No maps for these territories

Last night I had a vivid, highly detailed dream. I had secured something (a file? a database? a website? something important) with a password, and I spent the rest of the dream being terribly frustrated because I couldn’t remember that password.

Like most people, I suspect, I have a set of standard passwords I use, ranging from insecure to quite secure. I probably do not change them often enough, and they are generally variations on a theme. This makes it easier to manage the many accounts I have, but also means a certain amount of password-cycling when I log into little-used things. In my dream, I clearly remember going through each and every one, and nothing worked.

Apparently, my subconscious is at least as afraid of early-onset Alzheimer’s as my waking conscious is.
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It occurs to me, though, that this is probably the ultimate secure crypto system, if a bit unreliable. Someone dreams a key or password; they then have to go back to sleep and fool around in their dream-environment to get it back. Very cyberpunk.

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In reality, this probably stems directly from a frustrating problem I’ve had lately of not being able to send to any of the mailing lists I’m on; systems keeps changing our default work email addresses (first it was brg@xxx.edu, then brg@libpo.xxx.edu, then brg@library.xxx.edu, then brg@lib.xxx.edu, and so on). Add to this the fact that they also changed the default addresses for interoffice mailing lists (and resubscribed everyone with their new default personal emails) and you have a hugely annoying situation of not being able to send or receive mail properly that has caused much late-afternoon cursing.