Happy Chinese New Year

Year of the Golden Boar this year, and from what I've hear, the "golden" part of it only comes around once in 600 odd years.

I work indirectly with some people in China, and over there they get the whole week off. Actually they are suppose to work on Saturday and then they get Sunday to Saturday off. That's a long time of consecutive days off!

At work, I also happen to get Monday off for "Heritage Day". Not sure why we get it off, perhaps a relic from the past, but I'm not complaining. It also happens to be President's day in the US, so maybe that's part of the reason. It just so happens to fall on the same weekend as Chinese New Year, so maybe Heritage day is appropriate for me this year.

---

On a different topic, my post about sharing passwords generated a lot of comments.

Here are some highlights:

"I think being "family" has more to do with it than how many years you have been together"

"there's the whole "persona" thing, if I give you my password, then my persona is not necessary consistent."

"I don't see what the big deal is, meddling and trust are related no? You have to trust them not to meddle and change your settings too."

"I want to limit my liability by not having access to their private account."

"real trust means that you trust your partner to act responsibly as her own person; one must learn to accept that."

"the strongest and best relationships and marriages are ones that respect the rights and autonomy of both members equally."

"All in all, it's not a trust thing, but a guy (geek) thing."

When I first wrote the entry, I had no idea that it would divide so strongly along gender lines. Maybe it's a matter of commenting bias, that is males who identify with my position feel strong enough to comment and males who don't agree rather not comment and similarly with females. In the end, I think it was a matter of trust imbalance that caused conflict. I don't have access to her Xanga account anymore and hopefully that will be the end of the story. Although, please feel welcome to continue commenting.

Even though I got twice as many hits blogging about relationships, I can now go back to blogging about the Wii (do I hear groans?). I try to diversify my blogging topics, but usually I just blog what most easily comes to mind and, unfortunately, recently it's been the Wii. Anyway, Happy New Year!

Sharing Passwords

Kitty and I were having a heated discussion the other day about the sharing of passwords.

It all started when I mentioned something about a picture on Facebook and she wanted to see it. Since she didn't have an account she asked for my login. Now this is where it gets dicey - I refused. I don't give out my passwords to anyone. It's not even a matter of the information that I care about. I would be totally fine with me logging into whichever of my accounts and then she can look at anything she wants.

I just don't like other people messing with my stuff. For example, logging into gmail logs you into gtalk as well and if someone started a conversation, and she didn't respond, they might think I'm rude. Or any other program where logging in and doing something might inadvertently affect the state of the program without me knowing about it (for example marking unread emails as read). An analogy I thought of is that it's like having a workshop or garage that is basically off limits to her. Except, since I'm a geek, in my case instead of a workshop, it's my online accounts.

Her argument was that it was a matter of trust. I don't trust her enough to give her my passwords. I don't think that's the case, since I don't really mind her looking through any of my accounts. If trust is a matter of content, then there's no problem for me, but if it's a matter of meddling, then it matters to me. To make matters worse, she had told me one of her passwords in the past. Way back, I got her password to Xanga so that I could log in to post a comment. I have to admit, I hate Xanga (too restrictive), and I was not about to go get an account from them just to post comments. I don't understand why Xanga's so popular, it's almost as bad as myspace, but I digress.

Maybe I'm biased, because I had a bad experience with sharing passwords. I used to share a locker for working out and we happened to use my combination lock (that I had had for >10 years, since middle school). One day, I shared my locker combo with my workout partner. That very same day I lost my lock. Probably had something about not following a routine of unlocking the locker and snapping my lock onto my backpack right away. Anway, I had to get a new lock, and I'm still learning the combo to that one.

Maybe I'll change my mind 20 years from now, but for now that's my opinion. I finally convinced Kitty to get her own facebook account (yay! finally!), since it made the most sense in this situation.

Anyway, what do you think about this topic? For those couples out there, what do you do? And for you single people, what will you do when you meet someone? Does the length of time you're with someone matter? (Kitty and I have been together for 4.5 years and we don't share passwords, but my parents who've been together a much longer time share passwords) Eventually, you'll share things like bank account passwords when you're married, so does being married make a difference? Anyway, leave comments and let me know if I'm anal.