Password Hades

Today's lesson, boys and girls: Remember how your passwords are managed.

This morning, I awoke early and decided to be a good little worker bee and login to my e-mail. Mass chaos ensued. My Outlook window kept popping the username/login screen. Now, this would not be a big deal, except that my password is auto-entried and I have not changed my password for my e-mail in at least a year. (A decision that dumps me into IT disfavor, I'm sure). The box kept popping up even after I closed Outlook in frustration.

Since some of our corporate websites are secured with the same password, I tried logging into them as well, without success. Thinking quickly, I attempted a password that our Help Desk staff often use as a "default" when a user is locked out. The default worked. Puzzling, since there was NO reason for me to be locked out (who would want to login as me?)

With the success I experienced logging into the websites, I took my new-found confidence back to Outlook. No such luck: I couldn't even get the cursor to blink in the continuously popping up window. I thought, perhaps, if I went to the online exchange server and changed my password, perhaps the outlook pop up would realize the change and would stop to let me change the password. Silly me, assuming that a machine can deduce.

So I sat pondering and pondering, and an ever-growing panic swept over me. I love Outlook. It is my life. While the Exchange server has its conveniences, I hate that I have to wait for Internet-slowness to load pages and switch gears from calendar to mail to tasks, etc.

AHA! An idea!
I have a password manager on this computer.... maybe, just maybe, the password manager is causing that pop up, since the manager can only assume the password is right since I haven't changed it in its own software. I hunt down my password manager... delete the old password.... and the pop up stops! I am able to enter the new password in, and save it in the password manager with success.

Now.. back to the original question... why did I have to change my password in the first place?