I remember once coming across my-hostname-is-longer-than-yours.mit.edu. My university used ship types as names for their machines. Workstations (of which there were many) had a short 3-letter ship type followed by two digits. That worked very well.

Privately I use fantasy/Science Fiction worlds. One of the first was discworld (it had a very large harddisk), and I stuck with it. I've had beleriand, dagobah, tatooine, and my most recently ferrix. Okay, mostly Star Wars planets, I guess.