. If you use a slightly less obvious scheme (second letter, or sequential letters) you can just write down the passphrase and only need to remember the scheme.

[folk]

Yep! (Not your SSN, of course. :D)

I'm a fan of song lyric-based semi-secure passwords. Clio, that might take your fancy, actually. Vktrs!Immaimc1980s, from Video killed the radio star! In my mind and in my car, would work well.

[annearchy]

# True story: when my father and I went to get a copy of my birth certificate, so I could get my first social security card (I was about 12), we didn't realize that all the information had been officially changed when I was adopted. That is, on my birth certificate are my adoptive parents and the name that they gave me. We were trying to get it under my birth name as listed on my adoption papers--which also isn't real, since it was a closed adoption.

I can see how this alone could precipitate an existential crisis. My DD's adoption is somewhat open; we met her birthparents at the time she was born (I was in the birthing room!) but once the adoption was finalized, the amended birth certificate contained only OUR names, not birthmom and dad's.

That said, your birth certificate verifies your birth date and time, birth weight and length, location, race (ugh, you know what I mean) - which narrows things down ITO you versus someone else who might have your name. If that made any sense.

random

[imaginarycircus]

This sounds a lot like Descartes to me and he was a huge proponent of algebra. I have seen you and I believe you are who you say you are.