And even a few fairly secure >9 char ones (recomended where possible) are a PIA to keep changing all the time.

Many places limit how many characters you can use to "short" ones (<6?) that are not really hard to crack. It's probably more important to flip in a new one fairly regularly at those sites, but of course that depends on whether there's any significant information there and whether anybody can hurt you by getting to it. And no matter how secure the password is, length and randomness don't matter much if someone finds a place where all they have to do is copy it.

John