With the end of the year around the corner it’s no surprise to see a slew of best of lists for 2003, but I didn’t expect to see a top ten lists of words for the year. Blog is the #2 word, which is kind of cool, but not nearly as cool as the amusing “new” words such as bling-bling, stog, tricked out, and “what up?”.

Then there’s the business lingo, with words like ping (I’ll ping you about that issue tomorrow), multitask and off line. I heard a non-technical person use the word ping once and gained a new respect for their technical knowledge until I discovered they had no idea what an ICMP packet was. My respect turned to disappointment and to this day I remain unimpressed with its usage.

Speaking of ping, here’s a tidbit of trivia. The man who wrote the ping program named it after the sound that a sonar makes. On his web site he also includes a review of the book, “The Story About PING” which I loved to read as a child. I’ve mentioned the book several times to friends, but no one had heard of it. It’s as if I have a bond with the beginnings of UNIX networking. Well, sort of…