Eye See Cue

[plonq]

I ran into a snag when I was installing Trillian on my new laptop; I couldn't remember my ICQ password.  They assigned me a new one (an unsightly mix of numbers and letters) after my account got hacked 3-4 years ago, but I have never got around to writing it down or memorizing it (it's one of those r2bK0kcX9e monstrosities).  Without the password, I'd have no way to activate the account on my notebook.  Inasmuch as I take pride in such things, my inner geek likes having a low UIN in ICQ (334625), so creating a new account wasn't an option for me.

Fortunately I had a message from them in Hotmail with my "new" password from the last time I'd changed it.
Unfortunately I apparently deleted that message along with some spam within the last few weeks.
Fortunately they still have that "change password" feature on their website.
Unfortunately it no longer seems to work - leastwise it no longer recognizes any email address I've ever owned as being valid.

What to do?  In the back of my mind, the little voice that usually screams obscenities and tells me to kill people said, "Didn't you recognize your own ineptitude a couple of years ago and back up that message someplace?"  I couldn't remember the actual act of doing so, but neither could I shake the certainty that I had.  It took a couple days of digging, but I eventually found a copy of the message buried deep in one of the folders on my work account.  Hurrah for anticipating my own failings!

This morning I finished the downloads for the HL2 suite, and applied the last patch to WoW.  I have a couple of other titles to install, but I'm in pretty good shape for the next LAN party.  This will be SO much nicer than packing along my desktop!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

DL a copy of the real ICQ client (or even one of the 2001a or 2002bs) and use it to reset your pword.

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

That were me! I was the turkey all aloooooong!

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'll keep that in mind if I misplace it again.

It would be nice if more clients had a "reset password" option - maybe have a challenge question that you have to get past first. Having the option to change my password does me little good when it first prompts me for the password that I can't remember...

Having a system that remembers your password for you is both a blessing and a bane.

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

ICQ will allow clients to be made of it but only its clients can reset passwords. That part of the proto is undoc.

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

Also I'm a lowish guy, 8274761, but hey I joined a little late. ACTUALLY I have a 5 digit as well... it's lost to the ages.

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

Huzzah for eventually finding archived stuff!


This being August, I'm sure the heat will sort of taper off and I'm hoping my basement will become cool enough to host a LAN party.
I'm working this Saturday (sigh!) and am scheduled to work the following two Saturdays too according to the "tentative" schedule (double sigh!) but as soon as I get a weekend off, LAN at my place!

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Next time... I know, you'll either keep a copy or change the password to something you can remember; but failing that, next time you could look for a password hacking utility. Your password must be stored somewhere in your desktop's trillian, right? So there must be a utility out there that can retreive it for you.

Oooh, another 6-digiter; I'm 142785 me'self ^^