You wrote: 

A trick I picked up from Jeff Schiller, MIT network God, is to include
doubled letters in your password, e.g. "alloy" (but pick a longer
one); someone who can see you hit the keys will find it very difficult
to figure out that you hit one key twice, let alone which key....

Curious.  Some sites I've worked at will not allowed doubled letters.  
They claim it makes the password easier to figure out.  Beats the hell 
out of me why...

------RM