November 22, 2000

2:20 PM

Mike Muuss, author of ping(1), dead at 42.Traffic accident, Maryland, tractor-trailer. Half a dozen bad pastiche jokes go here, but I'm not going to do them.
posted by baylink (9 comments total)

I'll never forget ping.
posted by mathowie at 2:28 PM on November 22, 2000

the news snippet below that one is pretty cool...i Never got to blow things up in chemistry. I feel cheated. [Matt...i still have a copy of Ping boxed up somewhere.]

and on to the topic at hand...how about a link to something about ping(1) so i can read about it?
posted by th3ph17 at 7:52 PM on November 22, 2000

Ask, and you shall receive.

In perhaps the most stunning fit of irony yet this year on MetaFilter, the first usable page I could find in a Google search on the topic was about...

the Ping of Death.

Sorry. No joke intended.

In an even more stunning fit of irony (nothing like topping yourself), I remembered a cute story about hooking ping to a sound player and turning up the speakers to find a bad ethernet connection.

From beyond the grave, here's that story, authored by... Mike Muuss.

<sigh>
posted by baylink at 8:02 PM on November 22, 2000

I was wrong. It keeps getting {better,worse}.

From his home page:

Unlike every other document on the Web, this page is in final form and completely finished. *grin*

Yeah, I guess that's right.
posted by baylink at 8:06 PM on November 22, 2000

Sorry, Alanis. Coincidences doth not irony make.
posted by luke at 9:28 PM on November 22, 2000

Mike was responsible in part for BRLCAD, a ray tracer used by the ballistics research lab. I used this package circa 1989 and was in contact with Mike with regards to bugs and usage problems I was having. He was responsive and very helpful. I'm sorry he's gone.
posted by plinth at 6:46 AM on November 23, 2000

Dear God. Click on the photo on the homepage baylink linked to.
posted by jillmatrix at 7:49 PM on November 23, 2000

Well, ok, you're right, I'm Alanis.

But it's not just coincidence, neither.

Any volunteers for a better term?
posted by baylink at 8:20 AM on November 24, 2000

Wow. What if we all had to fill out forms like this and submit our webpages to an editorial review board? Can you imagine if it took 4 months for your site to be approved for release? Who would YOUR Division Chief be?

I don't know about you, but I know my site shouldn't be reviewed for OPSEC policy. The horrors!

Ah, military life.
posted by evixir at 11:58 PM on November 25, 2000