The other day my better half asked how I remember all the passwords I do, when she was prompted to change her network password. (Yup, even on the home network, I do as I say. ... Mostly anyway.) I was surprised I never told her this method:
Choose a line from a song or poem you like, or a make up a motivational phrase, and use the first letters of each word for characters in your password. It should be at least six to eight unique characters. Remember to include some capitol letters, numbers, and if you possibly can a "special" character.
For instance, "A vision of our tearless times discloses artificial men sniffing plastic roses." (Peter Meinke) becomes:
Avo02td@mspr or even just Avo02td@
"I will continue to keep my gardens without weeds."
becomes:
Iwc2kmg!w
(It helps to know that the exclamation point can also mean "not" in a number of computer languages.) Duplicate use of characters such as the "w" above should be avoided also, although in this case there are eight other unique characters its OK.
And so, because my LAN is connected to the Internet, (albeit behind a firewall) I change all my network passwords every 45 days. I'm not hakcer-proof, nothing is, but I'm determined to make it difficult.
And it's not that hard to do if you use this little trick.