Today, I was going through the sizable network that my roommate and I have built up, compiling a sysadmin-style binder of addresses, MACs, components, operating system settings, and so on, and was surprised how many systems we actually have on the network just within the apartment. The following is a full list. What I find interesting is how these machines’ names at once make them more “interesting” than just being “the machine in the bedroom,” and also seem to reflect something of what was going on in the brain of the owner at the time, to the extent I can easily tell which machines are mine and which are my roommates.

Mungus/Pacifica

• Apple Power Macintosh
• Mac OS X 10.4
• 2x2.5 GHz PowerPC G5
• 2 GB RAM
• 410 GB storage
• ATI Radeon 9800 XT
• 1680x1050 20" LCD

Squeegee

• Nokia N800
• Official Maemo-derived Linux
• 330 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP2420 (ARM11 variant)
• 128 MB RAM
• 256 MB Flash ROM
• 800x480 4.1" LCD

Twoface

• Dell Inspiron 6400
• Ubuntu Linux 7.04/Windows XP Pro
• 1.67 GHz Core 2 Duo
• 2 GB RAM
• 80 GB storage
• ATI Radeon Mobile X1400
• 1680x1050 15.1" LCD

Blue

• Custom-built machine
• Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86
• 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo
• 2 GB RAM
• 400 GB of stoorage
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro
• Dual 1024x768 LCDs

Haven/Gumbi Expandomatic

Apple AirPort Express, used nowadays purely for music broadcasting (though, as you can probably guess from the name, it was originally an AirPort network extender as well)

Wii

Our Wii. I wish there were a name to change what name the Wii self-identifies as, but there doesn’t appear to be.

NintendoDS

We have a DS and a DS Lite, though neither I nor my roommate play them much these days

Persephone

Our router, a Linksys WRT54G 8.0

Smear

Our PAP2 VoIP-to-phone adapter

Vera

• Custom-built machine
• Debian Etch
• 1.70 GHz Pentium 4
• 2 GB RAM
• 144 GB storage

Solomon (Retired)

Solomon is all but dead (the memory clip, located directly under the keyboard, broke from strain, and I can’t justify replacing the whole mobo on a six-year-old machine), and is being left to live out its remaining days in my climate-controlled office at Fog Creek for occasional use.

• PowerBook G4
• Mac OS X 10.4
• 667 MHz PowerPC G4
• 512 MB RAM
• ATI Radeon Mobile 7500
• 1280x854 15.1" LCD