Aaron Toponce

Aaron Toponce (pictured above, with daughter Jackie) is the author and maintainer of this site. I have extensive knowledge and skills in many Linux and UNIX-like environments. Such skills include Python, CSH/Bash scripting, kernel hacking, network administration, MySQL, PHP, (X)HTML, XML, CSS, C/C++, Perl, Python and JavaScript. I have been working with Linux for many years, starting with Sun Solaris in the late '90s, migrating through Red Hat, Slackware, SuSE, Mandrake, Ubuntu, Debian and many others.

I currently work as a system administrator and architect for a local ISP in Utah called XMission. I administer many Ubuntu LTS Linux servers, both as hypervisors and virtual machines. There are no Windows Servers anywhere in our cloud, and I use Debian GNU/Linux unstable on my laptop as my primary and only workstation. Also, along with system administration, I do a little development on the side, as well as configuration management. I work with a small team, all of which are all system admins, tech support and developers.

My education currently consists of having a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics with an emphasis in Applied Mathematics and a minor in Computer Science both from Weber State University. My current fields of study are cryptography/encryption and web-based standards. I am also a Red Hat Certified Engineer and Amateur Radio Operator (HAM) AE7ST.

If you would like to contact me, you can find me under the nick "atoponce" or "eightyeight" in #utah on irc.freenode.net. You can subscribe to my dents on Identica. I am also always available via instant messaging on Jabber only. JabberID: xmpp://aaron.toponce@gmail.com. In all cases, I generally use OTR for client-to-client encryption. I'm always connected via TLS.

Because encryption is such an integral part of my life, here is listed my public OpenPGP key. You will need it to verify any email I send to you, as I always sign my personal email: 0x808606F. If you have an OpenPGP key, you can can find your trust path to me:

I understand that OpenPGP keys can be difficult to manage, so I have miniLock IDs also. If you're not aware, miniLock is a Free Software application (not extension) you install in your Google Chromium/Chrome browser. When you provide an email address and a password, a deterministic key is created. The miniLock ID is actually the entire public key. Unfortunately, this also means that when you want to change your email or password, your miniLock ID will change too. As such, for a bit of flexibility, I have created three miniLock IDs- one for each of my email addresses. So, if you email me an encrypted file with miniLock, I will assume that you are using the ID associated with that email address. They are:

If you have a smart phone, such as an Android, iPhone or Blackberry, you can install the ZXing decoder (probably out of your "app store"), and get all of my contact information out of this QR Code. The application will ask you if you would like to add me to your address book, if you would like to send me an email, or if you would like to visit my web page. I posted about how I made this possible on this blog, using MECARD. It's worth the read. Point the scanner on your phone at this image: