Passwords

 

867-5309 / Jenny

Jenny, Jenny, who can I turn to
(Eight six seven five three oh nine)
For the price of a dime I can always turn to you
(Eight six seven five three oh nine) 

Having trouble remembering numbers or passwords? 

I have just been asked to reset my password to a 16-character code, which must change every 60 days! Passwords are getting harder and harder to remember, but being hard to remember is not a new phenomenon. I can readily remember only four phone numbers: 1) my late parent’s home, 2) my land-line phone, 3) my own cell phone, and 4) the Sheraton Reservation number. And the last is only because of the memorable jingle, 8 0 0-3 2 5-3 5 3 5. My parent’s phone, which was the number I grew up with, was WIlliams 1-6928. In the old days, phone numbers had exchanges. PEnnsylvania 6-5000 is a telephone number in New York City, written in the 2L+5N (two letters, five numbers) format that was common from about 1930 into the 1960s. The PEnnsylvania exchange served the area around Penn Station in New York City. 

PEnnsylvania 6‑5000 was the name of a Glen Miller Song, and also the number of the Hotel Pennsylvania which, claimed it to be the oldest continuously used telephone number in New York City.  It was eventually converted to 736. WIlliams 1 eventually became 941. In fact, most land line numbers were converted from telephone exchanges because those exchanges were easier to remember. My home landline has a 339 exchange after the area code, which means that at one time it would have been EDgewood 9. 

I find that rather than series of meaningless numbers, letters, and punctuation marks, a line from a song, a punchline from a joke, etc. makes a better password that I can actually remember. There is a reason that the Hilton number has stuck in my memory for so long because the jingle is an earworm. But my IT mangers need not worry. My new password is not a series of that or 867-5309😁.