I once was a good LinuxQuestions user
 

Before my stroke in 2011, I was always screwing with my computer, when I screwed something up, I would fix it all by myself, and then posted the solution on linuxquestions.org.

Why?

To be helpful, of course.

Since my stroke, I have been a mess, I have made mistakes and it seems to me I am bombarding this site with inane questions.

But after every mistake, I do manage to learn something, at times.

EXAMPLE:

I really hate automatic randomly generated nonsense

1: Every password is written down on a real, physical, notebook. With pages and everything

2: Each password is different and unique:
a: pick three words, capitalize each word, include a digit and a special symbol
b: for example: I Eat Steak * 8, thus the password is IEatSteak*8
c: OK, it's a little simple, but you know what I am saying

3: This happened after a disk crash YEARS ago, and my passwords were all forgotten. It was a PITA to remember all the damned passwords, and some them were all cryptic

As an aside, I am a veteran with an honorable discharge, and I speak three languages English, Bad English, and Profanity.

Yes, some of my passwords are an exercise in profanity, since I can use profanity in German, Russian, and Chinese.

I also write my passwords down. Paper is unhackable.

A schoolfriend of mine who had a Russian parent always swore in Russian. She said it was the most satisfactory language for the purpose.

Not to add to the work, but two copies of the paper are a good idea. Archival quality ink helps since it won't run, fade, smear, or distort over time and might survive a drop of water or two.

i have five a4's with passwords and usernames.
at my home there isnt visiting ppl i cant trust, so i write em up.

Seems like I'm not the only one...... :D

Death is pretty common. It causes much grief among estate administrators when passwords haven't been written on paper, stone or something else visible that survives the death of a computer user.

I took a look at your posting history, and it looks perfectly fine.

Well, perhaps not to you, as you're comparing yourself to yourself pre-stroke, but that's another matter. Keep the questions coming.
A few years ago, a close relative of mine suffered pretty severe brain damage in an accident. Fortunately, he'd done exactly as you describe, and we were able to handle his affairs while he was recovering.
This is pretty much the perfect way to generate passwords, or rather passphrases, especially if you use a phrase that has special meaning to you, and perhaps even contains intentionally misspelled words.

Regarding stroke, it is encouraging that new research has shown that, contrary to earlier scientific consensus, the adult brain has remarkable plasticity and is in fact capable of generating new neurons. This means that over time, there's always a potential for some degree of improvement. The relative I mentioned earlier was initially wheelchair bound with only very limited control over one arm, and was unable to either speak or eat. It took years of physical therapy, but now he's living by himself and takes long walks almost daily.

I wish you the best of luck in dealing with your situation, incredibly frustrating as it must be.

Wow, this discussion is a great find for me. I had a stroke in May of last year; the right leg/foot still sort-of works, but the right arm/hand is more like "dead weight". The mental effort, OTOH, is a different story, with words and phrases blanking out on me for a few impatient minutes. But I've come far since then, and I have a lot more to go.

In the meantime:

Me: "My brain backfired, and my entire body ended up in the shop for repairs"

My brother: "What the **** are you on, did you get some bad leaves?"

I have never written down a password.
Instead of creating passwords for every occasion, I instead have categorical passwords.

The one for signing CA certificates is 24 characters, and is basically a picture I draw on the keyboard.

Then I have one for financial applications, which is logging into my banking accounts and credit cards.

There is another for e-commerce.

And another for social media.

I've memorized all four, and used the same passwords for years and years, except when password rigours went up, and I was required to make some modifications and use at least one uppercase and one symbol, and had to increase some lengths. The CA password I didn't have to modify.

Needless to say, I don't appreciate when a service provider asks me to change my password. I ususally just keep the same one, but change the position of the uppercase, and this causes problems, because I may have to type four or five variations until I get it, triggering their security alarms, then asking for a new password.

But if I write them down, paper, though unhackable, is readable by intruders. I have never had intruders, but there could be a first. Perhaps I should create an oldschool cipher for written passwords, like the second character is two characters back in the alphabet, and the third is three forward, and the fourth four back, etc...

I don't think it's a good idea to have the same password for different banking accounts. If someone hacks one of them, he will have them all.

My system for most websites and online services is to have a long and complicated passphrase which is standard to all, but it is appended with another mixture of characters based upon the name of the website or service itself (which is itself a system within the password system), thus creating more or less unique passwords for each website or service I use.

I use separate, unique, long and complicated passphrases for device user authentication, disk encryption and financial services (though the latter mostly require the use of 2FA anyway - one of the very few services where I think it is justified).

My password system should be secure even in the event that a hashed and salted password from a website is leaked. There is, however, a more significant systemic risk should a password be leaked in cleartext (though if passwords are being stored in cleartext today we may as well all give up).

In principle, I am in favour of a system of unique, randomly-generated long passwords using a password manager. However, such a system concerns me about the potentially serious risk of improper denial of access to data. For example, as silly as it may seem, I worry about those edge cases where I may need to urgently access something in unusual circumstances (e.g., I'm out without my laptop and my phone battery has died or perhaps I'm abroad and my devices have been stolen, etc.). I want to be able to access my data (whether that be e-mail, my hotel bookings, my cloud storage or my social media, etc.) from any device I trust without having to rely on another device to do it.