On Passwords

Everything you do online requires a password - checking your email, going on eBay, shopping on Amazon, and all those dumb little online clubs you join for whatever reason. It's a lot of passwords. I've had a few conversations with people about this, and there's a wide range of theories. My favorite is the "oh it doesn't matter, if you want to hack me you can", which I heard from a woman who told me that for everything she does, from online banking to the Pepsi club, she uses her dog's name as her password. Even her work stuff, in the semi-high security area. It's all "Fido" or whatever. I admire her blind faith in everything working out okay. On the other extreme, my friend and former coworker uses what appears to be almost a random string of numbers and letters, varied slightly for each thing, that he somehow keeps in his head. Example - we're in the car, he's driving and the directions are on his laptop. "Turn it on," he says, "and my password is RVA214HL3K." I am not exaggerating. Impressed, I asked how he could remember it. He said something about how it's easy, because it's his first and middle initial and then his father's middle initial, the month and day he graduated high school . . . and so on. Secure, I suppose, but insane. I am more on the paranoid side of normal. I change most of my "important" passwords every month or two. None of them are just a word, such as "password". Most often I take two seemingly unrelated words and put them together, or a word and a number that people would not normally associate with each other, but have some meaning to me. For example, a long time ago, my password for my email was my nephew's middle name and the date I found out he was going to be born (which even I no longer remember) so the password was like "john0405" which wouldn't mean a darn thing to anyone but me. For all the online clubs and whatnot, all the things that even if you had my password wouldn't cost me a dime or steal my identity, I have another password. It's a simple 8-letter word, and for the ones that require a digit, I add "1". So, if you figure out my password for Kraft Kitchens, you can also access my Wall Street Journal online free membership. I don't care. But it's not even close to my eBay, Amazon and various email accounts which change without notice anyway. I'm curious - am I more paranoid than I think? Or not as security minded as my friends? Don't tell me your passwords, tell me how you come up with/remember them.