RE: Creative system names....

[Jim Damato <jdamato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Steve
>On a light note, What is the name of your system?  Do you still
>have old dull
>name that was supplied by IBM when the system was shipped?
>Or have you been creative and given it a meaningful name?

Tracy Kidder's "the Soul of a New Machine" describes Data General's
engineering effort to produce a system to compete with Digital's VAX.  The
project was going on around the same time as some of the most aggressively
competitive soft drink marketing (the Cola Wars).  The two engineering
prototype machines were supposed to be named Coke and Pepsi, but for some
reason, not fully understood, the machines ended up being called Coke and
Gollum.

I always liked the idea of systems named for no good reason, so that years
down the road no one could really explain the folklore.  At a previous job
we had just purchased a new development System/38, and there was some
discussion about whether to follow the company's BABY, JUNIOR, SENIOR naming
path or the zodiac signs trend that was starting.  I told one of the Systems
Managers to just name the system SLUGGO (for no good reason), and quickly
set up the APPC device names and other dependencies so that the name would
have to stick.  Unfortunately he hesitated and discussed the possibility
with others.  The end result was a department wide vote after which
management stuffed the ballot box to prevent SLUGGO in favor of the less
silly and less random ARIES.  The moment it went to a vote the point was
lost anyway.

The lesson to learn from this story is name your systems quickly with no
explanations and no apologies.

-Jim

(It's too bad that you can't meaningfully shorten Deep Thought to eight
characters.)