I wonder if you used more exotic extended characters than what is available on the keyboard such as ὭӔꙬΘ whether this would make a 8 character password harder to crack?
My standard login password is 13 characters but maybe time to change to a passphrase. I saw a good article where someone mentioned about opening a book onto a specific page and then creating a passphrase from the page number, and then the first word on say the top 6 lines intermixed with a special character.
So doing that from a electrical parts catalogue I have on the table gives me a passphrase of:
222Long-domestic-paths-Polycarbonate-Lumens-LEFULLWH
Biting the hand that feeds IT
