Computer Names

You can tell a lot about a person from how they name their computers. Some people name their computers off of characters from their favorite story, or video game. Some people name their computers off of locations they have visited. Some people name their computers on their favorite food dishes. Some people have no naming scheme at all, and still others don't even name their computer. This last group of people are monsters, and I don't want to talk about them today.

On this day above all others I feel it is appropriate to write about a few things that I love the most: Computers and wordplay. I have had a relatively consistent naming scheme since I began to bother naming computers in the first place. All of my computer names are based on geological terms. On top of this convention, whenever possible I try to name my computers, and some times separate boots of my computers, based on comparisons with other computers I have owned.

In what follows I will do my best to remember and recall every computer I have ever owned, and how its silly name relates to my naming scheme. If that doesn't sound interesting to you I apologize for taking up your time and offer you a full refund on the price of admission. This is simply something I must do, especially since I find I can barely remember some of my first computers, even though those were only around ten years ago. Time passes oddly.

• 2005 I think my first computer was back in 2005. I remember very little about this computer. I think I got it for my 16th birthday. I do remember, however, that it was a dell media center computer decked out for media consumption. This meant it had a TV tuner (which I could never get to work outside of windows), an IR remote (I've still got that, it still works), and 5.1 surround sound (which I'm still using). For a teenage introvert who spent a lot of time watching TV and playing on the computer, this was the super machine. I'm not sure if I actually ever named this one.

• 2007 - Brick Brick was my first laptop, a Dell XPS M1730. There are two things to know about brick. First, brick was built for gaming. It was top of the line for 2007 with a graphics cards, a physics card, and fake raid hard drives for slightly faster read speed. With all that and a top of the line screen, brick was a lot of hardware, which meant that brink lasted a good 4 to 6 years in active status before getting shelved function, but obsolete.

  Secondly, and more importantly, brick was big, very big. Brick was big enough to have a full keyboard with number pad. I've seen this model of computer specked out at 16 pounds, placing it firmly in the "desktop replacement" category. Let me tell you, walking two and a half miles through the snow both to and from school with that and an advanced algorithms textbook in your backpack will make your feet strong, and your back sore. This is actually how brick got its name, because its like hauling a brick around everywhere you go.

  Brick was also the first computer that established my convention of giving the linux dual boot of the computer its own name. Brick was dual boot off of a flash drive, because I could never get linux installed on its wonky hardware raid setup. The linux book, like the flash drive, was named mortar, because mortar made brick useful.

• ? Boulder - I don't remember much about this, only that it existed, and I only remember that because I used parts from boulder to build the next computer. If I had to guess Boulder was around 2009 (empirically I seem to want a hardware upgrade every 2 years or so), and was a partial rebuild of my 2005 computer. I'm guessing I replaced the graphics card and the ram but left to motherboard alone (I'm pretty sure I've only messed with one motherboard, and that comes next). The name boulder would be the first name where I started using a geology terms scheme. Boulders are bigger than bricks, and not at all portable.

• ? Pebble Pebble was a lenovo ideapad laptop. I can't for the life of me figure out when I bought it, but I'm pretty sure it was after Boulder, before Wheel. Pebble was a great, if tiny, little laptop. It had great battery life, a very light weight, and not much else. After Brick's overpowered, overweight self, pebble was the perfect laptop.

  Pebble was also my first of many lenovos. I like lenovo laptops, I also have a tendency to kill lenovo laptops, particularly around the hinges. In this case what went first was charging the battery. This alone wasn't a big deal, until one winder day I tripped and the laptop hit the ground pretty hard. This led to some case damage that weakened the plastic around the hinge. This weakened plastic led the hinge to start breaking the case, literally pulling itself apart. The death stroke was when this started interrupting the cable to the screen, rendering the screen inoperable.

  Fortunately, with pebble I had bought the extended warranty (still not sure why I haven't been doing that for other laptops). When I contacted them they said essentially "we can't buy a replacement, since those aren't made, the issues you are having would be worth more than the laptop to fix." They wrote me a check for the price of the laptop and let me keep the remains. That check went into my next laptop, and the remains went on to be a reasonably good streaming / entertainment center PC up until I got a chromecast a year or two ago.

• 2011 Wheel At some point boulder wasn't enough for me. It was time for a new computer. At that point I went and bought a new motherboard (that's how I narrowed the time line for this build) a new CPU, new ram, etc. I think I kept the graphics card and sound card, since those were pretty good on my old computer still. At any rate I took these put them in a new case and built myself my first from scratch computer. I decided to name the computer wheel, a bit of a departed from the naming scheme, but whatever. The idea is that wheel was carved from the parts of boulder, and that it moves really fast. I did not skimp on parts Wheel moved very fast. It died about a year ago, was still a great PC, when from what I can tell the motherboard went out. I haven't replaced it yet. when I do I'm probably naming it mountain, since it will be more powerful (bigger) than all previous boulders.

• ? Rock Again, I'm not sure when I bought it, but rock was another lenovo laptop. A little more powerful, and bigger, than the last laptop so I gave it a little more powerful and bigger name. Whats bigger than a pebble? A rock. This was my second of three lenovo laptops, again minor case damage led to hinges to go bad and damage the case and internals. At some point around a year ago it stopped turning on. Upon investigation It seems as if its wifi antenna was sheared through by the hinge. How that killed it I don't know, maybe it shorted into something sensitive. Either way, if the short didn't kill it, my hamfisted vivisection did. While it is dead, I still have the parts and I'm still looking for the use of a great laptop screen and keyboard.

  Rock was another dualboot computer with clever linux names. The first was Geode. Geode was a fedora boot. it ran gnome 3, and it was very shiney. Geode lived inside of rock, and was much prettier, hence the name. At some point I re-installed linux and changed the name from geode to geodude, because it made me laugh.

• March 2015 Itacolumite My latest laptop, on which I am typing this blog, is Itacolumite. Itacolumite is a lenovo yoga, meaning it has one of the full rotation hinges that lets me flip the screen around and use it like a tablet. Itacolumite is the name of a flexible type of sandstone, hence the name, geology, but sill flexible.

  Itacolumite was a lucky find. I like the full rotation feature, even if I don't use it much. Whats really special about it though, is that it has a dedicated graphics card, which means I can play video games on it. I might not be able to play top of the line games on it, but it keeps up with my time lagged crawl through the best games of a few years ago.

  The linux partition on Itacolumite is named spline. This is based off of a possibly apocryphal story a math professor once told me. Apparently, the term spline for spline curve comes from a thin piece of wood that could be curved in a way to better draw curves in architectural drawings. My logic is that Itacolumite is flexible, and therefore could play a similar role (if very poorly), therefore spline is the "getting to business" version of Itacolumite. Not all of my names are quite as funny as the others, I'll be the first to admit.

  Itacolumite is the first of my lenovos to not have hinge related issues. Instead, it has issues at the corners, where if I hold it wrong it will turn itself off. Its very annoying. I think I might still be under warranty, I should look into that.

• Mobile devices I have had many mobile devices over the years. As a general rule these have all been named "sand", as they are many, and compared to a computer they are small. With newer cell phones the comparison is less apt, but I haven't found another name that sticks.

• data storage Data storage, such as usb flash drives, are that which carries from one rock to another. Therefore I have decided to name these based on wind phenomenon. My old keychain thumbdrive was Gust. My current keychain thumbdrive is Gale.

• Unnamed I have three devices without names that deserve consideration. The first is a pebble smart watch. On its own I wouldn't consider a pebble worthy of a name, but the name happens to collide with a larger, more computationally useful computer. Right now I'm thinking "silt" which would place it firmly smaller than sand.

  The second and third are raspberry pi computers that I got for my birthday. Its not clear to me that these computers need names. If I do decide to name them, right now I'm thinking "grit" which is kind of like sand, but used in rock tumblers and sand paper, so it has a more "getting things done" connotation to me.