Jeff Makey

At the San Diego Supercomputer Center in sunny San Diego, California I am a sysadmin who helps keep the supercomputers running for researchers. In a past life I helped write the Department of Defense Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria, which is better known simply as the Orange Book (because of its bright orange cover), and was a principal author of the Department of Defense Password Management Guideline (a.k.a. the Green Book). Both of these documents are part of the Rainbow Series of computer security standards. I have a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology where I wrote a research paper in which I argue that Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem is not an obstacle to artificial intelligence. I am a long-standing member of the Association for Computing Machinery, and I still know how to use a slide rule.

I wasn't always a longhair; in fact I was pretty cute when I was 9 years old and wore a crew cut. My last real haircut was in 1983.

The proper pronunciation of my last name is MAY-key. There are very few people in the world named Makey, and most of them are unrelated to my family. In 1893, at the age of 8, my grandfather and his younger brother were abandoned in New York City by their mother. There was considerable confusion about Grandpa's exact name, but during his schooling at the New York Juvenile Asylum he "insisted on spelling it Herman Odlo Makey," according to his autobiography which continues, "I have no recollection of where or how I got this name." It is fairly certain that his parents' name was different, so there is no relation between Herman's descendants and others named Makey.

P.S. I am not any of the Jeff Makeys on Facebook.