Psztrnk is curious about how we name our computers[1]. I've always found
this an interesting topic; I think is says a little bit about people's
personalities.
In the past, I generally named my computers after food items, such as
tofu, beans, and cheese. I really don't know why. I've deviated from
that lately, but I also have fewer computers since I don't really care
to have any more than I need. (I'm one step ahead, sysdharma[2]!) If I
had to get more computers, they would have more or less functional
names, since they'd be more or less functional systems.
My 'terminal server' (basically an ssh client) is named mushroom, after
the mushroom pies you get at the local vegan bakery.
My home server is boombox, after the venerable boombox at UMN. It was
originally a personal gopher server (and still runs a gopherd), but now
does mainly backup and telephony.
My VPS is tellus, after the model of vacuum cleaner, not the Roman
goddess. This is the one that now runs my public gopher server, at
tellus.strangled.net. This name has a bit of a story. I was helping set
up an HP Proliant ML110 server (one of those servers that's shaped like
a desktop). When you power these things on from cold, the fans spin up
to full for a few seconds, making it sound like a vacuum cleaner. I
joked about how we should name it after one. It ended up being given
boring descriptive name instead, but I decided I'd name my next computer
after a vacuum cleaner. That was tellus.
For those curious about operating systems, I'm sorry to bore you. All
of the above are running FreeBSD. It works and I know how to work it.
The machines at work all have pretty boring names like imac and hosting.
The one called bigmac is not food-themed.
[1]
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/psztrnk/log/20180123.txt
[2]
gopher://sdf.org/1/users/sysdharma/phlog/./2018.01.23
