Passwords Revisited

I posted a blog entry on passwords a few years ago and I think I need to update.   Everywhere I turn I am asked for a password or my childhood best friend or the name of my first dog.    I think we have reached the stage of overkill on passwords.    Everything I do in life seems to require a password now.    I am not tidy enough to write them all down and keep them where I can find them quickly.    I'm also not convinced that we even need to have passwords for a lot of stuff.    What's going to happen to me if somebody hacks my Facebook account anyway?    The hacker might "poke" a former girlfriend, still a FB "friend" due to my lack of diligent policing of my "friend" list?    God forbid such a thing.   I usually use my kid's name if I can get away with six letters.    8 letters and a requirement for letters and numbers gets you my kid's name and his current age.    Gosh, I guess I've given away the store.   All the hackers out in the blogosphere now know that my kid is between 10 and 99.   These entrys are normally followed by a notice that my "security level" for my password is low, sometimes I get rated as fair.   I used to use the name of my great uncle's coon dog as my password but that was hard to type.   "Xavier" is harder to type than my kid's name.    My computer guy says that AT&T needed the name of my favorite superhero this morning to get into my DSL line file.    Honestly don't remember having a favorite superhero or telling AT&T his/her name, for that matter.   I seem to get asked a lot of "challenge" questions that I don't remember providing answers for in the first place.   And my first car could be the old beater my dad loaned me in college or the nice new one my wife and I bought when we were first married.   Whichever one I pick will surely be wrong.   In any event, I'm kind of a risk taker in life.   I would be very willing to forego passwords for such things as my blog account and take my chances.   If some terrorist wants to get on my blog and post some scary stuff, then I am willing to take that chance.   I guess I can always delete his message when I get around to it.