It’s been three days. Three long, excruciating, hard days without my fix. My fix, of course, being my laptop computer.
Before I sent my laptop out to be repaired I took every single precaution I could think of. I backed up and removed every single picture I had and every single document I had saved. Who wants some creepy geeky guy looking at my pictures? Not that there are any porno shots on there or anything, but still. Way too much of a creep vibe not to remove them. I also backed up and removed all of my work related databases per my boss’ request. He doesn’t want his entire client list and document history to be in the hands of who knows who. I also backed up my entire ITunes library onto not only an external drive but a DVD also – just in case.
However, I failed to consider one very important factor – and one very major flaw in my dependence of my laptop. Online bill paying. While online bill paying is extremely handy, one of the things I managed to overlook is the fact that all of my usernames and passwords are stored on my laptop and are filled in automatically when I access the site via my bookmarks. And I can’t remember all of them. I’m not concerned with the geek squad being able to look at my bank account (and not that they would find anything interesting there anyway). I have a master password in Norton 360 that will prevent any of my bookmarks or automatic logins from triggering if it is not entered. However, I have to pay these bills before my laptop comes back and, for the life of me, don’t recall what they are! And I have had many of my bill keepers stop sending me paper invoices since I do everything online. You know, save a tree eat a beaver – that kind of thing.
So, I’ll be spending my weekend going through all of my accounts one by one, logging in, making sure I’m up to date on my bill paying schedule worksheet – which I did remember to backup and have since accessed.
Does that get me out of paying my bills? Hardly. It just makes it a tad more difficult. And I learned a valuable lesson in the process. Keep a secure list of all your account numbers, usernames, and passwords if you’re a geek like me that pays everything online.
