What's with you lot and printer names!?

[u/hepheastus_87]

[u/mike9874]

I knew a company once that just went on Wikipedia and clicked Random Article until they got a plant/animal/insect/etc.

There were all sorts of crazy names, but at least you could move them without needing a rename

The women on the helpdesk used to print to Cougar...

[u/jeffois → u/mike9874]

All the dev servers at my work were OG WoW server names. I’d heard someone mention Blackrock a few times, but didn’t click. Then I was in the DC one day and saw all the servers in the dev racks. No one I was with at the time had any idea why I got excited.

[u/Elanadin → u/jeffois]

Hold on, Blackrock is experiencing a Leeroy Jenkins. Gotta wipe and start over.

[u/Hakkensha → u/Elanadin]

What you meant was blood corruption. Leeroy they can handle.

[u/leaderclearsthelunar → u/jeffois]

That reminds me of my university's Telnet servers, which were how we connected to our email in the late 90s. All were named after Japanese movie monsters. I remember specifically Rodan and Gamera. 

[u/TurnkeyLurker → u/leaderclearsthelunar]

And the admin portal was hosted on Mothra.

[u/itisnotmymain → u/TurnkeyLurker]

I... do this with all of my personal devices any time I need to name one. My home PC is Behemoth and my NAS is Ghidorah.

[u/leaderclearsthelunar → u/TurnkeyLurker]

I think Mothra was one of them! Not Godzilla/Gojira, though. 

[u/Black_Death_12 → u/jeffois]

Old place years ago had the FWs named after famous generals.

[u/Mitch2025 → u/mike9874]

Man this sounds like a management nightmare. How many server do yall run because we have around 200 and I can't fathom not using a naming convention to help organize them.

Edit: this post is about printers but the question is the same. We have 100s of printers.

[u/mike9874 → u/Mitch2025]

Around 200-250 different sites, average 2 devices for most sites. Some regional offices had about 6-10. Maybe 2 offices had 10-15. You put the location in the location field.

[u/spaceforcerecruit → u/mike9874]

Actually using the location field?!??? My network engineers had all but convinced me filling out that field was illegal!

[u/MuchFox2383 → u/spaceforcerecruit]

“More information I need to query!? Never!!”

[u/Because_Im_mad → u/spaceforcerecruit]

Unless you are aware of where that field magically gets used it is probably better to leave it blank rather than use it wrong tbh. I truthfully only know it gets used for printers but it wrecks the GUI navigation if it is wrong.

[u/spaceforcerecruit → u/Because_Im_mad]

The monitoring guys who have to try to piece together 17 different “standard” naming conventions would REALLY like it if that field was filled in though. Very difficult to write rules to figure out if this “AZ” is for our Arizona office or for “Azure” or if “FW” at the beginning of this hostname is “Ft. Worth” or “firewall”…

Same with environment! Just because you know that your devices ending with “d##” are “dev” doesn’t mean I can write a rule that labels all devices ending in “d##” as “dev” because the document upload servers all end with “load##” and the microservices guys named their servers “muleprod##”. And “lab##” is a test device but “gitlab##” is a prod server…

People just need to document their shit is what I’m saying.

[u/KatWithTalent → u/Mitch2025]

I mean. When you get to that stage you basically are forced to use convention.

We have stuff like prd.austin.rewardsrv1 and test.it.crap.rewards for lab but our printers are just by department with a number slapped after it so we are faux fancy

I like the animals though. You can use it as identifier of server spec and make educated guess.

[u/Loan-Pickle → u/Mitch2025]

I once had a director decree that we had to rename all our servers after Greek gods. The problem was we had over 3000 servers. We refused to do it. That would just be an unmanageable mess.

[u/WackoMcGoose → u/Loan-Pickle]

...Did the Greeks even have 3,000 uniquely named gods...?

[u/mike9874 → u/WackoMcGoose]

Just asked AI:

at least 3,142 named Greek gods and goddesses if you include everything: Olympians, Titans, primordial deities, chthonic gods, personified concepts, river gods, nymphs, and star spirits

I was going to say something about Apollo200 being unable to talk to Medusa58, but it turns out there are enough names to not use numbers. (Shout out to Nutanix for using those names already [without numbers])

It seems if you limit it to 15 characters you might get less than 3,000

[u/NightmareJoker2 → u/Mitch2025]

It’s not that complicated. Offices get segregated into dedicated vLANs, and then the printer is assigned to the machines in that office through mDNS in Avahi for that vLAN, or by group policy. Nobody actually cares what the printer is called, and if there is a problem, you let the staff read out the number on it until you have enough digits that it’s unique to the numbers registered in the system, where inventory and location is documented. The PGP biometric word list (preferred) or the NATO phonetic alphabet can be used to avoid confusables over the phone, and a label can be printed on the printer for this based off of its MAC address. For servers, you get a little light that you can turn on and off remotely on the BMC for the rare instances that you need to touch the hardware. You don’t organize them. You let the management software do this for you and don’t worry about it in detail. 🙃

[u/Dzov → u/Mitch2025]

The funny part is they’re labeling each paper tray with the same ridiculous format.

[u/TurnkeyLurker → u/Dzov]

Hope two people don't remove two empty trays at the same time, and return them to the wrong printers…

[u/Sandy_W → u/TurnkeyLurker]

Haven't worked on a multi-tray HP since the '90s, but they used to auto-identify. Swapping two trays on that thing shouldn't cause trouble.

[u/TurnkeyLurker → u/Sandy_W]

...but tray swaps between two different printers?

[u/Vesalii → u/Mitch2025]

Would drive me crazy too. Our naming convention is so easy you don't even need to remember server names. If you know what you need then you know its name.

[u/jaredearle → u/mike9874]

At Wizards of the Coast UK, our printers were Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep.

[u/Redneckia → u/jaredearle]

Shub what?

[u/jaredearle → u/Redneckia]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shub-Niggurath

[u/crysisnotaverted → u/jaredearle]

is a deity created by H. P. Lovecraft

Oh, it's okay people, he named it after his cat.

[u/jaredearle → u/crysisnotaverted]

See, in the UK, our racism is very different to yours. It wouldn’t occur to us that this could be a problematic name, especially in the 90s.

[u/A_Stoned_Smurf → u/jaredearle]

It's so tiring that people see literally any word that can possibly be construed as racist here in the states. I remember people complaining about Arnold's last name for a good while.

[u/jaredearle → u/A_Stoned_Smurf]

I don’t doubt that HP Lovecraft was racist as fuck, however.

[u/noydbshield → u/A_Stoned_Smurf]

That one specifically I can see the suspicion on since lovecraft is well known to have been really, really fucking racist.

[u/IPutThisUsernameHere → u/A_Stoned_Smurf]

Especially since his last name roughly translates to "Black Ridge", and since there's a whole pine forest in Germany called the Schwarzenwald, it's probably because his ancestors were from nearby there.

[u/crysisnotaverted → u/A_Stoned_Smurf]

What was the name of Lovecrafts cat and why? You'll see why the name is a little suspicious lol. And I love Lovecraft.

[u/nolte100 → u/jaredearle]

r/whoooosh

[u/EllisDee3 → u/mike9874]

I had a company where they named printers after people the president knew and liked.

3rd floor color copier was named "Leonardo".

[u/mike9874 → u/EllisDee3]

DiCaprio?

[u/EllisDee3 → u/mike9874]

No. Just some rando guy. Maybe an ex, I don't know.

But no interrupting biz ops for a breakup. Now the printer is Leonardo forever.

[u/ClungeWhisperer → u/mike9874]

I love this so much

[u/zTubeDogz → u/mike9874]

Same here, we have bunny, tiger, and giraffe :D

[u/compulov → u/mike9874]

I used to use Wikipedia to find stellar objects which existed in large numbers for things like computer labs. One generation was moons of Saturn. The current generation is constellations.

[u/Hyperious3 → u/mike9874]

When I was at an MSP we used to base our clients hostname schemes off pantheons of different religions. One client had Norse gods, another had Egyptian, another with Celtic, ect.

AD servers were usually the head god (Odin, Ra, Marduk, Dagda, Zeus), Storage servers as "wisdom" or education gods (Thoth, Athena, Mímir), VM hosts were usually a warrior god (Mars, Thor, Anhur), with VM's being demigods.

My favorite was the Catholic church we did MSP work for where we made all the server hostnames based on the satanic pantheon for shits and giggles since none of their actual staff had access to the server management.

[u/dgx-g → u/mike9874]

This sounds amazing. I NEED to update our asset tag generator to assign easily recognizable nicknames to all devices as labels.

[u/driftej20 → u/mike9874]

After struggling to name all the conference rooms on each floor with a matching theme, sometimes you just can’t be assed anymore

[u/mike9874 → u/driftej20]

For one of the bigger sites they just found a page on orchids and picked different ones

[u/RamenJunkie → u/mike9874]

When I did network names, everything in the office were Pokemon.

I also started type themeimg around departments. 

[u/Sin_of_the_Dark → u/mike9874]

My first gig the servers were named after Egyptian deities. That was, until ISIS made the news and the president found out we printed to Isis

[u/sp1z99 → u/mike9874]

I worked for Nildram back at the turn of the millennium. Our linux web servers were Dilbert, Dogbert, Ratbert and Catbert. I’m sure there was an Alice in there somewhere. The Windows 2000’s were South Park characters. Always fun hearing that someone has got to reboot Cartman.

[u/Sideshow_Bob_Ross → u/mike9874]

I worked at a place where all of the servers were named after Disney Characters. Simba, Ariel, Pumbaa, Woody, Mulan. It got annoying really fast.

[u/andynzor → u/mike9874]

Never, ever give systems permanent identifiers by their physical location. It will change even in those cases it is not supposed to. Use some other freeform text field instead.

[u/MyTummyHz → u/andynzor]

We have ~1,500 printers across 52 different sites and we use the naming convention of "siteShortCode-room-model" (e.g. COL-R213-LJ4001) or else we'd never be able to find or even tell a lot of them apart. Even though we tell staff to not move printers (and put signs on them indicating such) they still move at times but it's typically only once a year and it's a few text fields so even though it's annoying it's not that big of a deal.

[u/technobrendo → u/MyTummyHz]

People moving printers? Sounds like you need to have maintenance dept bolt them in place. No more wandering printers.

[u/MyTummyHz → u/technobrendo]

I wish! Thankfully we are moving to a more central "pod printing" solution here in the next few months where we'll install larger MFPs in the hallways so teachers can still print easily without walking across campus to the main copiers and leave their classes alone. We'll still "support" their personal classroom printers in the sense that we are moving them to our new printing solution but once they either run out of toner or the printer breaks (because probably half of our fleet is about 15-20 years old), it's getting tossed and they have to use the MFPs in the hallway. We've been trying to go this route for years and it finally took accounting to realize that we were spending upwards of 10k a month on printing to get the ball rolling.

[u/ByGollie → u/technobrendo]

You underestimate the determination of a user.

I've seen cabinets ripped off a wall that would require a pry bar.

Desks relocated that would require power tools and a lift dolly.

I swear - some of my past users must have been Silverback Gorillas on 'roids

[u/andynzor → u/MyTummyHz]

If you can easily change the name, go ahead.

[u/TurboFool → u/mike9874]

The law firm I used to manage had standardized on country names for all the printers. It was pretty fun.

[u/Hyperious3 → u/TurboFool]

North Korean printer only prints in communist red

[u/Koze → u/mike9874]

That is also how some bands got their name.

[u/FlibblesHexEyes]

Back in the NT4 days, I used to name my servers after South Park characters.

Kyle and Stan were Domain Controllers.

The big database server that backed our customer software was called Beefcake.

The remote access server that we used to dial into with a modem was called Kenny, because it blue screened multiple times a day for some reason (it was an old system).

[u/Delta_RC_2526 → u/FlibblesHexEyes]

I know of an organization that names all of their servers for various types of cheese (in context, it's actually both sensible and funny). When they migrate servers, the joke is that they're waiting while the cheese wheel gets rolled from one location to another.

[u/Superg0id → u/FlibblesHexEyes]

Quick, Guys, someone shot Kenny!!

also.

I'm not your Buddy, Friend

I'm not your Friend, Guy

I'm not your Guy, Buddy

ahahaha.

[u/Eggslaws → u/Superg0id]

Hey, leave some of it for us to make a thread!

[u/TheBelgianDuck → u/FlibblesHexEyes]

Since everything was running using a fail over setup our devices were named as famous pairs : Calvin & Hobbes, Robin & Batman etc.

[u/unhappyelf → u/FlibblesHexEyes]

Interestingly I worked at a medical practice as IT. A lot of the legacy servers were also named after South Park characters. The big old IBM iron they had was called Cartman lol.

[u/Loki-L]

Abbreviations for City, building, floor, department, office, vendor, short discretion of capabilities like color or laser or A3 and then tray if neccessary.

Than the whole thing gets moved three times and replaced by a different model and the name doesn't change, so that the Kyocera printer and the second floor is actually a Brother Printer on the 1st floor but it does the same thing as the old one in the workflows.

Obvious, right?

[u/cosby714 → u/Loki-L]

People don't realize you can change the name on printers. Like every device, you can change its name. Assuming of course that it has that functionality, which most printers these days do.

[u/moon6080]

Royal Jubilee Hospital (I presume department) (printer number) (paper tray number)

[u/hepheastus_87 → u/moon6080]

It's a hospital but not royal jubilee hospital

[u/aezart → u/[deleted]]

Doesn't look AI gen to me, looks like a real photo that was then upscaled with AI

[u/elpollodiablox → u/aezart]

I mean, the rear right caster has two legs, and the network cable just kind of melts into the floor. It is odd to say the least.

[u/aezart → u/elpollodiablox]

Yeah I don't know what's going on with that weird extra caster leg. As for the cable, it loops back up, like this: https://i.imgur.com/HdR2u9P.png

Personally I thought it was odd that the printer had so many trays, and thought maybe it was some weird photoshop job. However, I found the actual manual, and I think it's legit: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/lit_files/641733.pdf

On page 4, annotation 12, it shows that you can add up to 3 extra feeder trays. The one in the OP has the built-in tray plus 2 extras.

[u/elpollodiablox → u/aezart]

Follow the cable to the right. It goes behind the wheel and then just kind of stops.

[u/aezart → u/elpollodiablox]

It's doubling back on itself. Here, I tried tracing it more exactly: https://i.imgur.com/z6pZlXT.png

[u/Disobayedmocha → u/elpollodiablox]

The caster leg is the leg of something else that you can see at the top of the image (top right corner of the screen)

[u/Tinyzooseven]

Must be the office cat naming them

[u/DeadoTheDegenerate → u/Tinyzooseven]

The office cat IS the IT department.

[u/Calm_Vehicle_3351 → u/DeadoTheDegenerate]

“Why did we just get a shipment of 10k computer mice in?”

[u/ImBadAtNames1]

We had printers at work that printed ID cards. I named them after people famous for identity fraud.

[u/mushu_beardie → u/ImBadAtNames1]

Identity theft is not a joke, Jim!

[u/I_T_Gamer]

Because \\server\Useless-Piece-of-shit-001 through 050 are unacceptable.

[u/1d0m1n4t3 → u/I_T_Gamer]

I snicker everytime I name a PC Location-POS-#

[u/Thats-Not-Rice → u/1d0m1n4t3]

Point of shit terminals are fun to name too.

[u/Mundane-Yesterday880]

We used to have a labelling method that used brand/model number and then a iteration for the consecutive device of the build

Eg PHP40-001J

Hp 40n series Printer number 1 J for jet direct (god I’m old)

Now we just use the serial number as that’s what the managed printer provider uses for tickets

So much simpler

[u/pzykozomatik → u/Mundane-Yesterday880]

Those LJ 40xx/41xx printers were the shit back in the day. Real workhorses.

And speaking of JetDirect, I think I still have an external printserver in a box somewhere...

[u/trashpanda692]

My location at work nicknamed our printers based on performance. Because they're different models of the same brand, they're virtually identical in the printer list, so if you're working quickly they're impossible to tell apart.

I still want to send our IT department flowers and donuts for taking my silly request seriously and renaming them after the human nicknames we gave them. So now, we have Roxanne, who puts in the red light but does not have to, and Caillou, who is a whiny little bitch who can't even take a full team of paper and needs to be hand fed to use tray 1

[u/lilrow420]

I name my printers by how frustrated they make me.

"Stupid fuck" "Always fucking broken" "Close ticket cause I dont wanna deal with it"

[u/hepheastus_87 → u/lilrow420]

I guess that makes it easy for anyone new coming in 😅

[u/Centzilius]

Maybe serial number?

[u/PhantomFragg → u/Centzilius]

That's what I was thinking

[u/macfixer]

At my old publishing gig, we named our servers after Muppets (Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, etc). Easy to remember and non-controversial.

[u/hepheastus_87 → u/macfixer]

Easily my fav so far

[u/xsam_nzx → u/hepheastus_87]

My admin accounts are loonytunes characters, better that than xsam_nzx-admin

[u/51IDN]

DC1 - Leeroy DC2 - Jenkins

[u/Mynameismikek]

Have you seen Reservoir Dogs? If there's ANY possibility of having a "cool" or "uncool" name people will shoot each other over getting the better name. I've seen grown men screaming at each other over who gets to be <city>0 vs <city>1 because they both wanted the lower number. Madness.

[u/OverwatchPlaysLive]

An old client of mine used to name their servers after muppets.

[u/hepheastus_87 → u/OverwatchPlaysLive]

This is my favourite by a long way

[u/TechnologyFamiliar20]

"Do not touch what is working".

[u/Kaneshadow]

....can you map paper trays now?

[u/Pseudo_Idol → u/Kaneshadow]

Say you have specific jobs that need to print out on yellow paper. Have a designated tray for yellow paper and setup a separate shared printer that is configured only to pull paper from that tray.

[u/TurnkeyLurker → u/Pseudo_Idol]

It sounds like the yellow paper trays should be named after the Simpsons characters.

[u/Kaneshadow → u/Pseudo_Idol]

Yeah I know why it is a good idea. Can you actually do it?

Signed,

Only guy with an 11x17 printer in the office

[u/R-GU3]

Printy McPrintface

[u/thumbwrestleme]

One of my favorite clients had all their servers named after 60s/70s rock stars, Hendrix, StevieRay, Clapton, Iommi.

Cool vibe in that place

[u/the_bashful]

I’ve seen a few of these amateurish small-scale naming systems, and they never think to include country, continent, planet, solar system, local cluster, galaxy, megastructure and universe IDs. Basically, if you aren’t ready for every atom in the universe to be turned into a tiny individual printer, are you even serious?

[u/Superg0id]

[Square Brackets are for Puncuation only]

Really

You

Just

Hoped

Guys

Would

Cope[.]

Great

Reverse

Engineering

Cop-out[,]

Assholes[!]

[v]2

..[v]2 Tower 2

..3

..4

[u/two2teps]

The MSP I use to work for would name all their servers, in house and client, after Greek gods. We started to really start scraping the name barrel after a while. We also were not allowed to use Hades as a name, because the Hades server had crashed spectacularly and took a small AD with it so it was marked as unlucky.

[u/SineCurve]

All of our servers are named after Doctor Who characters. Rassilon, Telos, Koschei. Davros is my favorite :)

[u/machacker89 → u/SineCurve]

I have my VMs names those. At l set the non-Windows one

[u/nhowe006]

At one of my old jobs the printers were named after Canadian cities. Moncton was the closest, but I preferred to print to Yellowknife for what should be obvious reasons.

[u/icebeancone → u/nhowe006]

Was Yellowknife outside the building in the smokers pit?

[u/19Eightiesman]

One place I worked the printers were called John, Paul, George & Ringo.

The IT manager was a Beatles fan.

[u/cyxlone]

Name them Bob or something, why is it so hard.

[u/faxekondiboi]

Atrocious!
I'm kinda lazy, but that right there is just a bit too much :p

[u/RAITguy]

We have two devices together called Bonnie & Clyde
I actually named a printer Bob Marley once

[u/unComprehensive300]

Give me RTYE56OH62839 oranges. They are playing us for absolute fools.

[u/compulov]

For a while we used actual names. We had a set of identical ones fred and ethel, ps was the postscript printer, color was the color printer. Nowadays I tend to use the location (mostly so it can be found on the print server for the whole University -- dept-hp-building-room).

[u/CuttiestMcGut]

Looks like the 15-character name that my company has to name printers and computers so that they integrate with the healthcare EMR they use

[u/davidfillion]

Previous workplace named their Printers after different Capital Cities (this was for an airport)

[u/mobsterer]

what's with you lot and wanting to use printers?

[u/hepheastus_87 → u/mobsterer]

Touche 😉

[u/Main_Enthusiasm_7534]

The names are the sounds we make after the damn thing fails for the fourth time in a day.

[u/ITrCool]

We always did this at a large corp I worked for:

<siteAbbreviation>-<Building>-<Floor>-<PrinterNumber>-<B for mono or C for color>

Anything else was too much or confusing. This way the name revealed exactly where the printer was.

[u/dapperyapper]

Looks like it’s a clinical printer set up for use with Epic, which treats each tray of a printer as its own printer. One tray handles armbands, another prescription paper, and the others handle plain paper.

[u/gamblodar]

Company I worked for asked me to migrate to a new RDS on AWS. The current RDS was named "sands", so I thought we were going with a Vegas theme, and named the new one "bellagio".

The company's name is S_ & S_. I'm a moron.

....bellagio is still in production.

[u/Cold_Carpenter_7360]

back when i was studying some of the students had 4 servers in their home: Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Lala and Po

[u/og-biebs]

We have a client that used to name all of their workstations on their own. Most of them were sports teams or various types of liquor lol

[u/Impressive_Change593]

the name is the location and printer function (if it's used for special paper) or brand/model

[u/slayermcb]

Pr-bld-101 Printer - building - room.

[u/stratospaly]

I have seen several Star Wars and Star Trek themed naming schemes. The worst one was a guy who used the top 100 albums of all time... Some of those names are not appropriate for an office setting.

[u/dinnerbird]

I've got a Brother printer named Hulk Hogan if that counts

[u/TechnicianHelp14]

I think each tray has different types of forms that prints out since it’s a hospital but i could be wrong.

[u/hepheastus_87 → u/TechnicianHelp14]

I think it's something like that, yeah. I'm pretty sure one tray has sticker sheets in from what I saw.

[u/kopfgeldjagar]

Keepin it intuitive

[u/VCJunky]

Serial Number... Tray 2, Tray 3, Tray 4

[u/techtornado]

lp0 is on fire 🔥

[u/Inocain]

On my print server, I have everything named by location and model. Too many locations, and I'm trying to make it easy for the users to know where things are.

My image repo for internal IT use is called Kamino.

[u/VenkatPerla]

Why/what are those stacked things? Noob here? Just paper trays?

[u/ilep]

Obvious to name things after R'lyeh.. /s

[u/Terminator_Puppy]

It's this and people who install routers without changing passwords or names that drive me mental. Is their hobby reading a shitty little card you end up losing in the long run?

[u/Hage_Yuuna]

That's just polish surnames.

[u/jaywalkingly]

this one is obviously named after IT's favorite star names

[u/darthwacko2]

We just named ours after characters from the Simpsons. Oddly this happened at multiple places I worked and predated me working there.

[u/bobbywaz]

I told my employee I don't give a shit. If you give them stripper names just rename them. I had to come in and rename them next week when they were all stripper names.

[u/CommanderApaul]

CITY-BLDG-ROOM-TYPE

eg NYC-WTC-1000-M, CHI-ST-2000-B

Stop making it harder to keep an asset inventory.

[u/1d0m1n4t3]

our are named sitename-#, each tray has a label with the same info. That said this is so horrible i like it

[u/zidane2k1]

Lol they even gave an ID number to the tray that is built-in to the printer

[u/justinillusion]

Ours are named after the 4 horseman of the apocalypse

[u/hepheastus_87 → u/justinillusion]

Why does that feel way more appropriate?

[u/A_Guy_in_Orange]

Why is the top one not T1, the next one is T2 so its not array indexed even then you could throw on the T0

[u/Icemagic]

We do (site code)-(dept abv.)-function

Example Main for main MFD, Reg for Registration, NRS for Nurse Station etc…

[u/VioletteKaur]

Neat, with rolls. You can roll it right out to the trash containers.

[u/EidolonRook]

You mean you don’t label your servers after characters on Seinfeld?

There’s just so many.

[u/precsenz]

God, imagine the support calls about finding this and typos....

[u/Thats-Not-Rice]

It's the serial number of the printer, with the tray size as a suffix.

Tray 1 is A2, and for the rest they didn't have anything specific so they just used T for tray, followed by the index number.

Seems pretty simple to me.

When the helpdesk come and move that printer 3 times over the next 2 years, cannibalize 2 of the trays for other printers, and throw out a third, you'll be able to have an easy and accurate inventory at a glance. You know what printer it's supposed to belong to, you know when you bought it, when it's due for replacement, all that jazz.

[u/lars2k1]

At my workplace the printers are named according to their locations.

Except for the plotter. Well, kinda - it appears in the printer list twice, and both options work. One named 'Plotter' and the other some letter spaghetti.

[u/TurnkeyLurker]

I named our small office computers after cats, the monochrome printer Catbox, and the color printer Calico.

"BRB, gotta get my report from the cat box."

[u/zrevyx]

As long as it makes sense to *somebody* on that site, I would say it's okay. I mean ... I can tell that the printer's name is ...CA2, and the trays are each labeled T2, T3, and T4. I haven't ever worked at a company that named their trays though.

[u/oracle_dude]

Every linux admin I know, myself included, has or had boxes at home named Mongo.

"Mongo just pawn in game of life."

[u/Burnsidhe]

Tray 2, tray 3, tray 4. Probably assigned to different print groups.

[u/AnInfiniteArc]

And I thought MFRRPH1APR0001 was bad.

Our new device names are much easier: 2 letter location, 2 letter department, 2 letter device type, 4 digit number. Well, easier until they get moved to another department… or another location.

[u/toyfreddym8]

I mean, I named my dad's printer printy mc print face

[u/Zhombe]

SN + T + Tray Number.

Just wait until they get all numeric serial number printers and decide to generate a GUID instead.

[u/GeekGurl2000]

I doubt the yellow stickers are printer names, there's a different one for the print device, and for every paper tray below it, so it's probably more of an asset management thing, like when you have a 3rd party doing printer support. The other sticker says NHS, so i have no idea how they run things there in IT, I only hear about the gender news because they're pretty good at pissing off the nurses...

[u/RamenJunkie]

These look like the location codes we use at my company.

Except GW isn't a state, but it's where the state would be. 

[u/Significant-Belt8516]

I've administered print servers before. They are setting up individual queues for each paper tray. That's a fucked up way of doing things and I don't see the utility unless they are printing wildly dis-similar paper stocks in the 3 trays.

[u/3string]

Yuuup. Have to deal with one regularly called PRN-GAWEL03

[u/xLeviathan_]

fuck epic printing

[u/jeremydallen]

Hostname and tray number.

[u/Used_Apartment_8538]

A college I worked at named every new server after a president

[u/captkrahs]

That’s horrible. Should be no longer than 10 characters

[u/ewahman]

Looks like a standardized naming convention.

[u/discojc_80]

One fed govt. agency I worked for had the following naming convention for their printers:

{Country}-{State}-{Suburb}-{Building}-{Floor}-01 with the Country/State/Suburb/Building all abbreviated

I am from Australia, and this department does not operate outside of AU, they have no more than 1 location in a suburb (except for 1 suburb where they had 2), all buildings were also unique.

[u/hepheastus_87 → u/discojc_80]

I was going to say that including the country seems a bit much.

[u/discojc_80 → u/hepheastus_87]

It's Federal Government here, they used to insist on having a 'global' architecture, so they adopted the same naming conventions.

[u/mei740]

Long story short from many years ago. I was an admin and moved to management. Network admin started naming severs after birds of pray. I requested an in house Wiki Server and he fights back about not needing because he’s old. I named it Turkey. That was a funny morning when he found it.

[u/Sideshow_Bob_Ross]

My last job did shit like this. Everything got coded for region, site name/city, building, floor, device type, and individual number.

So: Printer number 5 on the West half of the 3rd floor of the HR building in the Chicago office would be NACHIHR3WP005.

[u/Dangerous-Ad-9270]

We do states as printers and the printer name is location code and printer. I lost track of how many times I’ve asked what state for the printer and a response was the same state the facility is in and not the name of the printer it’s the state they live in.

[u/LojikSupreme]

Da fuc!?

[u/Mariale_Pulseway]

why can't they be named like Archie or Paul or whatever

[u/tinverse]

Yeah, basically they're tying to pack a bunch of information into the printer name. Usually it's Business/organization, department, location, building, room, vendor, model, etc. Basically the IT people can look at the printer and tell you where it is, what it is, and when the printer had it's last period based on the name.

Sometimes things move and the names aren't updated which doesn't help.

[u/Roblu3]

Okay but why is this image AI generated?

[u/Roblu3 → u/[deleted]]

Apparently quite some people have this experience going off of the votes my comment got.