Looks More Like a Puma

Yesterday I tried to casually join a friend’s fantasy football league. Once again I found myself creating a yahoo account. I’ve done this a few  times before; for whatever reason, I never seem to use yahoo’s stuff for very long and can’t remember my username, much less a password, between times I use it.

Now when I use a third-rate website, I expect a third-rate experience. Corresponding, when the website I’m on has been a staple of the internet for as long as I’ve been browsing, I pretty much expect a flawless user interface. My first time through the sign-up form, things seemed alright. I griped at the absurd and utterly unnecessary restrictions on my username (restricting me to alphanumeric plus periods and underscores is at least  within the realm  of reason, but what possible  justification is  there  for limiting me to one period, not allowing consecutive underscores, and not allowing either at the end?), but was floored when I first clicked submit. Question: What is the point of having cute javascript checkmarks that affirm the validity of my information as  I  go, if you’re going to reject my form submission anyway? Because you don’t think 30107 is a US zip code? I assure you it is, I actually wasn’t lying about that (though I’m not sure why). Turns out, according to yahoo, 29406 isn’t a US zip code either, all the mail I recieve notwithstanding. Completely baffled, I checked Google, and somebody on the internet, explaining what a zip code was, used 90210 as an example. For some reason, it worked.

Was I done? In fact, no. Apparently there was still a problem with my first security question. Luckily I had a descriptive error message to help me solve the problem: “Invalid Secret Question and Answer”. What was the problem? I still don’t know. My answer met the stated length requirements and was composed entirely of lowercase letters. Eventually I tried a different tack and created a  custom question/answer quite derogatory toward the website I was using. That one passed.

Was it that easy? No. Observe the curious length of the password in the screenshot. I assure you, I have never intentionally created a password that long. I don’t know what garbage yahoo was putting in that box, but every time I went around this hamster wheel, I had to retype my password. Twice. Plus the Captcha.

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PS - What the heck is ylrouaioppodd? My tenth choice for a username, yourlamerestrictionsonusernamesareindicitiveofpoorprogrammingordatabasedesign, was too long, so I turned it into an acronym. It’s surprisingly memorable.

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PPS - Did  you use the GIMP smudge tool on your email address and security question answers?

Absolutely.