How do I use a variable in an Ember component template that runs more than just once?

I need to generate a random string from two arrays with a bunch of names of people and devices. I have an Ember computed property that does it perfectly well. Except computed properties only happen once. So I end up with a list of like 5 rows with the SAME TEXT.

The reason I'm doing this is because I am getting a list of devices from a REST web service, but they don't have the ability to return the name of the device, only id and a bunch of other info. So I am supposed to use dummy names for now, and so I figure. no problem. I'll just generate a random name for each row. Well as I already said, I end up with this:

John's iPad                  <actual unique ID from the server>
John's iPad                  <actual unique ID from the server>
John's iPad                  <actual unique ID from the server>
John's iPad                  <actual unique ID from the server>
John's iPad                  <actual unique ID from the server>

When it needs to be the name of a random person and random device (which I have in arrays and the code works perfectly, but only executes once, and returns the same value for each consecutive time it's called.

So then I read on here and in an Ember book I have to do this:

property1: function() {
  bunch of code
}.property('property2');

So this is supposed to run every time property2 changes, except. Back to square one. How do I change property2? I can't do it from the hbs template, from the code within the .. Then I read somewhere to use a custom helper, but in my experience ANY helper ecapsulates the returned value in a div which breaks the layout and would result in

text
helper response
remaining text

when what I want is:

text helper response remaining text

I mean yeah I could just make an array of text and then pass the index but then when I add new data I have to manually add items to the array because it's not dynamically generated for every row of data.

With my method I have like a ton of names and device names chosen randomly so no matter how much data is returned it can populate the name field until they fix it on the back end to return names.

Would really love to know how not just to solve this problem but how to run ANY CODE that I want from ANY PLACE I want in the page/template/etc. not just static properties or computed once properties..

sometimes you want to be able to have templates that use variables in them that are completely dynamic ran EVERY TIME that component is called.

Sometimes you want an actual helper that doesn't encapsulate the response in a div, so you can do stuff like The answer is . and not have the output be this:

The answer is
5
.