This too shall password-protect
Dec. 10th, 2008 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members."
- Oscar Wilde
Now that the economy is circling the toilet bowl, with the real estate market as toilet paper, interest rates are plummeting to historic lows. According to the Wall Street Journal, this theoretically makes for an ideal time to buy a home. Now all I have to worry about now is possibly losing my job, or falling seriously ill, or embarking on some other extravagantly expensive project like an engagement or a wedding or something.
After briefly flirting with the idea of moving westward, or southward, or elseward, J. and I have decided to stick around the Washington D.C. area for a while. And thus begins The Great House-Hunt of 2009. In advance of the actual shopping, we are performing our due dilligence by applying for mortgages with a variety of lenders.
This kind of endeavor, to say nothing of the actual purchase itself, requires a very thorough examination of one's personal finances. As they should, loan officers want a complete, high-definition picture of the applicant's worth, including: investment assets, liquid assets, solid assets, gaseous assets, god-given assets, livestock, stock options, preferred stock, shitty stock, pension plans, savings plans, health plans, career plans, career goals, career assists, MVP awards, outstanding debts, average debts, debit cards, credit cards, credit scores, partial credit, extra credit, extracurricular activities, co-curricular activities, educational transcripts, medical records, criminal records, The Police records, get-out-of-jail-free cards, one's current residence, prior residences, future residences, family planning, family history, U.S. history (specifically "The Gilded Age"), proof of American citizenship, passports, fingerprints, dental records, blood samples and any current and past medications. The rectal exam is optional, in lieu of the essay portion.
It's bad enough that this process forces me to actually look at all my equity investments -- For several months I had been consciously avoiding even sidelong glances at my retirement portfolio, which now looks like it has been carpet-bombed by the Germans -- but each of these little bits of information require me to enter my user ID and password.
Yesterday alone I had to retrieve five different user IDs and passwords. It was a real pain in the ass. And it doesn't even count the numerous logins I unconsciously complete every day for my e-mail, etc. There are logins for everything. Many of you are logged into this very Web site right now. At least I have an unusual last name -- I can't even imagine how difficult it is for someone named Pete Johnson or something, who must have to come up with weird IDs like "fluffernutterlovr12" or "p00p10rd&!"
Sometimes I think about inventing a service that would store all of a person's passwords so they would never have to remember them or write them down and leave them lying around the house. But of course, you would need to password-protect that site with a super-ultra password of its own, and you would have to make it 100% no-shit hacker-proof, and you would have to hire an ascetic Mormon samurai with Government Security Clearance just to safeguard the database. So it probably wouldn't work.
Instinctually my next desire would be for a global standardization of password protocols, so that I wouldn't have to make up 20 different passwords for 20 different sites, all of whom have different rules for length, symbols, number of alphanumeric characters, etc. (One site restricted me from repeating any character within the password; for example, "Tennessee911" would not have been allowed, even if it were backwards.) But, of course, then people would just use the same password for everything, blithely paving the way for identity theft and fascist world domination.
And at that point, it would just be expedient for us to have no passwords at all -- no firewalls, no phishing, no privacy. We'd go back to the honor system. Or maybe it goes all the way back to survival of the fittest. It's like an elegant amalgam of socialism and free-market philosophy.
Yeah, of course that doesn't make any sense. I don't want other people peeking at my 401(k) plan. Although I must admit, I like the idea of someone else absorbing the losses for a while.
- Oscar Wilde
Now that the economy is circling the toilet bowl, with the real estate market as toilet paper, interest rates are plummeting to historic lows. According to the Wall Street Journal, this theoretically makes for an ideal time to buy a home. Now all I have to worry about now is possibly losing my job, or falling seriously ill, or embarking on some other extravagantly expensive project like an engagement or a wedding or something.
After briefly flirting with the idea of moving westward, or southward, or elseward, J. and I have decided to stick around the Washington D.C. area for a while. And thus begins The Great House-Hunt of 2009. In advance of the actual shopping, we are performing our due dilligence by applying for mortgages with a variety of lenders.
This kind of endeavor, to say nothing of the actual purchase itself, requires a very thorough examination of one's personal finances. As they should, loan officers want a complete, high-definition picture of the applicant's worth, including: investment assets, liquid assets, solid assets, gaseous assets, god-given assets, livestock, stock options, preferred stock, shitty stock, pension plans, savings plans, health plans, career plans, career goals, career assists, MVP awards, outstanding debts, average debts, debit cards, credit cards, credit scores, partial credit, extra credit, extracurricular activities, co-curricular activities, educational transcripts, medical records, criminal records, The Police records, get-out-of-jail-free cards, one's current residence, prior residences, future residences, family planning, family history, U.S. history (specifically "The Gilded Age"), proof of American citizenship, passports, fingerprints, dental records, blood samples and any current and past medications. The rectal exam is optional, in lieu of the essay portion.
It's bad enough that this process forces me to actually look at all my equity investments -- For several months I had been consciously avoiding even sidelong glances at my retirement portfolio, which now looks like it has been carpet-bombed by the Germans -- but each of these little bits of information require me to enter my user ID and password.
Yesterday alone I had to retrieve five different user IDs and passwords. It was a real pain in the ass. And it doesn't even count the numerous logins I unconsciously complete every day for my e-mail, etc. There are logins for everything. Many of you are logged into this very Web site right now. At least I have an unusual last name -- I can't even imagine how difficult it is for someone named Pete Johnson or something, who must have to come up with weird IDs like "fluffernutterlovr12" or "p00p10rd&!"
Sometimes I think about inventing a service that would store all of a person's passwords so they would never have to remember them or write them down and leave them lying around the house. But of course, you would need to password-protect that site with a super-ultra password of its own, and you would have to make it 100% no-shit hacker-proof, and you would have to hire an ascetic Mormon samurai with Government Security Clearance just to safeguard the database. So it probably wouldn't work.
Instinctually my next desire would be for a global standardization of password protocols, so that I wouldn't have to make up 20 different passwords for 20 different sites, all of whom have different rules for length, symbols, number of alphanumeric characters, etc. (One site restricted me from repeating any character within the password; for example, "Tennessee911" would not have been allowed, even if it were backwards.) But, of course, then people would just use the same password for everything, blithely paving the way for identity theft and fascist world domination.
And at that point, it would just be expedient for us to have no passwords at all -- no firewalls, no phishing, no privacy. We'd go back to the honor system. Or maybe it goes all the way back to survival of the fittest. It's like an elegant amalgam of socialism and free-market philosophy.
Yeah, of course that doesn't make any sense. I don't want other people peeking at my 401(k) plan. Although I must admit, I like the idea of someone else absorbing the losses for a while.
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