One of my longtime friends, Kevin Cheng, is getting married today to Coley Wopperer on what is quite possibly the nerdiest of days: 10/10/10. It is so nerdy, that it justified a New York Times article:
For those of a geeky bent, the date has another layer of importance – it is made up entirely of ones and zeros, the binary language of computing. Kevin Cheng and Coley Wopperer of San Francisco have been waiting nearly two years for their wedding date to roll around, having realized over dinner with friends in 2008 that, as one suggested, “you could have a binary-themed wedding!†he recalled.
But the nerdiness of this occasion will not end there. In March of 2008, I sent Kevin an email with a GPG-encrypted message:
Hey Kevin,
This is a very important message. Store it in your archive – you will need it at some future time, but for what purpose, I can’t say at this point. The following is plain text encrypted using GPG to a passphrase I will reveal to you at some point in the future, once an important event has come to pass. It’ll be a nice surprise when I do, trust me.
Sorry for the James Bond factor, but it’ll all make sense in the future. Here’s the GPG encrypted text block:
—–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—–
Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin)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=0gbj
—–END PGP MESSAGE—–
Brendon
—
Brendon J. Wilson
Now, on the day of his marriage, the time has come to reveal the passphrase for the message to reveal the message. So, my gift to you Kevin and Coley, as small a token as it may be, is the passphrase to that message: itoldyouso.
