Where is it again?

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I was a late adopter. I didn’t see the need to jump onto the computer bandwagon. My 3-line memory-erase electric typewriter was the cat’s meow, as far as I was concerned. It was several steps up from the old manual on which I had learned to type in Grade 11 (most practical course I took in high school), and it was fully portable. Who needed a new-fangled expensive personal computer? 

Well, of course, it turned out that I did. Once persuaded to leave the dark ages, I adapted quickly to the DOS-based machine we bought. Do you remember that amber (or green) blinking cursor? All those floppy discs? I certainly do. 


What I don’t remember is a constant hunt down my memory’s lane for passwords. We must have had them, did we? But I don’t recall the angst I feel these days about cyber security and, along with it, all the different passwords and 2-part authentications required today. 


Back then, the PC truly was a glorious word processing machine that enabled me to vastly improve my writing skills by making it so much easier to edit and cut and paste and generally move words around to better effect. 


But then email came along and addresses and passwords became significantly more important, and then the internet slithered into our lives, and shortly thereafter Facebook appeared…and it’s been down hill ever since, really. 


Today alone, Val and I have spent untold minutes that add up to hours getting online with new passwords for financial matters. Oy. Spare me the pain of temporary personal access codes and secure passwords that boggle the mind. Of course, nothing is written down. That’s bad practice, right? But if, say, a person had made a written record of the occasional password, where, pray tell, did that person put the paper with the precious secret word? Now there’s today’s million dollar question… 


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A Post a Day in May No. 19 For the past two years, I have posted something to this blog every single day in May. This year, I hope to do it again. 


Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash 

Comments

  1. danielle-momoMay 19, 2021 at 6:52 AM

    All those passwords are certainly a bother. I keep a manual list in my security box at the bank.
    Not very practical out of business hours and it is 8km from home. But if not urgent, not often used and easily forgotten, it can help.
    Also, if I become incapacitated or when I die, my successor will be able to access my accounts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnnMay 19, 2021 at 7:13 AM

    Oh Amanda, you took me back to 1979 when my place of work installed a main frame that took up several thousand square feet of air conditioned, dust free, accessible only by little men in white jump suits, here-to-fore used only for storage basement place.

    And then there were the little CRT with key board. The only function allowed a lowly staff nurse was to transfer a patient from one hospital unit to another, perhaps ER to OR to recovery room.

    However, I, in my eagerness to play this instrument, managed to discharge a patient from the hospital by mistake, and she was never to be found in the system again! So embarrassing.

    This experience progressed to overseeing the development and implementation of an electronic medical record for The Women's Hospital in Long Beach, CA, in the 80s.

    I never lost another patient to the ethers again.


    ReplyDelete
  3. BarbaraMay 21, 2021 at 12:03 PM

    I can so identify with the password hell! And, yes, where did I put that paper/ book where I wrote the passwords and what do you mean I don't have a gmail account, I have a password for it?

    ReplyDelete

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