hill_ja to hillj30
Today was the first day I got my username correct every time it was requested. I didn’t think it would be such a big deal, but I’ve been working at this new job for 13 days and until today I had to use the backspace in combination with my mistyped username at least once a day--sometimes more. I think the problem stems from similarity and frequency. At my last job they used last name plus underscore plus first and middle initial to construct usernames. Mine was hill_ja—it should have been hill_jl, but I was hired as a contractor with little notice and in lieu of a middle initial they just took the first letter that came along. At this job it is your last name followed by the first letter of your first name—should be hillj, but there are lots of people here and I’m not the first hillj to sit at a desk and type so I get hillj30. I don’t know if that makes me the 30th hillj or not, but I tend to think so. hill_ja to hillj30, you can see how I might get goofed up. Plus I have to enter it like 30 times in a day, so I tend to disconnect that task from my brain and just let my fingers type. It has taken 13 days and probably 390 logins to get consistent enough to make it through an entire day. Proving once again the incredible nature of muscle memory.If you’ve been following my occasional ramblings, you may be wondering what all this ‘new job’ talk is all about. “Hmm, I remember way back in July when Jason quit his job, but when did he get another one? And what does that mean for the treehouse.”
Well, the treehouse is a work in progress and I am watching window caulking on one of my windows dry as I type this post. When it dries, in 2 days, I’ll paint it and then get it in the treehouse, where it will be followed by 4 more, plus a door.
I am currently working a 6 month contract, at Nationwide Insurance in Portland, doing various web related coding tasks. It is not saving the world, but it does pay the mortgage and gives me time to do some other stuff.
As far a logins go here is what I remember:
Nationwide: hillj30
Pacificare: hill_ja
Webridge: jasonh
adidas: hilljas
Oddly, I can’t remember any more than that.
posted by Jason Hill at 2:23 AM
7 Comments:
hill_ja became your username because we didn't know your middle initial and we couldn't get a hold of Melanie at the company that you were working through. Knowing that if we didn't submit your logon request asap you wouldn't have one on your first day, we submitted the log-on request with "A" as your middle initial.
With all the bureaucracy around logons at PacifiCare, it actually would have been easier to have your middle name legally changed to "Arthur" or "Alan" than get a new logon id.
Hee hee!
I’m glad you have a new logon at Nationwide that doesn’t make you mistype your middle initial over, and over, and over. :-)
It didn't bother me back at good old Pcare. I just figured it was the first 2 letters of my given name. I think I'd been there a couple of months before I realized it was everyone's middle initial and mine didn't match. I miss hill_ja...
I can relate... As you know, I have a couple email addresses. One is more personal than the other. If I need info from a website that I think will blast me with junk mail I use one of my bogus emails to keep my in basket empty of junk. If I have to come up with a user name... well, johno, youthimpact, tijc, johnobond would be the order I would try.
When I go back to login after a few months... Which email did I use? Did I use a login ID? Which one? And let's not even begin to add passwords.
Put them all together and the possiblities could be difficult to crack.
peace.
johno~
I am starting up a username amnesia. . .what was I typing about. . .oh username. . .I forgot
Spoke too soon. This morning I logged in with the wrong username. Nope, still doesn't work. Maybe I can get them to change it for me...
Email formats are similar. At my first job it was jdavis@company.com. Then I went to a bigger company where I couldn't be the only Davis, so I became jennifer_davis@company.com. Then it was onto Intel (who has more employees than most towns in the US) and I became jennifer.b.davis@company.com. I ended going back to company #2 (Planar Systems), but I am still afraid that my next gig would be with a company that would make me spell out my entire name and include my social security number!
Love the blog. Got a chance to read some archives today. Thanks for putting your thoughts down.
Thanks Jennifer. I've always had a wee bit of envy for those folks with unusual enough names that they didn't need all the qualifiers in their usernames. (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.)
Post a Comment
<< Home