Ok, see, Cac, this is where you failed to bore me .... why on *earth* would only passwords beginning with "a" work? Layman's terms, please (wink).
I don't know. Ask the software engineer. {tap...tap...tap...}.
I'm the network engineer. we don't actually know how anything works; we are tasked with figuring out how to make it work...together. I can see on the de-bug console of the thingamajig that the password entered on the whatsis is being passed on to the whatchamacallit with the first character changed to the letter "a". Which, of course, returns an "incorrect password/access denied" error. "Password" is being changed to "Assword". I'll figure it out, eventually. and when I do, I'll be quite pleased with myself.
Obviously, I make this sound much more dull than it really is. I wasn't trying to do that, but I did anyway. But thats exactly my point; If you don't understand this little obscure niche, it does sound boring. Its not, to me, but its hard to talk about, to others. Thats allz I'm sayin'. someone (I don't even remember who, now) said "talk about work"...its not so easy. Wow. It must really suck to be you. Sounds like you have no choice in the matter, this is what life has handed you... and oh, honey... go have a life on your own, with your own friends and interests... fck me now and then... or actually, don't, I need something to complain about, otherwise, I'd never say a word... Let me know how we're doing, occasionally... I'll be in my... bat cave. you know...that does sound oddly appealing. I imagine that gay people must have it easy without this annoying mars/venus bs. (not that there's anything wrong with that) But again, I'm not "complaining" about my job...I'm just saying that the topic of "what I did today" is not a conversation that flows freely. Heck, if I only had a nickel for every time I had a conversation with a user, upon my fixing of some problem, they curiously asked, "so, why was it doing that??"...and then they think about it for a second, and before I can start to answer, they say, "STOP. nevermind. I don't think I really want to know"...to which I just and say, "good choice". Oh, and I meant to add as a side note, you guys really need to get an office prank thing going. Man, talk about having something to look forward to, break the monotony, add some laughter. I live for that stuff. Like inserting VERY candid photos of the professors into the pull down maps on the wall or in their powerpoint lectures. yeah...um....that wouldn't go over big in the "private sector". I can just imagine the pics of my boss with his fake buck-teeth and coke-bottle glasses and propeller bini popping up in a presentation to the board of directors of the highly visible big-city development proposal... But those pictures DO exist.
and say, "good choice". 
