how to create a new online account

1. Go to an online vendor you've used before. Fill up your shopping cart.

2. Hit "checkout". The system will tell you to log into your account.

3. Curse quietly. All your old account information and passwords were lost when your computer crashed a year ago, and you haven't ordered with this vendor since then.

4. Try a few user names and passwords that you frequently use for low-security accounts. They don't work.

5. Since you think you know the username, click the "Reset password" button.

6. Now it asks you for the answers to your security questions. Discover that you don't remember the answers to your security questions.

7. But not to worry! It says that if you don't remember the answers to your security questions, you'll have to create a new account.

8. Go to the new account page.

8.1. By this time you've already spent more time trying to check out than you spent shopping.

9. Fill out everything on the account page.

10. The button doesn't work. Enable JavaScript.

11. This erases everything you've entered on the page. Fill it all out again.

11.1. By this time you've spent twice as much time trying to check out as you spent shopping.

12. Hit the button. Get an error message saying it's matched up your information and you appear to already have an account. Duh. So it won't let you create a new one. Double-duh.

13. Curse again, more loudly this time. Go back to the login page and try again to remember your password and/or security questions. Fail.

14. Go back to the create-account page. Since you don't have another address, try changing your e-mail contact to a different account and your phone number to your cell phone.

15. It works! Go to the payment page.

16. Go the other room where your wallet is, because you can't remember your credit card number. You used to remember it, because of the frequency with which you order online, but the company reissued the credit card with a new number a few months ago. Note the part of the number you've forgotten, and return to the computer.

17. Go back to the wallet and look up the credit card's 3-digit security code.

18. Go back to the wallet and look up the credit card's expiration date.

18.1. You could have done all these at once, of course, or have just brought the card to the computer, but each time you forgot you'd need more information further down the page.

18.2. By this time you've spent four times as much time trying to check out as you spent shopping.

19. Success at last.

20 (later). Get an e-mail at the address you used for the original account warning you that someone has been trying to break into your account, and it's been locked.