xkcd

by **ModestMouse** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:23 am UTC

Woolly Mittens wrote:Every network needs to have at least one server named: "Uranus Hertz".

For a split second, I was ready to Google Mr. Hertz. I fell for that one!

by **Kredal** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:34 am UTC

I used to use Shuttle computers almost exclusively at home, so coming up with names was easy... for the first several. Enterprise, Discovery, Challenger, Atlantis, etc...

Then when I ran out of those, I switched to Star Trek shuttlecrafts, and then starships.

Where my wife works, at a Marine Science school, all of their servers are named after bodies of water... Tethys and Dead are my favorite names that they have... and their test-bed setup is called Groom.

by **squig** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:49 am UTC

DanielLC wrote:This reminds me of when I named my computer. I really should have consulted someone who knew Latin. I named it Machina Ex Deus, which, from what I understand, is just Deus Ex Machina with different emphasis. Anyone know how to say "the Machine from God"? I probably should have just called it Deus Est Machine (God is the Machine).

Google translate has it has "Machina a Deo"

by **DragonHawk** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:54 am UTC

One shop I worked at, we used Simpsons characters. Home dirs and other corp files were on homer, firewall was quimby, nameservers itchy and scratchy, web server bart. Each machine had a printed image of the character taped to it.

University had a bunch of boxes named after Tolkien characters, but all boxes of the same model or type would be the same "species", so there were environment variables DWARVES, ELVES, etc., defined for easy for loops in shell scripts. Oh, and the machine hosting all the vendor help files was named "oxymoron".

I once named an MS Windows server "MONOPOLY".
-----

iabervon wrote:I've replaced all of the hardware in my server at least once, got rid of Windows, changed the distro, switched MTAs twice, IP addresses twice, and domain name once. But the hostname is still the original hostname.

Reminds me of a story: I had a buddy who bought a new car that was the same model as his old car. So he kept the radiator cap from his old one and put it on the new one. He claimed that meant it was still the same car; he had just replaced some of the parts.
-----

doggitydogs wrote:I wonder if you can set something as 10.0.0.0...

It's possible, but some things may not work work. A node of "all zeros" is technically reserved for the network number, IIRC, and some code makes assumptions about the network number.
-----

iain_benson wrote:I'm not sure what happens if a piece of hardware dies and needs replacing - will the name change and suddenly we have to remap everything, or do they reuse the old asset number on the replacement hardware?

They really should be using DFS (Distributed File System) to abstract storage servers away from the share names clients use.
-----

Kredal wrote:... all of their servers are named after bodies of water... their test-bed setup is called Groom.

That's awesome.

by **kasmeneo** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:54 am UTC

At the place I work all servers have composer names - beethoven, brahms, mozart, schubert, wagner and so on.
And one colleague's machine is called zappa.

by **bigchiefbc** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:07 pm UTC

squig wrote:
DanielLC wrote:This reminds me of when I named my computer. I really should have consulted someone who knew Latin. I named it Machina Ex Deus, which, from what I understand, is just Deus Ex Machina with different emphasis. Anyone know how to say "the Machine from God"? I probably should have just called it Deus Est Machine (God is the Machine).

Google translate has it has "Machina a Deo"

Google translate doesn't get the context of it though. a/ab is a preposition that means "from" in the sense of "away from" e/ex means "from" in the sense of "out of". Machina a deo means "The Machine away from god". Machina ex deo is closer to what he's looking for.

by **Carlomagno** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:12 pm UTC

Farabor wrote:
DanielLC wrote:This reminds me of when I named my computer. I really should have consulted someone who knew Latin. I named it Machina Ex Deus, which, from what I understand, is just Deus Ex Machina with different emphasis. Anyone know how to say "the Machine from God"? I probably should have just called it Deus Est Machine (God is the Machine).

The verb goes at the end, and yeah, you'd need to change your tenses. The actual original expression is Deus ex Machinae (The -ae making it the right ending). If you wanted The machine of god, it'd be...Machina Dei, I believe. Not sure on the proper tense for Deus for God is the machine, but it'd be something like Machina Dei Est. (With the -i ending of Deus probably wrong, needs...ablative, I think, and -i is genitive..._I think_...depends on whether Deus is 2nd or 5th declension....)

Okay, it's been WAY too many years since my high school Latin

Latin teacher here! First, Machina doesn't mean machine. It's the root of our word machine, but it actually means a crane used in a Greek tragedy. The crane would lower someone playing the god down into the scene at the end, thus solving all of the problems. The phrase "deus ex machina" today means an unexpected, sudden, and poorly written resolution to a plot. Also, you're using tense where you should be using case. Tense is for verbs. And remember, est doesn't take any special case. It's just the linking verb "to be." The predicate is in the nominative with a linking verb like that.

Some corrections:
Original- Deus ex Machina (That a on the end is technically long, but I am not using macrons in a forum!)
Machine from God - Machina ex/a Deo
Machine is God- Machina Deus Est

Forms review and tattoo requests are available via PM!

by **meatyochre** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:20 pm UTC

I have similarly agonized over naming my computers (tomatohawk, quicksilver) and WoW characters.

by **Lewton** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:57 pm UTC

I usually just take a quick glance around where i'm sitting and pick two items and put their names together, which has resulted in brilliant names like

"shoecup", "pencilbook", "pantsbottle" and so on

by **five dollars** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:08 pm UTC

I wonder how much time Randall actually spent coming up with the name "Caroline"? :p

by **radtea** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:11 pm UTC

I once worked in a lab where a post-doc had named all the machines after Narnia characters and objects. "Lamppost" and "Wardrobe" were OK, but "MrTumnus" caused one of the senior theorists to blow a fuse. Amusing as that was I've avoided fictional character names since, although there's a network out there somewhere where Elizabeth is connected to Darcy via Cat5.

If you're going to go with character names they shouldn't be too contemporary. A 20-something admin assigned to a network with names like "Milo" and "Opus" and "Bill" might not find them quite as evocative as people did in 1985. On the other hand, "Achilles" and "Diomedes" will probably be around for a while yet.

But for a TrueGeek the sciences are the best source of names. I'm writing this on "Fluorine", although I guess if the network grows big enough I might end up adding "Element118" or "Unobtanium"...

by **digitrev** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:16 pm UTC

Legend of Zelda theme for me:

Win 7 desktop: Link
Xubuntu desktop: zelda
Ubuntu lapto: epona
Cell phone (bluetooth): Navi
Bluetooth headset: Tael

by **peteispo** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:19 pm UTC

WestfW wrote:Psh. Trivial. Coming up with THEMES for a group of servers is the tricky part.

I worked in a company that named it's machines after bands: I had 'radiohead' for a while.
My current site had Arthurian legend: Arthur, Morgana, Merlin...
My workstations have been 'hammond' (small) and 'clarkson' (larger and noisier)
Then I got fed up of thinking: the latest four servers are alpha, bravo, charlie and delta - some room for expansion there.
I like themes that evolve: one place I worked, the older machines had been named after colours, with the two big servers called 'black' and 'white'. The replacement for them was called 'sable'.
Then came 'ermine',
then 'wolverine'
and I think we ended up with a 'weasel' too...

by **bombadil_rocks** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:20 pm UTC

Tolkein Characters for me. Laptop is tom-bombadil, gentoo desktop is beren-ereecimon (sp?), ipod is bullroarer took. I need to figure a name for my wii now though, any suggestions?

by **vodka.cobra** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:23 pm UTC

jspenguin wrote:Name the server GLaDOS, then Caroline can be a virtual machine running on it.

As much as all the fanboys going around spoiling Portal 2 because they think they're cool piss me off, I actually laughed at this Portal reference. Also, good idea.

by **Oracle** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:25 pm UTC

Epidural is a method of delivery, not necessarily a specific drug. It is like "intravenous", "subcutaneous" or mainline (slang). Possibly all good server names.

by **Plasma Man** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:30 pm UTC

That gives me a really good idea; naming computers after anatomical features. In fact, it makes me want to set up a wi-fi node at home, just so I can call it Ranvier.

by **peteispo** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:34 pm UTC

Oh, I forgot about the suite of HP workstations called 'gordon', 'edward', 'james', 'henry' and 'thomas' - Gordon was the big one, of course. Back in the day, they had to be less than eight characters for the network we were on.
These days, some of the Culture ship names would be nice, as long as you don't have to type them...

by **feyayeruka** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:42 pm UTC

My first car was called Caroline.

by **gnoitall** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:48 pm UTC

syko_lozz wrote:haha total GOOMHR moment
Am currently trying to decide on a) what to name my child b) whether I think I should have an epidural
(8 weeks left to make above decisions!)

When we had our last kid, I wanted an epidural. Frankly, I demanded an epidural. Anesthesiologist kept refusing me. He thought my wife should get the shot instead of me. Objectively, I suppose that's fair; I wasn't the one in labor. But dammit, I wanted that painkiller!

by **gnoitall** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:03 pm UTC

DragonHawk wrote:One shop I worked at, we used Simpsons characters.... Each machine had a printed image of the character taped to it.

I'm sure we didn't work together, but that's exactly what we did for our non-production systems. Until the goose-stepping fascists in the Command's Network Operations Center decided that didn't "communicate a good professional image". Joyless ratbastards.

DragonHawk wrote:
iabervon wrote:I've replaced all of the hardware in my server at least once, got rid of Windows, changed the distro, switched MTAs twice, IP addresses twice, and domain name once. But the hostname is still the original hostname.

Reminds me of a story: I had a buddy who bought a new car that was the same model as his old car. So he kept the radiator cap from his old one and put it on the new one. He claimed that meant it was still the same car; he had just replaced some of the parts.

Theseus would like to compare notes with you regarding car maintenance versus ship maintenance. (For those who don't get the reference, plz google "Ship of Theseus", since apparently I can't linky.)

Esoteric philosophical joke (?) aside, I've done the same thing with my home server since around 2002. It's been "hiroshige" through three complete hardware replacements, about 3 total distro changes (redhat -> suse -> fedora -> centos), and three moves (different homes). I believe that, through the magic of tar, there are still several dozen megabytes of data on the RAID array that were on the original 1.2 gb IDE drive of the original 486 hardware.

eta: ship of theseus ref ninja'd by snowyowl loooong ago. my fail.

by **RevengencerAlf** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:13 pm UTC

All my machines get squaresoft character names. All the fixed hard drives get norse dieties, all the external drives get greek or roman dieties, and the portables get non-godly mythical figures.

For some reason I broke the mold with my Vista machine though and named it Kitsune. I'm still not entirely sure why, though I'm guessing it involved staring at my dog at 4am in the morning after I finished setting it up.

When I convert my old desktops to servers they get named after scientists. I still haven't used Tesla because I haven't found any machine worthy of the name yet.

by **skieaskhell** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:22 pm UTC

I was on a Monopoly binge for quite some time - in fact I still use it for structuring my SA passwords - meets the requirements for length and can be easily substituted with special characters.

I would like to name my next imaging machine Ununpentium.

Our current structure is from the movie "Hackers" - not my choice, but Bedlam, and others works well.

by **BentFranklin** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:38 pm UTC

I like how panel 3 isn't just a copy/paste of panel 2.

by **eidako** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:50 pm UTC

I do it by physical or spiritual description of the machine.
e.g.
silvery gray tower: chrome
red topped netbook: scarlet
black tower with shiny black front: onyx
obsolete laptop repurposed as a server: reborn

...although it helps that I don't have to work with identical systems.

by **astrosteve** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 3:49 pm UTC

My current network is named after Norse mythology. (server, before it burned itself out, was Vanaheimr, desktop is Loki, router is Yggdrasil. Laptop is Enkidu... hey... that's MESOPOTAMIAN! I'm apparently not good at sticking to themes...)

Though I'm wondering if it's time to change themes. My router has always been named Yggdrasil, for as long as I've had one (even before I decided to have a theme) and it'd feel weird having a router not named Yggdrasil.

by **kresp0** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 3:53 pm UTC

This step when installing a o.s. is the only one that requires to use the left side on the brain. All the others questions during the install are logical :arrow:

, but this one is creative :idea:

. For me, this is the hardest step when installing a new machine.

by **suzi** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:08 pm UTC

MathUhhhSaurus wrote:I have this problem on the rare occasions that I play pokemon games. Usually, I'm just lazy and don't name them at all, but sometimes I'll feel bad so I'll try and come up with something creative and fail miserably.

ahaha oh god, I have a finished Pokédex on two generations (well, my 5th gen is *almost* done) and every single Pokémon that I didn't get through a trade has a nickname. I probably spent more time thinking up names than actually completing the damn thing.

by **popman** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:38 pm UTC

I don't go with a scheme. I just pick a name as I am setting up the computer.
my computer: Englebert
other computer in the house: William
Wii: Carl
ps3: Janice
dead iPod nano: Tony

by **Bratmon** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:54 pm UTC

I just want to point out that the kid's name is going to end up in more offsite documents than the server.

by **jimhsu** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:01 pm UTC

Plasma Man wrote:That gives me a really good idea; naming computers after anatomical features. In fact, it makes me want to set up a wi-fi node at home, just so I can call it Ranvier.

Wow, medical terms actually make good server names. Just thought of these in under 30 seconds:

Arachnoid
Decussation
Plexus
Sacrum
Myasthenia
Mydriasis
Miosis
Mitosis (heck all the my/mi names are cool sounding)
Brachium
Amyloid

I've yet to cover any molecules, or any drugs, or any...

by **Stanistani** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:03 pm UTC

I had a Roman Mythology theme picked out for our first UNIX rollout, and the first two servers were named Romulus and Remus, natch.

Our vice director came by as we were setting up, saw 'Remus' and demanded we select another name as that one was 'racist.'

In vain we pointed to Roman myth and the companion server.

In the end, a rule came down from his office: all servers were to be labeled with the first two letters of the location, followed by a four digit number.

SD0001, SD0002...

Nobody could keep the server names straight without a chart.

by **RogueCynic** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:07 pm UTC

gnoitall wrote:
syko_lozz wrote:haha total GOOMHR moment
Am currently trying to decide on a) what to name my child b) whether I think I should have an epidural
(8 weeks left to make above decisions!)

When we had our last kid, I wanted an epidural. Frankly, I demanded an epidural. Anesthesiologist kept refusing me. He thought my wife should get the shot instead of me. Objectively, I suppose that's fair; I wasn't the one in labor. But dammit, I wanted that painkiller!

That's just what THEY want you to think. Remember, you're the one holding her hair when she throws up. You're the one who has to put up with her mood swings. You're the one who watches her boobs get big and you can't play with them. You're the one who has to take "no" for an answer when you want sex. You earned the epidural, fight for it!!!

by **etagaes** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:30 pm UTC

eidako wrote:I do it by physical or spiritual description of the machine.
e.g.
silvery gray tower: chrome
red topped netbook: scarlet
black tower with shiny black front: onyx
obsolete laptop repurposed as a server: reborn

...although it helps that I don't have to work with identical systems.

I now feel a bit better (I was beginning to think I was the only one who went with straightforward names)--mine tend to be along the lines of laptop-a, laptop-r (user intitials) followed by server-x and network "home" - I think yours are a bit more creative though. Hurrah.

by **DragonHawk** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:33 pm UTC

gnoitall wrote:I've done the same thing with my home server since around 2002. It's been "hiroshige" through three complete hardware replacements, about 3 total distro changes (redhat -> suse -> fedora -> centos), and three moves (different homes).

Yah, I had a whitebox PC like that. It began life circa 1990 as something vaguely 386ish. I dubbed it "wildfire". (At the time, it was fast.) Later it became a 486, then a K5, then a K6, then an Athlon, then a faster Athlon. Also had various hard drive and video card upgrades, but never at the same time. I kept the same Pro Audio Spectrum 16 for practically all of that. It was only circa 2007 I got a crazy deal on a Dell that I replaced the whole thing at once.

by **Grungydan** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:40 pm UTC

Kredal wrote:I used to use Shuttle computers almost exclusively at home, so coming up with names was easy... for the first several. Enterprise, Discovery, Challenger, Atlantis, etc...

Then when I ran out of those, I switched to Star Trek shuttlecrafts, and then starships.

Where my wife works, at a Marine Science school, all of their servers are named after bodies of water... Tethys and Dead are my favorite names that they have... and their test-bed setup is called Groom.

My laptop is GROOMLAKE and my iPhone is China Lake.

by **jcsalomon** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 7:19 pm UTC

I’ve been using the “other” names of Firefly characters: Derrial, Hoban, Adelai, Kaywinnet, etc. I’m waiting for a machine for which I have a reason to give multiple names to (YoSafBridge, of course).

by **SpringLoaded12** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 7:37 pm UTC

jspenguin wrote:Name the server GLaDOS, then Caroline can be a virtual machine running on it.

I instantly thought of Portal 2 as well.
Although, naming a server GLaDOS... that runs as much risk as naming it HAL, VIKI, SkyNet, etc.
That is to say, none at all. Carry on.

by **neoliminal** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 8:30 pm UTC

I like to use exactly 6 digits of hexidecimals. This makes it fairly hard for people to figure out WTF the thing is when they come across just that text. It obfuscates it.

For example if you saw:

Code: Select all: Servers found: Arachnoid Decussation a3e4ef Plexus Penis Myasthenia Falcon XKCD

Which one seems like the most fun to hack?

by **Maxpm** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 9:20 pm UTC

Kredal wrote:Where my wife works, at a Marine Science school, all of their servers are named after bodies of water... Tethys and Dead are my favorite names that they have... and their test-bed setup is called Groom.

I see what they did there. Good one!

Who is online