Chapter LIII: A Rose By Any Other Name

would smell as sweet, Juliet informs us in Act II. But a blog by any other name? That remains to be seen. Effective next Wednesday (July 26), the blog URL will be changed to tryptox.blogspot.com, from the current tryptofantasmic. This modification is win-win because it is easier for me to type, and easier for you to remember. The correct pronunciation of the new name is TRIP-TOE-EX, not TRIP-TOCKS, as some uncultured swine might have you believe.

Along the same vein, I've finished changing the passwords to all my various Internet personas: facebook, myspace, partypoker, crazypenguinsex.com, etc... Yes, that was a joke; I don't actually have a myspace.

Anyways, until a few days ago, my main password was the cumbersome 'salamandostron,' which is a fictional mountain in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Circa 2000, when I set up my first password (to hotmail.com) these were my favorite books, and it was a natural choice.

The problem with 'salamandastron' is that it's long and somtimes hard to get on the first try since password fields are all ************** and you can't tell if you've screwed up*. This can be a pain if you're trying to get into one of those sites that lock you out for an hour if you don't get the password right on the first two tries, ie my.calpoly.edu.

Also, some sites (flickr.com) limit your password to 10 characters, so it ends up being 'salamandas' but their devious password field lets you type more than that, so you have to realize what site you're at and what the character limit is, if there is one.

Finally, many sites (turnitin.com, collegeboard.com) require that your password include a non-alphabetic character, which means the password ends up being 'salamandastron1', or, if the previous restriction also applies, 'salamandast1'.

All of this, combined with my crappy memory, was a recipe for disaster that I have finally rectified. The new password is 8 characters long, well within the min/max character restrictions of all passworded sites, and incorporates a number to cover that contingency as well; basically, now I can use the same password for everything, no matter what the requirements are. Out of nostalgia, it still contains a reference to Redwall.

Image of the Day: the original US edition softbound cover

*When I was in second grade, I watched my cousin type his password to something, and triumphantly declared that I knew his password. When he asked me what it was, I told him it was six of the little star thingies. That's the day I learned that password fields are sneaky like that.