All I want for 2021 is to remember my passwords

There’s a lot of chatter about the “word of the year,” or maybe it’s been blatantly obvious.

Strong contenders are “unprecedented,” “exponential,” or “quarantine.”

For me its “passwords” — the number of which that I need to operate professionally, personally or in general society or the economy, has grown exponentially.

Used in a sentence: “I now have an unprecedented number of computer passwords, which I am not supposed to write down anywhere, for security reasons.”

There are passwords for various video conferencing services, various social media accounts, operating codes for home, work computers plus cellphones (plus my wife’s), a dozen or more for financial institutions and instruments, insurance, car registration, and at least 18 various others, including one for a bakery.

Is there anything now, in this ease-of-your-own-armchair world, that doesn’t have a password?

Registering a car this year required three such passwords, and that’s to save the province the cost of a stamp, minus the expense of building and maintaining a hopefully secure internet site.

As well, you’re not supposed to use the same password twice, and never, ever write them down and store them a single place, warn cyber security experts.

This is just in case robbers bust in seeking money or goods, like a computer, but get confused and grab scraps of paper instead.

Or, conversely, maybe the cyber criminals have undergone some self-realization and start rifling through desk drawers instead.

You can hit a “remember me” option when submitting a password, but if robbers get it right and just grab the computer, then you’re really in trouble.

One strategy is to simply reset your password every time, but the security questions prompts are troublesome as well.

Surely someone who can operate a phone that’s in your jacket pocket, can figure out your high school’s mascot or your mother’s maiden name.

A solution could be to set up a series of alternate identities, all with unique security prompts, but that’s a lot of character development.

So we’re stuck, it seems, in the ironic situation that cellphones have destroyed our ability to recall phone numbers, but now require us to remember 40 to 50 separate combinations of upper and lower case letters with at least one number or special character.

And just to be safe, change them all regularly.

Watch words of 2021

My bets are local, deficit, “double Christmas,” battery storage, net-zero, and some yet-unknown word describing the dual feeling of elation and social unease when the pandemic ends.

Boxing Day

Among those at home enjoying Boxing Day, instead of awaiting thongs of bargain hunters, is Lynn Adam Hertz.

This comes after a half dozen callers this month asked if the News had heard about her retirement sale that ended Wednesday.

For the record, we approached the owner of Adam’s Jewelry this month about the store’s closing down after 68 years in business, but she shied away from the spotlight.

All we were allowed was a picture of her arranging her window display to preview the City Centre Development agency’s Midnight Madness promotion.

We couldn’t let her get away scot free, however, and the retirement appears to be wellplanned and welcomed.

It does leave a gap on Third Street, where C.E. Adam Jewelry opened in 1952, by patriarch C.E. “Cliff” Adam.

The effect on the street is compounded by the retirement earlier this year, and under similar circumstances, by downtown stalwart Snooki Welling from Stone Furs.

A look ahead

It’s Boxing Week, so all official business is on hold ‘til 2021.

If you’re looking to fill time, rather than online (or out-oftown) shopping, why not figure out some old connection to rekindle with a phone call or contemplate New Year’s resolutions.

Speaking of looking ahead, this column is on a brief holiday next week, so a sneak preview of Jan. 1, 1921 is provided below.

100 years ago

A New Year’s message across the front page of the News this week in 1920/21:

“With the birth of new year comes the optimism of passing another milestone on the road of life.

“Few of us have done so well with our years now gone, but we feel we can do better with future opportunities.

“Fewer still have had experiences so sad and trying but that the New Year will bring renewed hope for peace and happiness.

“With every citizen and organization expressing their citizenship in a helpful an constructive manner Medicine Hat will be helped over the rough places into a finer conception of its responsibility and example, if not into an overindulgent material prosperity.”

-- E.W. Stacey, President of the Medicine Hat Rotary Club.