Ari Johnson. Computers.

My Computers

I own many computers, several of which are in active use. As a computer hobbyist and former IT worker, I not only use computers to simplify my life as much as possible but also enjoy collecting them when I have enough space, money, and time not taken up by my other hobbies.

My computers are presently named after characters from the American television series Futurama. In the past, I named computers after various Greek islands and, before that, after some arbitrary name related to the type of computer bearing it.

In Use

bender.theari.com and flexo.theari.com are named after the bending robots Bender and Flexo, who look identical other than Flexo's beard. These names point to the same computer, which is my colocated server in Miami. It has three IP addresses, two of which are used for the server and one of which is for remote management. Therefore, I needed three names that worked well together. The third name is for me to know and you to wonder, but it fits into the theme. Bender runs Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 "etch" and replaced my previously leased server in northern Virginia (which had the same names) in December, 2006. (The previous server was up since late 2004.)

hermes.theari.com is my PowerMac dual G5. It is my primary workstation and is used for everything from my day-to-day work to software development. It is named for Hermes Conrad, the manager and bureaucrat for the Planet Express delivery company. Hermes is known for his efficiency, for only appearing on screen when needed, and for his somewhat strange culture, just like my PowerMac. I have had Hermes since summer 2005.

Nibbler is my 12" PowerBook G4. This was my first Apple computer and earned the name of Leela's pet, Nibbler, by being "cute" but powerful. I use this laptop whenever I travel. It provides me with a familiar interface, running mostly the same software as Hermes for instant messaging, e-mail, and so forth. I also use it in class and in the courtroom to take notes, write exams, and retrieve information quickly. I got Nibbler in early 2005.

Fry was for much of its life a 2.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 system running Windows XP and Arch Linux. I recently set it up for my parents' use, as I was no longer using it, and in the process it suffered a mechanical failure of the chipset heatsink spring bracket. I replaced the motherboard and CPU, so that it is now an AMD x86-64 system. It runs Windows XP and will also run Ubuntu Linux when I get around to installing it. Fry was, for a long time, my primary workstation and therefore took the name of the primary character of Futurama, Philip J. Fry. I got Fry in late 2002.

Dormant

Zapp is a Toshiba Tecra 8100 that I got in summer 2000 and used until Nibbler replaced it in early 2005. It has, at various times, run Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Windows 98, Windows XP, and Debian GNU/Linux. It is named after General Major Webelo Zapp Brannigan, who is fond of talking about how much he gets around but who in fact does not see nearly the amount of action he pretends to. Likewise, this Toshiba laptop certainly has gotten around in its day, but not as much as it could have if I had kept putting a new battery in it every 18 months.

IRIS is a Silicon Graphics Indigo2 Extreme running IRIX 6.2. I used it as my primary workstation from the time I purchased it in 1999 until it proved too insecure for that purpose in late 2000. Observant readers will note that IRIS happens to be the default hostname for the IRIX operating system, and thus that this name represents a low point in my creativity.

Sparky is a Sun SparcStation IPX running OpenBSD/sparc. When I bought it used in approximately 1997, it had Solaris installed on it, but it would not boot because it required system files located on the external hard drive and I did not receive a SCSI cable for that drive until later. Being impatient, I installed OpenBSD on it and used it as my primary workstation and, when IRIS took over its workstation duties, as a file and development server.

Martin is a Gateway 2000 desktop system with a 233MHz Intel Pentium processor that I used as a file server while Kupros was my workstation. It ran FreeBSD in that role.

lt3 is a Hyundai Super-LT3 laptop that my dad gave me when he replaced it, sometime in the mid-1990s. It has an Intel 80286 processor and originally ran MS-DOS, but eventually I installed Minix 2.0 on it. It has no networking capabilities, but it was not at all a bad computer. This was also my first Unix or Unix-like system.

Dead

kupros.theari.com, named for the island Cyprus, was an AMD system that served the role now fulfilled by Bender from the time it was replaced by Fry for workstation purposes in 2002 until its untimely demise in late 2004. It ran, variously, Windows 98, Windows XP, FreeBSD, and Debian GNU/Linux.