Beginning of the End

I finally took the plunge.  I downloaded a password manager.

Until now, I've either remembered my passwords, used some algorithm to determine them on a per-website basis, or tracked them in my emails.  All of those had shortcomings, so I decided to try a password manager.

Using no particular criteria, I devided to try Revelation.  Simple, to the point, and for the handful of days I've used it, it's gotten the job done.  Using a password manager has its own shortcomings, but having to look up a password in a single application beats trying to find passwords in my email or guess until my account is locked.

So...who wins?

Recently I was reading a forum thread that was talking about Linux distributions. Three comments in a row went thus (paraphrased):

Person 1: After 10 years of Ubuntu, I'm running Fedora.
Person 2: I gave up on Fedora back in 2003 and went with Gentoo.
Person 3: I used Gentoo for almost 3 years, but personally, I dumped it for Ubuntu.

True Computer Geek

Now this guy is really a computer geek. Arrested and convicted for uploading Star Wars III to the internet before it was released in theaters, he had to serve some jail time, and is now under probation. He also had to have monitoring software installed on his computer, which meant he needed to switch from Ubuntu Linux to Windows (since the government didn't have a Linux version of their monitoring software).

So what did he think about all this?

It isn’t the fact that I have to be monitored that bothers me, it is the fact that I have restructure my life (different OS, different software on that OS)

Wow. It wasn't the jail time that bothered him, or forced him to "restructure" his life. It wasn't the ankle bracelet he has to wear, the restricted hours he's allowed to leave his house (8:30 am to 5 pm on weekends), or even, as he says, that he's forced to have monitoring software installed on his computer. It's the fact that he had to change his operating system from Linux to Windows.