Passwords

I understand the concept behind passwords, really, I do. And it all seems good and well until you actually have to live in the world of passwords. I complained earlier when my company suddenly called me and said, um, you were supposed to put a password on your blackberry months ago and today is the ultimate deadline so either put a password on or it will stop working, so I have to struggle to push those tiny buttons (a particular problem right now b.c. my nails have grown extraordinarily long, a separate issue). In any case, just now, in the middle of the day (not really the middle of the day but I've been at work for a couple of hours because I got here early so it feels like the middle of the day) my computer stopped working, telling me my password had expired. Now, fair enough, my password had expired. I knew it expired today. I was surprised when it didn't tell me that when I logged in, but I figured I had miscalculated and "one day" meant I had one more day after this one. Point being, I didn't get any prompting to change my password so I just continued on. Had I been prompted it would have been an easy process, switch to the new password (I have a system so this is a straightforward process), move on. See, a big part of my annoyance is that I leave all my various programs running so this password reset forced me to shut down about 7 explorer windows and 6 word windows and many other programs that just run as singles. And I wouldn't have had to do that if it had just prompted me when I got in this morning.
Not to mention that the idea of someone getting past the presidential-style security downstairs and making it onto the floor which requires keycard entry and ending up at my computer and somehow knowing my password seems rather ludicrous. But I don't dispute the need for passwords. I say, fair enough, to that. But I would just appreciate it if the prompting for new passwords happened at log-in and not in the middle of the day. This strikes me as an eminently reasonable request.