The Wha-Huh?? Code

Just thought you’d all like to see another fine example of your tax dollars at work. (Yep, that's what I'm here for.)

You may remember an earlier post in which I ranted about the gazillion sites I have to register my company with in order to conduct on-line transactions. That time I was bitching about Raytheon, Lockheed, et al. This time it’s the Feds.

DFAS (I forget what it stands for) used to have this really simple website where I could go and enter our “CAGE” code to check the status of unpaid invoices.

Not any more.

Today I had to register at two sites (which took much hoop jumping and promises of my first manchild). Okay, I can handle that (well, not really…the whole process took hours). But here’s the part that raised my blood pressure. The rules for creating a friggin’ password.

Copied and pasted, so, cross my heart, I’m not exaggerating or makin’ it up:

Minimum 8 characters
Must contain at least 1 capital letter
Must contain at least 1 lower case letter
Must contain at least 1 number
Must contain at least 1 special character
Cannot contain consecutive characters (abc or cba)
Cannot contain repeating characters (aa, bb, etc)
Cannot contain the same character more than twice
Entered password must be different from last 10 passwords used
Cannot be changed within 24 hours

Um, obviously the name of my dead dog ain’t gonna work here.

Okay, you try. Trust me, it’s not that easy. And I promise you won’t come up with anything you’ll, like, remember.

I know, I know. It’s to protect and secure our privacy.

Yeah, right. More likely, some evil genius who never cracked the logic problems in the Dell crossword puzzle books, is having his day in the sun.