Missing when needed

[052] ... [Technology]

Much of today's morning went off waste. I had planned to go out on some work, though not very urgent. Prior to that I thought of referring to something that lay encrypted in a program that's in use since over ten years, and never failed. To my surprise and later horror, the set password wasn't accepted after repeated tries and it kept closing after three failed attempts. Combinations, guesses and whatever else tried was neatly rejected. The said program is one which acts as a terminus to store all other passwords, PINs and other log-in related, and it was like losing the key to a safe that contains all other keys.

Of course, it's wrong to put all your eggs in one basket, and I have been careful to note it down in part to guess the balance. But the problem came when trying to locate where exactly that piece of info was saved. It has been over two months since I had opened that program on the computer, and naturally it was a bit frustrating since it was the first time I encountered defeat. But not being the one to give up, I had to overexert my mind to think backwards and managed to find it. The cryptic (*) clarified the added character at the beginning and end of the original string to make it a bit different. Since the code wasn't changed for a very long time, and was never typed-in subsequently, the extra characters never got registered mentally.

We all go through such occasionally, though the ways differ. It's always better to note it down in a hard-to-guess way somewhere, like in your calendar or diary or a post-it note on the screen on the said date, so at least you can decipher when in need.