Apparantly Fred Pohl has passed away.

[Bob Schroeck]

I remember that I read it back in high school, I think it was, but beyond that, no -- I was, like Fred Pohl, thinking of the actual mathematical/probabilistic concept when I chose the name. I used to write drunkard's walk programs in BASIC for fun whenever I was bored at school and in my first few jobs: pretty much flip a virtual coin and incremnt/decrement a counter accordingly, and count how many flips it took to reach some arbitrary absolute value.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.