People seem to like to name the things that they spend lots of time with. Pets, electronics, body parts *cough*, musical instruments, cars, and so on.

When I was growing up, we named each one of our vehicles – the Blue Truck, The T-Bird, The Rabbit, The Poo-Got (Peugot sadly mispronounced), The Boat (my 1971 Oldsmobile Delta 88), etc. My best friend’s family’s car was called Molly. I mentioned before that our family van for a few years was called Clifford.

Kiddos name their stuffies and favorite toys. We even give nicknames to our favorite people.

My daughter is working with her best friend on a reverse bungee project for science that has to ‘launch’ an egg on a wild bungee ride without losing or breaking the egg. Turns out, they are so confident in their design that they have gone as far as to name their egg: Petrova. Petrova the Amazing Un-Breaking Bungee-Jumping Egg.

I have no idea how it happened really, but in this discussion about nicknames and naming her egg, my daughter and I decided that my computer was worthy of naming. I do spend quite a lot of time with my computer, and even though I don’t always get along with it, it is possibly the most important ‘appliance’ in my home. Having a silly name like “MacBookPro” didn’t seem to be adequate.

August 2008 - My 3 kiddos 'holding up' the Apollo Test Module at Meteor Crater, AZ

So, we easily settled on “Weirdie“, for obvious reasons, but it needed more than just “Weirdie”. It needed to be an EPIC name, something fantastic and adventurous, like “Apollo 13”.

Yes, that’s it: Weirdie 13.

No, wait…. Apollo 13 blew up! EEP! Don’t go there!

But, Apollo?  That could still work. So which Apollo mission would be fitting to name my computer after…? Manned, or unmanned?

“Technically, Mom, you are ‘manning’ the computer, so it should be a ‘manned’ spacecraft.”  OK, manned. That narrows it down to Missions 7-17.

But not 13.

Weirdie17 sounded kind of cool, but it was quickly decided that THIS would most certainly NOT be my last computer. Scratch #17.

What else was left except to choose the very best – #11. The Apollo 11 mission was the first successful manned moon landing, when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Lunar Module (LM) there on July 20, 1969 and walked on its surface.

Sweetheart: “Yup, Mom, that’s the one. Gotta be #11. John Glenn was there and all that!”

ME: “You mean, Neil Armstrong.”

The Newly Dubbed "Weirdie11" MacBook Pro

Sweetheart: “Yah, OK. The ‘one small leap’ guy. That one. That’ll work perfect. We’ll call your laptop ‘Weirdie11’!”

And so, mixed-up astronauts notwithstanding, my MacBookPro4,1 with 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM has now been dubbed “Weirdie11“!

Another beloved inanimate object has been named!

Just remember, when naming your favorite equipment of whatever sort, be careful to choose a good name. Avoid the names of things that self-destructed, blew-up, or suffered some other catastrophic fate. No need to tempt history to repeat itself.

Please don’t blow up Weirdie11, PLEASE!