PASSWORDS & APPS – omg

In this case, OMG means: Overtly Many Gadgets. Perhaps it doesn’t seem so obvious to anybody born after year 2000 or so, but to this OMG (Old Meandering Geezer) it still seems so bloody new, as in ‘somewhat complicated’, at times. But I do pride myself with innate stubbornness, as challenges to conquer the unknown are still kicking butt between my ears. So let me give you my take on passwords & apps, the Old Meandering Geezer way.

Passwords are nothing new. The initial need for passwords started early on when Homo sapiens needed access approval to whatever (another cave, perhaps?) about 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, give and take. Listen to this – if you can:

“What’s the password?”

“I don’t know”;

“Close enough - come on down”.

Yeah, they were pretty new at this. Just so you know, ‘Homo’ in this case means: mankind – actually ‘Homo sapiens’ is Latin for ‘wise person’. Wow, you are learning a lot today, already - huh?

Yes, passwords improved over time and turned into extraordinary complexities. It has become an exceedingly complicated thing, where mixing words, strings of characters, numbers and rare letters for authorization and access approval, has morphed into the land of utter silliness – really.

In my case, I have way over 100 applications (PC and mobile) and none of them will open without a secret handshake, known as passwords; bank accounts, credit card accounts, iTunes, amazon.com, and so forth.

When this frenzy started years back, I was adorably coy and decided that ******** would do; yeah, actually 8 of those * things. I’m sure I wasn’t the only genius – really. I was constantly told that it was a weak password. So I came up with something even cooler and created another generic password for everything – simplicity at its best. Feel free to feed off my genius (*********), yeah, now actually 9 of those * things; go ahead, count them; I dare you...

But as the need for passwords grew, too many applications were not happy with my *********. They ridiculed the primitive combination of ‘characters’ I used, even when using caps, or by bringing a few wild and exotic characters into the mix. Though I often thought ‘screw them’, I realized that I was not going to win at all, if I wanted to play; so I gave up. I estimate that currently I have over 40 different passwords/codes that I use to be able to function in gadget-land. I did try to continue my pre-genius ways, by making many versions close to my previously established *********, but all of those suggestions were rejected.

So I have all these passwords and other pertinent information written down, saved and edited over and over, whenever applications ask me to ‘renew’ passwords – I just hate that, don’t you? All the hoops you have to jump through to reset a password. I was perfectly happy with the one I had – duh. But I do as I’m told and make the corrections on my list of passwords and etc. access codes and ID’s. Now if I could only remember where the Hell I keep that damn list – all 6 bloody pages of it…

Of course at times I’m pathetically naïve enough to think (I did mention ‘naïve’, huh?) that I can actually remember a certain ID and password. I pathetically hammer that info into the appropriate boxes, but am immediately told that the ID and/or password are incorrect. I scream ‘screw you’ (like that helps, but it feels good); then I ransack the house, trying to find my bloody list (nah, only kidding, it’s right here – in front of me; so now you know).

Of course there are the times when I have not ‘adjusted’ my list with a new ID/password. That’s when I scream ‘screw me’ (which doesn’t feel good). Then you have to tell ‘them’ (again) that you can’t remember the damn ID/password and ‘they’ send you some kind of (stupid) code to let you into your account so that you can reset the ID/password (again). Don’t you just hate that? And on and on it goes.

The thing is that I don’t think I have a lot of stuff that needs protection. I mean who the heck would benefit getting into my AAA account (for you foreigners, it’s an auto club membership here in the USA); would you kill to get access to my FitBit info? (Being my pedometer account – I’m walking about 30 miles weekly, so now you don’t need to break that code to get this information). I have travel applications that are holding our flight, hotel and car rental information; massive quantity of secret handshakes just to get into those things. I mean, if you could, what would you do with it? There is no ‘sensitive’ information like credit card numbers, bank accounts or even my current weight. But I guess it’s enough personal stuff to protect, and I’m kind of okay with that – actually.

But are we going a tad crazy with all this ID/password crap? Overall: yes.

I have an iPhone 5S, also known as ‘smarty-pants’. With the speed of constantly new and improved gadgets hitting the market, my ‘new’ phone became ‘obsolete’ while I was buying it – true story; the sales-person seriously told me so before I left the store. So when telling Siri (the Apple queen of voice-command) what I want her to do for me, she obviously only understands (very) Olde English; so I have to use words like: ‘thou, thee, thy’ etc. before she jumps into action; very complicated as well as annoying, I can surely tell thou...

The phone has touch ID, which I do enjoy. No secret handshakes or passwords to recall, just give my phone the finger. But I do have to remember what finger to give and do have to remember what finger to bring along, if I want to use the phone. Can you imagine the mess I’d be in if I lost that finger? Any other finger would be okay, but that one? They would send me a new password, but would they send me a new finger? That’s a scary thought.

I have evolved through party-line phone (1950ish), rotary, keypad, HUGE pre-mobile gasoline-powered monster phones (in most cases with supporting training wheels). Then came car-phones, flip & flop phones and finally I arrived at smart-phones. At the smart-phone point, there were several issues I needed to get comfortable with. As with so many other things to learn, I bought a massive iPhone book/manual to really get to know what this thing could do – can do. And it can do a lot, way beyond what I will ever use it for – I thought.

First of all I was so totally against texting – set against it big time. Old- (or is it ‘olde’?) fashioned me. From generations ago, I prefer the face-to-face interaction or if not available, I will accept phone-calls to cover that interaction thing. Well, that was then and this is now (very poetic). I’m texting with family and friends like crazy, though some of my friends (and you know who you are, Benjamin) can’t figure it out, by cowering behind: ‘I don’t want to…’ I’m using a billion (an approximate estimate) cute icons in the process. And recalling face-to-face? I’m slowly building up to using FaceTime on my phone – daring olde me, huh?

I was set against using apps (as in applications). Why should I involve myself in this kind of silliness? - A waste of time, if you ask me. Well, that was then and now is another reality (not quite as poetic, but true…)

Today, I use pretty much 43 applications of various kinds on a daily basis. The etc. bank accounts, medication, podcasts, watch, calendar, DailyArt, weather, 11 travel apps that are extremely helpful, amazon, Kindle and Netflix, 5 soccer (football as I call it) apps, FitBit, Calm and so forth. I can only giggle as I have changed my (apps) tune 180 degrees (I have an app for that too– not). Now I generally shake my head and roll my eyes when contemporaries like me (older folks) blatantly admit that they do NOT use apps; the same people who do not text - duh. What is the darn world coming to, huh? Heading back to rotary?

It always takes a bit of ‘doing’ for me to embrace new things. Today’s gadgets, from toaster ovens to smartphones, take me a few moments to adjust to, but I am a stubborn one, so I will eventually conquer them all. I find myself rather knowledgeable concerning my computers (laptop & PC), and know plenty to make me function well within those realms. And to catch up with my iPhone 5S, I’m even taking classes in ‘Olde English’ at the local Junior College, so I will eventually be able to tell Siri what I want her to do – and at some point I might invite her out for a pint of ale? 

When I try to speak to her in today’s English she has two responses: ‘What are thou wishing Siri to doeth?’ and the other one: ‘What the hell’s with the bloody accent?’ Yeah, she can be nasty like that – thanks to Apple… (OMG).