Who/what is Edythe?

If you've read this, I guess that you can come to one of two possible conclusions.

• I'm a pervert lusting for a girl called Edythe, or
• I'm a depraved individual lusting for Edythe.

Seems like the confusion was quite deep, as Cui asked what Edythe was. Well, I'd say that at least she managed to figure out that Edythe was not a human (otherwise, where did the what come from?).

I may want to love and be loved by a woman, but for the record, I'm not that desperate to jump on anything with a skirt on...

Before anyone gets any more weird ideas about me, here's a picture of Edythe:


And yes, Edythe is my Fujitsu S-series Lifebook. Man, what were you thinking?

Okay, now I guess that you must be wondering why in the blazes do I call my laptop by a name, and a female name at that. Well, a chief reason is that giving a computer a nice human sounding name is much easier to remember than if you call the computer by a atring of unrelated alphanumeric characters e.g. N0705ACM1234.

Of course, as a self-respecting geek/hacker, it is natural to call the computer by a name, and in my case, referring the computer as a her. This is wholly consistent with the practice of car buffs calling their cars "ladies" and sailors referring to their ships as "her".

But why the name Edythe of all things?

This is starting to get complicated... According to this, Edythe has three possible lineages (and thus meanings). The meanings and lineages include:

1. Anglo-Saxon

   Form of Edith - Rich Gift

2. English

   Spoils of War

3. Teutonic

   Rich Gift, Happy

Among the three, I was looking at the Anglo-Saxon meaning. Edythe is a gift by myself for myself, for all the pain and suffering I put up in order to be worthy of owning my own machine. And Edythe does not come cheap—even with some contacts from GiSC, she still weighs in at a hefty 3000 dollars (okay, maybe it's because of the 2GB RAM and the DVD-everything-writeable). Does "rich" qualify then?

[Ed: On hindsight, she can be considered the spoils of the war between me and some of the oppressive entities stifling my creative freedom in writing computer programs]

Even then, I could have just used Edith, which looks a little more contemporary. But I like the name Edythe for its über quality—it looks darn Old English like. Yah, it's more unique to use an Old English like name than one that is so plain Jane.

Until next time...