• the217
• Life
• Simplicity is the key

It seems that whenever we try to make things easier for ourselves, they just end up being extra complicated. I remember thinking, for example, that getting to class would be so much simpler with a bike. So I bought one, and it is nice to have, but I always end up losing my bike key, having to check up on my tire pressure before every ride, having to buy handbrakes and reflectors, etc. And it doesn’t stop there. Eventually I’ll be able to get a car to make things even more convenient but along with it comes so many other things to worry about.

And it’s the same thing with acronyms. First of all, who could possibly be busy or lazy enough to not have time to say, type, or read all three or four syllables of Barnes & Noble or Burger King? The time it will take to explain what B&N or BK means to someone who has never heard of the abbreviations should be enough to prove my point; while abbreviations and such are meant to make things easier, in the end they are just a waste of time

And of course, the only things worse than acronyms are Internet passwords.

About a week ago, I got an e-mail from the University alerting me that my CITES (most obnoxious acronym) NetID password will be expiring. The e-mail linked me to a page that let me change my password for the next school year ... IT TOOK ME NINE TRIES UNTIL IT ACCEPTED A PASSWORD. The password had to be at least eight characters including uppercase and lowercase characters (and numbers), no names, NO WORDS, no alphabetic or numeric sequences, the list went on and on. How can you possibly remember a password that looks like this: TdskI93kH45? And then when you throw that in the mix with work login passwords, e-mail passwords, online stores passwords, etc., life immediately gets a lot more complicated. Boy, the Internet sucks. When can we go back to a simpler life?