Online Aggravation, I Mean Registration

Every month, I get buried under a stack of bills. Between the bills themsleves and the checks I have to write, I figure we must be responsible for the deforestation of at least half of Oregon.

So this week, I decided to try and pay some of them online. I've seen the ads. It's supposed to be faster, easier, better. I can do it during the commercials while the popcorn pops, or while I'm waiting for the coffee to perk (Well, maybe not. Too risky to do anything before coffee.) Then, I can use all that lovely extra free time to bounce around the house like Mary bleeping Poppins. Yeah. They lied.

First, you have to register on each site. This requires a username, password and security question. At least. Some want blood or your first born child.

Username. Okay. How about my name? Taken. Tim's name. Taken. Our names combined? Taken. Seriously, what are the odds of other Tims marrying other Anns and signing up for Verizon Wireless with the same last name as us? Apparently, they are pretty good.

After a fun ten minutes of trying every possible combination I could think of, I ended up making up usernames that I will never remember. Oh, and it can't be the same username for all the sites. That would be too easy.

On one site, it has to be between six and ten letters. No numbers. On another, eight to twelve characters, including at least one number and one letter. And on yet another one, all numbers, no letters.

Great. I can barely remember where I put the car keys that were just in my hand, and now I'm supposed to remember eighteen different usernames? Then, to add insult to injury, on one site, if you have multiple accounts (which, of course, we do -- cell phones), you need multiple usernames! More fun.

Once you have cleared this hurdle, you get to choose your password. No less than six letters, no more than five. At least two numbers, no numbers allowed. Naturally, all of them are case sensitive, so you have to remember where and if you used any capitals.

Some sites though, don't let you choose your own password. This is for security reasons. You can't complete your registration until you get your super-secret password in the mail. Oh goody. Does it come with a special decoder ring? Or maybe it self-destructs five minutes after opening the envelope.

Twenty randomly assigned numbers to remember. They've got to be kidding. Secure? You bet. From me!!!

And speaking of security...they are not done with you yet. After settling on usernames and passwords that you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of remembering, you have to choose a security question to answer. But, again, each site has different questions.

Therefore, I now have to remember my favorite book, movie, hobby, color, actor, actress, author and high school teacher. Which would be great if I actually had a single favorite in any of those categories. After all, I really liked Mother Goose and Captain Kangaroo at one point, but I hate to think I'd be stuck with them for the rest of my life. Oh, and I am so over Tom Cruise too.

Ahh, but once you get past all that, you get to access your account, and choose the method of payment, etc. Which is great, except that with all the "print for your records" pages and lists of usernames, passwords and security questions I've printed out this week, I think I may have deforested the other half of Oregon.