Also note that "paco" would be an unusual nickname for a Michael; it's usually a nickname for Pablo or Pasquale, I think, as well as Francisco

Or perhaps "paco" is simply an abbreviation formed from the first two letters of a Christian name and a surname, for example, Paul Cohen ... which just happens to be the full name of SourceForge user paco!

The SourceForge paco (Paul Cohen) appears to be an Eiffel programmer living in Sweden. So, perhaps paco is skiing to work as we discuss Him, listening to Abba on His headphones!

A more likely alternative may be wikipedia user Paco, who seems to be a phenomenally versatile computer wizard, based on his profile. So, instead of skiing in Sweden, perhaps paco is sunning Himself on the banks of the Rio Grande, Mexico, just south of El Paso, Texas.

Update: Given all the references to Hope College in this thread, and our fervent hope that paco will return, perhaps He is London-based software security expert paco hope, author of O'Reilly book Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security who once griped about Perl documentation and is referenced at PM in Perl Newbie and pacohope.

Update: As a chess fan, today I noticed a new chess article A chat with Paco featuring Spain's top chess player Francisco ("Paco") Vallejo Pons. Maybe paco is this Spanish grandmaster, leaving an ingenious clue to his true identity by staying at Perl Monks for exactly 64 minutes - corresponding to the 64 squares on a chessboard.

See also: Re: poll ideas quest 2016

paco will return!