Apparently, if someone passes away and the death is reported to the Social Security Administration, that number is published by some commercial services. (See question Q9 on this page.) I saw this page as an example.
Nathan Alter lives in Albuquerque with his wife and kids. He currently develops in C#/.NET, but is learning all the time and has enjoyed computers since programming in Basic on an Atari 400 as a teenager. He started blogging in 1999.