Me, I use characters from Norse mythology: odin, midgard, sleipnir, freya, etc.
Do you know that Midgard is the name of a high end open source free CMS too?
(I love the fact we don't have all these stupid "issues" clogging up the developer list anymore :P )
I love that discussion too. Basically, naming the machines after their function or hardware models is not a good practice. Machines get redeployed, upgraded, replaced, ...etc. There was a time when a machine called decvax or sun somewhere was not from DEC or Sun, but the name had to stay because it served in a network. I have seen planet names, star names, car names, as well as SsscccNNN (S + 2 letter state, + 3 letter city, plus number)...etc. I personally use fish names, since I used to do a lot of fishing. orca, shark, grouper, stingray, sohal, puffer. (Yes, Orca is not a fish, rather a mammal, but I needed a big thing, and whaleshark was not it). Again, I believe that the people doing the work are the ones who should decide what the names will be. If drupal1, 2, 3 makes it easy to locate the systems in the server racks, then so be it. The rest of us can continue to be arm chair sysadmins ... :-)