Naming Office Equipment: Our Weird Habit

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the practice of naming office equipment and other inanimate objects, exploring the humorous and personal connections people create with their tools and devices. Participants share their experiences and suggest names, while also questioning the motivations behind this behavior.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants describe their office equipment with whimsical names, such as "Diablo II" for a troublesome printer and "The Nommminator" for a shredder.
  • Others share their experiences of naming various devices, including printers, laptops, and even fish, often attributing names based on the equipment's behavior or characteristics.
  • A few participants express skepticism about the practice, suggesting it might stem from boredom or a need for amusement in the workplace.
  • Some individuals mention naming conventions based on themes, such as naming servers after beers or giving Bluetooth devices old man's names.
  • There are humorous anecdotes about past experiences with named equipment, like a printer called "Beelzebub" and a gas chromatograph named "Master Kan."
  • One participant notes that they do not typically name inanimate objects but found it interesting that others do, particularly in relation to a Roomba they purchased.
  • Another participant humorously mentions naming their soldering iron "The Gloryholer" due to its elusive nature.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree that naming inanimate objects is a common and humorous practice, though some express uncertainty about the motivations behind it. There is no consensus on whether this behavior is normal or peculiar.

Contextual Notes

Some participants reflect on the emotional or psychological reasons for naming objects, while others simply share names without delving into deeper meanings. The discussion includes a mix of light-hearted banter and personal anecdotes.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may interest individuals who enjoy humor in the workplace, those who engage in creative naming practices, or anyone curious about the personal connections people form with their tools and devices.

Math Is Hard
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We have this thing about naming equipment in the office.

The printer/copier/fax is called Diablo II or Spawn of Diablo. It's a cranky machine that responds well to voodoo offerings like shiny pennies, red ribbons, and chicken bones. It is not nearly as troublesome as Diablo I.

Then there's Willis, a printer that constantly complains it is out of paper when it isn't, and gives other erroneous error messages. leading us to say "whachoo talkin' bout?".

Squeaky (another printer. I think this one is obvious).

The Works (the printer that always works. Well, almost.)

The Nommminator is our shredder. (Omnomnomnomnommm!)

We have 3 new laptops now, and I am trying to think of names for them. I guess it's like naming kittens, though - you have to give it some time for their personalities to emerge. But I am open to suggestions.

Anyone else do this with office equipment? Or are we just really weird?
 
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Math Is Hard said:
Anyone else do this with office equipment? Or are we just really weird?

Bored, maybe.
 
G037H3 said:
Bored, maybe.

:biggrin: Yeah, those must have been some slow days when we came up with the names.
 
While you're at it, I could use a name for my office fish.

So far, his name is "version 0.9" ...

... because, after all, he's a Betta.

(bazinga.)
 
DaveC426913 said:
While you're at it, I could use a name for my office fish.

So far, his name is "version 0.9" ...

... because, after all, he's a Betta.

(bazinga.)
How about Hans? (from Hans Bethe)

He could be a second cousin (once removed) of Klaus, from American Dad.
 
Math Is Hard said:
Anyone else do this with office equipment? Or are we just really weird?

I give many objects the same first name - Damn - with the surname being the proper name of the device.
 
Ivan Seeking said:
I give many objects the same first name - Damn - with the surname being the proper name of the device.

I'd agree we humans pretty much damn anything and everyone which fails to live up to our expections.

Good observation Ivan. It actually gives me pause for thought behind the entire practice of damning anything. Is it merely that something fails to live up to basic expectations, and should therefore be damned.

I myself sometimes feel so.
 
All of our servers are named after beers. Fortunately, the names aren't common enough to bring continual snickers in every meeting. I told the sysadmin that he has to name the next one Borg. :-p
 
All my equipment with Bluetooth has always been given an old man's name (I've had Harold, George, Marvin, Alfred...).
 
  • #10
Years ago, where I worked at the time, we had a printer named Beelzebub. It was one of the early laser printers - about twice as big as the original LaserJet and half as reliable.
 
  • #11
Math Is Hard said:
Then there's Willis, a printer that constantly complains it is out of paper when it isn't, and gives other erroneous error messages. leading us to say "whachoo talkin' bout?".

Please tell me it says "PC Load Letter" - it will make my day!
 
  • #12
Norman said:
Please tell me it says "PC Load Letter" - it will make my day!

PC Load Letter? What the *&^^ does that mean?!

*baseball bat*
 
  • #13
I have an old spectrophotometer that has successfully resisted all efforts to silence its cooling fan...so I call it "Ol' Grumbly".

I never have to wonder if I left it on, I can hear it from down the hall: grumble-grumble-grumble-grumble-...
 
  • #14
In the pulp mill's lab, we had a Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph called Master Kan. I was one of the few chemists to evade its clutches. The ports were VERY hot. If you got bored and distracted running samples, and casually leaned your forearm on the top of the machine, you would be branded with the hexagonal shapes of the two port-caps. Time for you to go, Grasshopper.
 
  • #15
My car: Curly.

Downshift just right and it goes "woob woob woob woob ..." It has not yet started going "nyuk nyuk nyuk" though.
 
  • #16
turbo-1 said:
In the pulp mill's lab, we had a Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph called Master Kan.
Gas? How old is it?? The electic ones have been around as long as I can remember...
 
  • #17
DaveC426913 said:
Gas? How old is it?? The electic ones have been around as long as I can remember...
It was a long time ago. At least it wasn't coal-fired.
 
  • #18
These are pretty funny! Especially DH's "Curly"!
 
  • #19
Math Is Hard said:
Or are we just really weird?

I'm glad you offered that one up yourself. :)

Actually, no - you're not weird. A friend of mine named her Volvo Helga, and there's a C-130 that used to be in the USAF inventory we called FrankenHerk, as it was originally two aircraft, both of whom (which?) had been involved in accidents, but to different sections, such that a complete aircraft was built from the original two. It always flew a little bit sideways, which made celestial navigation problematic, as heading shots were always off. We finally figured out a correction factor for that aircraft, which made the going a little easier.

I've never been much into naming inanimate options, though I have referred to my GPS as Jill. I picked the name one time when I became annoyed at her incessant voiced directions, and said "Chill... Jill."
 
  • #20
D H said:
My car: Curly.

Downshift just right and it goes "woob woob woob woob ..." It has not yet started going "nyuk nyuk nyuk" though.

Hit a couple of guardrails and see if that changes...
 
  • #21
I call my cooker Verta, as it is all ways spitting hot fat and burning me.
 
  • #22
D H said:
My car:
Downshift just right and it goes "woob woob woob woob ..."
that suspiciously sounds like a loose belt
 
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  • #23
DaveC426913 said:
While you're at it, I could use a name for my office fish.

So far, his name is "version 0.9" ...

... because, after all, he's a Betta.

(bazinga.)

Betta Max
 
  • #24
i used to call my old thinkpad "The Fudgemaker" because it always found a way to fudge with me :-p and when it comes to tools my soldering iron is called "The Gloryholer" because i rarely see where i put it, I've gotten quite a few burns because of that.
 
  • #25
the_android said:
my soldering iron is called "The Gloryholer" because i rarely see where i put it, I've gotten quite a few burns because of that.
:smile: :smile:
That's just going to confuse the children and scare the adults.
I named all of my hard-drives in order to keep them straight in my head. Buffy, Lisa, Amanda, Raquel... and this one in my MacBook is Elvira. I also named my floppy disks after the 7 dwarves, Lord of the Ring characters, Star Trek characters, etc..
 
  • #26
I don't name any inanimate objects. But it's funny you mention this. I recently bought a Roomba (I'm getting into this idea of having robot servants to do my housekeeping). When I told my boyfriend I got one, the first thing he asked is if I'd named it. My response was, "Why?" Apparently, if you submit any sort of review to their website, it actually asks what you've named the thing. :rolleyes: He said he'd name something like that. I told him it came with a name...a Roomba. :-p I think that's about the time he decided to change the subject to something safer to discuss, like politics or religion.
 
  • #27
i just realized that i named the home wireless 'Temujin'. i wonder what 'AZNs Net' thinks of that?
 
  • #28
Moonbear said:
I don't name any inanimate objects. But it's funny you mention this. I recently bought a Roomba (I'm getting into this idea of having robot servants to do my housekeeping). When I told my boyfriend I got one, the first thing he asked is if I'd named it. My response was, "Why?" Apparently, if you submit any sort of review to their website, it actually asks what you've named the thing. :rolleyes: He said he'd name something like that. I told him it came with a name...a Roomba. :-p I think that's about the time he decided to change the subject to something safer to discuss, like politics or religion.
Ahahhah.
 
  • #29
I usually don't name things. But when it comes to enter a name for the computer I name it "HAWK". My computer is pretty much important. Mind you.
 
  • #30
Kholdstare said:
I usually don't name things. But when it comes to enter a name for the computer I name it "HAWK".

We once had a network administrator who named everything after obscure European car rally drivers. But we got revenge on him eventually, by naming a new batch of workstations after even more obscure 19th century Russian composers. (Which also shows that some engineers have interests other than engineering!)

But that cunning plan failed, because one of our application programs had a "feature" in its network licensing software that couldn't handle names longer than 16 characters :cry: