Tomorrow begins the onslaught of Final Exams. So, of course, I need to login to Blackboard in order to pull down the last of my study materials. At 12:01am tomorrow, I can login and take my final exam should I so choose.
But wait! No, I can’t. It seems that it’s password expiration season. So, just to add to the stress of preparing for Finals and have a little fun for themselves, the IT side of the house has decided that everyone should be locked out of the University Systems pending a password change. The timing is incredibly insensitive and poorly judged. Maybe I’ll feel differently once the password sync is finally complete. It’s been quite a while (about an hour) since I changed the password and I’m still awaiting propagation of the sync so I can get back to study time.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for security and enforcing strong passwords. I’m even pro-forced password changes. All I’m whining about is the timing. And, yes, I recognize it for what it is. I’m whining. Additionally, the Blackboard system doesn’t tell you that your password has expired, it simply gives you the dreaded “invalid login” message.
Would it be so difficult to make a password last the entire semester rather than cutting you off the day weekend before finals?
Oh, one last little detail. It seems that Moodle is not in sync with the UNT Portal and Blackboard from a password perspective as that login still works just fine.
I’ll shut up now.
