Hi LU's

I have a script which monitors the machines on the network to see if they
are up (ping).
I have in this script the  following:

while :
do
...
done

to facilitate this script running all the time, without quitting.  As it now
stands, I have to stop this script and then kill the process.  Is there a
"nicer" way to set this loop to run forever or at least a very long time?

Also, I test the exit status of ping ($?) to tell if the machine is up or
down.  If the machine is down I am using logger to write to
/var/log/messages, but how would I send an email to "admin" on the box this
script is running on...or....an external email to a good email address.  I
know from past experience that I can enter MAILTO=rossiter@discoverynet.com
in crontab -e and it mails me if the backup script fired from cron errs or
dies, but I can't figure out how to mail myself either locally or through
outside email from this script I am working on.

I've read man mail about ten times and am quite lost.

TIA,
Eric