SQL Server 2012 PowerPivot Services: Service Account Keeps Getting Locked Out

Okay, I've had to call Helpdesk an embarrassing 8 times today because my PowerPivot upgrade is going horribly wrong and locking out my AD account that, admittedly, I use as a "service" account. I'm really left with no choice -- I'm only granted one account on this network. Restrictive networks are so restrictive :|

For dev machines, I like to let PowerPivot setup my farm. Today, I was upgrading my SQL Server 2008 R2 instance to SQL Server 2012 and ultimately decided to just wipe out my entire 2008 instance and setup a new farm. Everything went well until the Validation area where it would say that my password isn't valid. Here's the workaround that worked for me:

• Running the validation once (which always resulted in a lockout)
• Unlocking the account
• Entering my Service Account Password
• Making the farm pass phrase the same thing
• Validating once more. If it fails...
• Type in the account password again but *click elsewhere* before hitting Validate so that the password box pretends it has additional characters.
• Hit validate, party.