He was also spending more time with members of the nondenominational church he and his wife, Jen, the product of two missionary parents who has never been one to shy away from a charity case, joined a few years after marrying.
"I've seen him get more intentional about his faith, about the role he believes God plays in his life," said Mark Norman, senior pastor of Fulton's Grace Community Church. Norman got to know Johnny through a church Bible study group. "There was a deepening, a maturity."
On the convention circuit, Johnny invariably declared himself to be a Christian during presentations, with ever-growing conviction behind the words.
He'd also moved into a researcher role at CSC, making room for younger, more specialized security professionals to take his place on StrikeForce.
But he didn't yet have his purpose. He was still looking for something that would merge his commitments to computers and now Christianity. He was looking for a legacy, but coming up short.
So, he borrowed one from Jen.
Visiting Uganda
In 2006, while Johnny was at another conference in Vegas, Jen was in Uganda with members from Grace Community Church. They were there to help a charity working with children orphaned by AIDS.
The pictures she brought back and the stories she told of children living in dirt huts, surviving on one sparse meal per day, did a number on Johnny. The orphan's eyes, their frail frames, worked their way into his thoughts, and, eventually, his heart. He had to go to them, to offer his help.
And the hackers - that group he once thought would blackball him for mentioning his faith - paid his way there.
Though the speaking engagements and book deals definitely brought more money into the household, they didn't make the Longs rich. So Johnny wrote a letter about his desire to go to Uganda and last spring sent it to The Hacker Foundation, an organization that connects technology projects with the resources needed to get them off the ground.
His missive was immediately posted online and asked its readers to "forego that triple-venti white chocolate mocha, and send [Johnny and Jen] a few bucks instead." Roughly 24 hours later, $4,800 had been raised - $600 more than they needed for the trip.
And so, in May of this year, Johnny, Jen and a half dozen others from the church set out for the Jinja district of Uganda, a small country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Sudan. A small country obliterated by AIDS.
