Regular readers of this column may feel the urge to throw some of my earlier comments back at me, because I did write here that I was going to try to avoid droning on and on about passwords and the need for everyone to use cryptographically strong ones.  Try though I may, I simply cannot escape the fact that passwords are the single biggest issue I am forced to deal with day in and day out.  Often at the end of the day I realize that out of a workday when I should have spent eight hours fixing problems and helping people, I actually passed an hour or two unproductively while someone tried to find some misplaced password.

Retired Yugoslavia-born astronomer Egon Beer, who has lived in Guadalajara for 27 years, gets up at 7 a.m. every morning and feeds the pigeons who visit his small patio before he settles into the routine that has been a fixture in his life for 41 years.

She has just three months under her belt as the head of Jalisco’s Secretaría de Cultura, the pivotal state agency that controls the state’s orchestra, choir, some museums and venues such as the Degollado Theater, but already Myriam Vachez has earned a reputation as decisive, affable and, yes, cultured.

Nesly Mombrun, originally from Haiti but now with 17 years of high-profile experience in Guadalajara, seems to produce arresting observations about culture, along with his sunny smiles, without even trying.

Remember that priceless scene in the 1967 film classic “The Graduate” when a zealous businessman collars the naïve protagonist Benjamin Braddock to offer a “just one word” of career advice? “Plastics,” declares Mr. McGuire. “Exactly how do you mean?” Benjamin asks. “There’s a great future in plastics,” McGuire replies solemnly.