When I was a youth, the newspaper could never get it right. One basketball article referred to me as “Pingelton.” Ha! I considered changing my name to “Pringle,” after hearing that one so many times. Another basketball article — my favorite — reported that “Pingelli” scored 20 points in one game. My best friend’s dad — himself a newspaper man — used to borrow that one. When I scored a basket, he would wait until the gym quieted a bit, and yell “Ping-GELL-eeeeeee.”
My friends, and later my fraternity brothers, shortened it to Ping, early on.
In college there was this hot little friend of a friend who actually had the last name Ping. If for no other reason, I wanted to marry her so that she would one day be Tonya Ping-Pingel.
Anyway … I named this blog PingWi-Fi to incorporate my nickname, my passion for wireless and my mission — to find Wi-Fi as it runs rampant in our culture. It is almost like a sonar sounding. I go out and I ping coffee shops to see if they have Wi-Fi. I ping college bowl games to see if there is Wi-Fi in the pressbox and/or the sidelines. I have pinged ferryboats, commuter trains and airliners on a regular basis.
It what I do. For the most part, it is quite positive and usually well received … at least among people who have entered the computer age.
But … Check out this article from a Texas newspaper. The Fort Worth-Star Telegram printed and posted a nice piece on my effort to protect my mission and my proposed PingWi-Fi trademark.
It seems there are those who just don’t get it.
Do me a favor … spread the word. Ping a friend today!
Know what I sayin?
