But alas! I can no longer escape from the grave danger. I have to change the password. I muster up courage and read the email carefully:
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From: System Administrator
Sent: Fri 20/10/2006 06:04
To: Jayprakash Keshav Acharya
Subject: Password expiry notification ... Open this mail for details !!!
Dear Jayprakash Keshav Acharya,
Your E-mail ID password is going to expire in next 7 days on 10/27/2006 9:04:27 AM at Indian Standard Time. Change your password NOW!!! It is recommended that you do not wait till the last day of password expiry!!!
Refer FAQ on Password Policy for the procedure to change the password and the precautions to be taken while changing password to avoid account lockouts. Extranet users can refer to FAQ by accessing Main Page -> Mail -> FAQ on Password Policy.
Please note that your password must be a combination of uppercase, lowercase, numeral and non-alphanumeric (special) characters. For example, it may be like "$M1cH37Bo".
Upon changing your password, you need to WAIT at least for 15 minutes, before you can use the NEW password. We recommend you to change the password while you are connected to LAN and just before you logout for the day.
Contact your local CCD for any further help.
Thanks for your co-operation,
System Administrator
Computers & Communication Division
Note: This is an automatically generated message. DO NOT "Reply" back to this ID. Please contact your local CCD for any assistance.
---------------------
Some of sentences in the mail, such as "Change your password NOW!!!" are in bold red, just to make it more frieghtening!! I take a deep breath and click on "FAQ on Password Policy". I am going to do this. I am going to understand this and do it correctly. So I click on FAQ on Password Policy. It opens up. And it is six pages long!! I need to study a six page document just to change my password!!! That's ridiculous. How can anybody be expected to read a six page document to change his password?! Why can't simple things be kept simple? Why are things made so complex? That's the reason I hate it.
I suffer from technophobia
Everytime I have to do something new with technology, I am in fear. Most often it is routine task like changing a password. For last several days, I have been getting mail suggesting that my password is about to expire and I should change it. I am panic striken! Everything is working fine on my computer and so I don't want to change my password.
I am afraid that if I change my password, some software will fail. If I change my password, I may not be able to login to corporate network when I get internet connection at home. Or because I am changing my password from my office computer, my laptop at home won't be able to connect to my corporate network. Or I will not be able to login to network because I am changing my email password and since we have common password for email and network login, I will not know whether I should use the old or the new password for logging into the network. If the network password is changed automatically on changing the email password, then the network password cached on my laptop at home will be different from my most recent network password. So I may face problems when I try to connect to corporate network from home. Or the worst of all, I may not be able to login to my laptop at all! :-O I hate password expiry policies!!
I remember my dialogue with Ramna few years back. The company had shifted to newer version of VPN software and had asked all users to upgrade to the latest version. Ramna asked me whether I had upgraded. I said that I didn't upgrade because the older version is working fine for me. He said, "Let me do it for you", and despite my protests he began uninstalling the older version from my laptop. I sat there in mortal fear!! "I NEVER uninstall a software that is working fine", I said. The new version worked fine. But my fear with technical tasks like software installations and password changes remains.
On my desk, I have a phone with 41 buttons!! I don't know why we need more than ten or twelve buttons. Three times in last two days my phone dialed a number that I did not ask it to dial. Today I was toying with some of the buttons when suddenly the speaker phone got switched on and someone screamed "hello!". I hastily scrambled and pressed a few more buttons at random, and thankfully that shut it off! Oh God! What a narrow escape!! I hate this hi-tech phone. :-(
Sometimes some of my friends ask me why I am still using the cell phone that old and outdated. They show me their hi-tech phones that can do magic. Well, they will not understand. All I need is a phone that has ten digits and a button to dial numbers and receive calls. That's almost all that I do with my cell phone. May be once in a while I send and receive an sms or save a number
in my address book. But anything beyond that is rocket science.
I am afraid that if I change my password, some software will fail. If I change my password, I may not be able to login to corporate network when I get internet connection at home. Or because I am changing my password from my office computer, my laptop at home won't be able to connect to my corporate network. Or I will not be able to login to network because I am changing my email password and since we have common password for email and network login, I will not know whether I should use the old or the new password for logging into the network. If the network password is changed automatically on changing the email password, then the network password cached on my laptop at home will be different from my most recent network password. So I may face problems when I try to connect to corporate network from home. Or the worst of all, I may not be able to login to my laptop at all! :-O I hate password expiry policies!!
I remember my dialogue with Ramna few years back. The company had shifted to newer version of VPN software and had asked all users to upgrade to the latest version. Ramna asked me whether I had upgraded. I said that I didn't upgrade because the older version is working fine for me. He said, "Let me do it for you", and despite my protests he began uninstalling the older version from my laptop. I sat there in mortal fear!! "I NEVER uninstall a software that is working fine", I said. The new version worked fine. But my fear with technical tasks like software installations and password changes remains.
On my desk, I have a phone with 41 buttons!! I don't know why we need more than ten or twelve buttons. Three times in last two days my phone dialed a number that I did not ask it to dial. Today I was toying with some of the buttons when suddenly the speaker phone got switched on and someone screamed "hello!". I hastily scrambled and pressed a few more buttons at random, and thankfully that shut it off! Oh God! What a narrow escape!! I hate this hi-tech phone. :-(
Sometimes some of my friends ask me why I am still using the cell phone that old and outdated. They show me their hi-tech phones that can do magic. Well, they will not understand. All I need is a phone that has ten digits and a button to dial numbers and receive calls. That's almost all that I do with my cell phone. May be once in a while I send and receive an sms or save a number
in my address book. But anything beyond that is rocket science.
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Technology
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