I work as a developer and “operations specialist” on the Identity and Access Management team at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. I work primarily with Java, but that’s just an organizational accident and I am, in fact, a polyglot. My focus is obviously on identity management and software security. It’s a new job, so we’ll see where it takes me. For the previous several years I split my time between being the “UI guy” and the “security guy” on our ERP team.

Over time, this site has morphed into being just my weblog, although every now and then I’ve written an essay or made a presentation that gets archived here.

In my weblog and in most conversations with me, you’ll find bias toward:

  • software and especially web application security;
  • web application development;
  • open source software (although I harp on that far less than I used to);
  • everything that gets wrapped up with modern web standards; and
  • good coffee.

What does “afongen” mean?

Have an OED handy? Look up “afong” — “afongen” is just the past participle. Is there a hidden meaning? No, it’s just a long-dead word that caught my attention some years back.

If you want to contact me…

…you’re free to send email to sam@afongen.com. You can also find me on AIM as afongen. I’m on other IM systems, too, but am going to be a pain in the ass and not tell you about them.