I've gotta change my passwords!

I was looking at a magazine and they were talking about the need to make passwords a bit more difficult to reduce hacking.  So they had this nice little illustration of how long it would take a computer to hack your password.  For example, an 8 number password would not take any time at all, a few microseconds.  On the other hand if it were 8 upper case and lower case letters, they said it would take 22 minutes.  Make that 10 letters and you are looking at 1 month.  Make that numbers, upper case & lower case letters and symbols and you go out to 5 years!  I don't know about you but I can't imagine anyone trying that hard to get past one of my passwords.  The article said the data was from www.howsecureismypassword.net.

That site was fun.  It is also a motivator to change a few passwords!  Of course, I've got passwords for American Airlines or Duolingo; maybe I can leave those quite simple.  Or flickr; what are you going to do, delete the pictures?  No one looks at them anyway!  

Speaking of photos: I was outside last night cooking on the bbq.  I've been talking about how warm it has been and late yesterday afternoon it was around 113F(45C) out there.  I saw this little hummingbird sitting on a rack we have out there IN THE SHADE.  He was just panting away and just sat there even though I was only a 4 or 5 feet(1.25m) away.

Well, that's the excitement for today.  Keep washing those hands.

Happy Birthday to the US of A!

 

It's been a weird year already but we've just got to keep working on it trying to improve things.  Who would have thought that the year would start out with a bunch of idiots breaking into the Capital?  On the health front heaven only knows what the Delta variation of Covid is going to become.  I'm hoping not so much but that is based on hope not knowledge!  And there is the Black Lives Matter movement; it looked for a time that there might be a bit more racial equality coming to our country; now all I'm hearing is how state legislatures are making it more difficult to vote.  They aren't doing that with old white guys like myself in mind.  All this racism, fear and negativity is depressing.  I have always thought that this was a country that was "conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal".  Bah, humbug!

I'll change gears here.  My wife and I bought a few extra things at the grocery store last week so we could just stay home on the weekend of the 4th.  Fireworks are legal in our county and we have three stores that sell nothing else.  Of course this is their big day but apparently they do just fine all year long.  They sell plenty of fireworks to out-of-town folks who want to make a big noise elsewhere.  We don't hear or see much around town.  A couple years ago I drove over to Las Vegas, where fireworks are limited to sparklers, etc., and saw 4 highway patrol motorcycle cops each with a car pulled over with illegal fireworks visible in the back seat.  Like most towns we have a fireworks display every year to celebrate the 4th; we watch it from our front yard.  That's plenty of excitement for us.

We've been working on taking a walk 1st thing every morning.  These days it is 75F (25C) when we set out; waiting for it to get warmer just doesn't make sense!  I liked this view of the mountains west of us when we set out.  The sun was being blocked by some clouds and it almost looked like snow.

Since those mountains are only about 4,000 ft (1,200m) and it is getting to 110F (43C) down here at 2,500 feet (760m); I'm pretty sure it's not snow!  

Well, thanks for stopping by.  Keep washing those hands!