How can I fix local name resolution problems

I have a Macbook Pro Retina running 10.8.4. One thing I've always had problems with is resolving my local names.

When connected via wifi, I can ping localhost just fine. However my computer's name is finney. And I cannot ping finney. However I can ping finney.local. Other machines on my network can also ping finney.local. I've always been able to live with this inconvenience 'till now. This macbook needs to run a local service that uses the value returned from hostname -s as the name of the machine and then tries to connect with that name.

In System Preferences -> Network -> wifi -> TCP/IP I've set my DHCP client ID to finney.local. So the hostname command returns finney.local and hostname -s returns finney. I can't believe I've spent so much time trying to figure a way around this.

My preferred options would be to figure out how to make it so I can ping this computer using its name finney. My DHCP server at home is a wifi router, through which I can find no option to specify a name for my macbook.

My second choice would be to figure out how to get hostname -s to return finney.local. At least if I could do that then my rabbitmq instance would be able to startup.

I'd be much appreciative if someone could help with some suggestions on how to get around these problems.

Thanks in advance,

Derek