TFL

Some three hours after starting out, I can now confirm the Bullingdon details reported earlier in the day.

The story being that, a little while ago, TFL warned me that when I next logged into my account with them I would be prompted to change my password. An entirely reasonable request, although not one that necessarily fits very well with my own password regime.

So this morning, as I was logging in, I was prompted to change my password. At which point things started to go wrong, evidence once again of the tiresome fact that however hard you test some new bit of IT, real users will often manage to break it in about thirty seconds, having thought of some new way to do things which you had not thought of or allowed for, let alone tested for.

Along the way my account was locked twice, on each occasion triggering a time out of an hour. I made one call to the TFL help desk, who were, to be fair, helpful. The wifi on this laptop got turned off once, requiring a visit to settings, the result of some mysterious interaction between Virgin (my provider this morning, rather than my own BT) and TFL. I received two reset password emails, emails which I now know time out after a while as an additional precaution. I typed in my new password at least six times, two times being needed for each attempt. And I am now back in again.

I dare some of this is me, being careless about reading to the end of other people's messages. But I dare say also that some of it is down to something flaking at TFL. Maybe their fine new security upgrade - something their help desk mentioned - has put a heavy load on their system during some transition period. But hopefully all will now be well again for many months, the TFL computer record with me having been, hitherto, unblemished.

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