The Best Things In Life Are "Free"

Such was the case of technology saving the day. And possibly, a dream.

I had some creative material I've been holding on to since 1996 and been thinking of publishing since 1999. One of them, I actually wrote when I was 7 years old. Several factors including forgetfulness, procrastination, lukewarm reception, fear, etc. etc. kept the project from moving.

The recent years that I felt motivated to resurrect the project - I spent trying to locate the manuscript. Mentally, for the most part, but finally this year, an actual physical search.

I did a sweep of all possible hard copy locations in vain. As for the soft copy, I'm not sure if I would luck out on it even if I do find the file, since my attempts at cracking the password since the year 2000 were futile. I was amazed that almost all of my 7 year-old (or older) floppy disks are still intact but I finally found the file in a 7 year-old CD-ROM. My hurrah at seeing it uncorrupted was for naught, though - I still can't remember the password.

I've had pretty standard passwords for as long as I can remember and ironically, the origin of my mother password had something to do with this manuscript. So how can it not be that or any of its variations? Or any other possible and silly thing I can think of? I began to feel depressed that, unless I rewrite these stories from scratch, this project won't ever see print. Not even for just my own kids to enjoy.

Today I found myself clicking that folder where the file was and struck by an inspiration. I asked a friend if he knew of a solution. He directed me to something that worked quite perfectly, but alas, being free, offered limited results. Two more attempts - same limited results. One of them did help by giving clues and I thought, that's good enough for me to remember the rest. But then it revealed that while I did use my mother password to protect file modification, the first few characters of the password to open were totally unrecognizable. Sigh. Nothing is free after all.

Oh but wait... that's not entirely true. For some things, all it takes is decent internet connection and time. And shame. And the offshoot problem that if it works, I have to find some other effective way to encrypt my other private files. Well, it did work. And right now, happiness at seeing my 13 year-old work again trumps this "price" for now.

The password? It's from one of Matt Damon's late 90s movies.