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May will be a double header of Spotlights, I have one waiting in the wings. Let me introduce extide.
First off, tell us about you.
Where do you call home?
Salt Lake City, Utah (Or as some of us like to abbreviate, SL,UT)
What is your family situation?
Married in summer of '11, and our first kid is on the way!
What do you do for a living?
For the most part, I am a software engineer, but I sort of do anything/everything in the world of computers.
Does your forum name hold any significant meaning?
Actually, it does. I was born in Connecticut, and we used to have a sailboat and spend a lot of time on it. When we moved to Utah, my mom used to joke about getting the license plate "EX-CONN" and I always liked the name EX-TIDE (as in no longer around the tides of the ocean!) and it is never used anywhere I want to register so that's nice.
Did you ever post in the "Let's see your mug... " thread? Why or why not?
No, never knew about it.
What other hobbies or interests keep you busy?
I have a VW GTI VR6 that has a GT35r turbo on it.. I spend a pretty good amount of time screwing around with the car and/or carpc/stereo system crap. I built a custom carpc into the car along with a lot of custom stereo gear.
Tell us about your involvement in DC.
Lets see, I started SETI@HOME in the 90's, and when I was in middle and high school I worked with the teachers in the school and essentially was the sysadmin to varying degrees. When I was in high school I managed to borg almost every computer in the school (several hundred!) and ended up being well into the top 100 individual users in the seti rankings. In more modern times I switched to F@H as it seems like a much more worthwhile use of computing resources. It's kind of funny because only a few of the machines I have folding would probably add up to as much computing poweras ALL of the machines I had running seti! Currently, I am still working on getting into the top 100 in F@H
Who or what got you stated in DC projects? About when was it?
This would again be in the late 90's. Being a nerd I have also always been fairly interested in space and all that, and I remember a friend of mine (he had ISDN, which rocked back then!) well his dad ran seti on some of their machines. I saw it there ad then looked into what it was and was running it everywhere I could soon after.
Why do you participate?
For fun, for the science, and partly for the competition. For several years I folded (not on a team) without a passkey as I didnt care about the points or bonuses or whatnot. Only recently have I decided to join the team and become bonus eligible.
If DC'ing could find a cure for just one disease tomorrow, which one would it be and why?
Gee, I don't know. I would have to say it's a 50/50 between cancer and aids/hiv, as those would have the biggest impact on the world.
What projects have you contributed to? Any others you find interesting?
Mostly F@H and back in the day Seti@Home. A FEW BOINC projects here and there, but at this point I am 100% F@H.
What teams have you contributed to?
Just this one. Most of my DC history has been spent not on a team.
Why did you choose the Horde?
I have been reading this site for well over a decade and it is definitely the one I have a true allegiance to. I also am a fan of the different methodologies that Kyle uses in reviews, especially video card benches.
If your current project ends, which one will you move on to?
Something that is a good contribution to science, in my opinion. I am not interested in, for example, the prime number DC projects, and stuff like that.
Current level of production and how's it spread around?
Somewhere around 150K PPD. I have a few heavy hitters, my 3930K @ 4.8Ghz running SMP, a 4.4Ghz 2500K running SMP, and a 4.0Ghz i7 920 running SMP, and then an i7 980 running bigadv in linux. There are around 4-6 other machines that range from core 2 duo's, to phenom 1's, to amd 64 x2's and whatnot that also help out running smp.
Where do you see the [H]ard DC sub-forum in the near future?
Still going strong.
Long term?
Still going strong.
Any ideas on improving the [H]ard DC sub-forum, or suggestions or improvements for our Team?
Not at this point. I will be sure to post up anything I come up with though!
Tell us about your involvement.
Where did you begin?
I have always known about the team here, but just recently decided to join. I have always done my projects team-less, but I am a big [H]'er so I figured I might as well go ahead and join up.
What are you running today?
See above.
Where do you see your DC'ing activities in the next year or two?
Hopefully improved. I have added quite a bit of production lately, so I don't think there will be much new hardware in the next little bit. I will have to shut some down in the summer months as power gets really expensive, but will come back up in the fall.
Do these boxen have day jobs or are they dedicated folders?
Most of them have other jobs. My 3930K is my daily driver, the 2500k is a server for a SMB client of mine, the i7 920 is going to be the replacement for my C2D box that currently runs windows 2003 that is my web server, dns server, shares out my data via iSCSI to the linux box, and other misc stuff, and the i7 980 is the linux box that hosts my ZFS and hosts the iSCSI target for the windows server box. The other C2D, and misc boxes are mostly workstations at a client of mine as well.
How are these boxen configured? OS, client, etc?
All of them are running windows, except the i7 980, it runs Ubuntu so it can host my ZFS, which makes it an ideal box to run bigadv on (while I can with 12 threads). The i7 920 is currently running win 7 as a stability test to dial it in, but will be moved to server 2008 r2 in the next few days to take over all of the roles my C2D windows 2003 box currently has.
Have you been successful borging? If so, what kind of borging worked for you? (For example, friends, family, and/or work?)
Well, quite a bit actually. When I was in school I was able to run clients there no problem, and these days some of the little businesses I do network stuff for on the side don't mind me running the clients on their boxes. At previous jobs when I have had several desktops I would always put clients on them, but currently I only have a laptop, and it folds rarely as laptops are just not that great for this stuff, cooling, noise, heat, power, etc.
First off, tell us about you.
Where do you call home?
Salt Lake City, Utah (Or as some of us like to abbreviate, SL,UT)
What is your family situation?
Married in summer of '11, and our first kid is on the way!
What do you do for a living?
For the most part, I am a software engineer, but I sort of do anything/everything in the world of computers.
Does your forum name hold any significant meaning?
Actually, it does. I was born in Connecticut, and we used to have a sailboat and spend a lot of time on it. When we moved to Utah, my mom used to joke about getting the license plate "EX-CONN" and I always liked the name EX-TIDE (as in no longer around the tides of the ocean!) and it is never used anywhere I want to register so that's nice.
Did you ever post in the "Let's see your mug... " thread? Why or why not?
No, never knew about it.
What other hobbies or interests keep you busy?
I have a VW GTI VR6 that has a GT35r turbo on it.. I spend a pretty good amount of time screwing around with the car and/or carpc/stereo system crap. I built a custom carpc into the car along with a lot of custom stereo gear.
Tell us about your involvement in DC.
Lets see, I started SETI@HOME in the 90's, and when I was in middle and high school I worked with the teachers in the school and essentially was the sysadmin to varying degrees. When I was in high school I managed to borg almost every computer in the school (several hundred!) and ended up being well into the top 100 individual users in the seti rankings. In more modern times I switched to F@H as it seems like a much more worthwhile use of computing resources. It's kind of funny because only a few of the machines I have folding would probably add up to as much computing poweras ALL of the machines I had running seti! Currently, I am still working on getting into the top 100 in F@H
Who or what got you stated in DC projects? About when was it?
This would again be in the late 90's. Being a nerd I have also always been fairly interested in space and all that, and I remember a friend of mine (he had ISDN, which rocked back then!) well his dad ran seti on some of their machines. I saw it there ad then looked into what it was and was running it everywhere I could soon after.
Why do you participate?
For fun, for the science, and partly for the competition. For several years I folded (not on a team) without a passkey as I didnt care about the points or bonuses or whatnot. Only recently have I decided to join the team and become bonus eligible.
If DC'ing could find a cure for just one disease tomorrow, which one would it be and why?
Gee, I don't know. I would have to say it's a 50/50 between cancer and aids/hiv, as those would have the biggest impact on the world.
What projects have you contributed to? Any others you find interesting?
Mostly F@H and back in the day Seti@Home. A FEW BOINC projects here and there, but at this point I am 100% F@H.
What teams have you contributed to?
Just this one. Most of my DC history has been spent not on a team.
Why did you choose the Horde?
I have been reading this site for well over a decade and it is definitely the one I have a true allegiance to. I also am a fan of the different methodologies that Kyle uses in reviews, especially video card benches.
If your current project ends, which one will you move on to?
Something that is a good contribution to science, in my opinion. I am not interested in, for example, the prime number DC projects, and stuff like that.
Current level of production and how's it spread around?
Somewhere around 150K PPD. I have a few heavy hitters, my 3930K @ 4.8Ghz running SMP, a 4.4Ghz 2500K running SMP, and a 4.0Ghz i7 920 running SMP, and then an i7 980 running bigadv in linux. There are around 4-6 other machines that range from core 2 duo's, to phenom 1's, to amd 64 x2's and whatnot that also help out running smp.
Where do you see the [H]ard DC sub-forum in the near future?
Still going strong.
Long term?
Still going strong.
Any ideas on improving the [H]ard DC sub-forum, or suggestions or improvements for our Team?
Not at this point. I will be sure to post up anything I come up with though!
Tell us about your involvement.
Where did you begin?
I have always known about the team here, but just recently decided to join. I have always done my projects team-less, but I am a big [H]'er so I figured I might as well go ahead and join up.
What are you running today?
See above.
Where do you see your DC'ing activities in the next year or two?
Hopefully improved. I have added quite a bit of production lately, so I don't think there will be much new hardware in the next little bit. I will have to shut some down in the summer months as power gets really expensive, but will come back up in the fall.
Do these boxen have day jobs or are they dedicated folders?
Most of them have other jobs. My 3930K is my daily driver, the 2500k is a server for a SMB client of mine, the i7 920 is going to be the replacement for my C2D box that currently runs windows 2003 that is my web server, dns server, shares out my data via iSCSI to the linux box, and other misc stuff, and the i7 980 is the linux box that hosts my ZFS and hosts the iSCSI target for the windows server box. The other C2D, and misc boxes are mostly workstations at a client of mine as well.
How are these boxen configured? OS, client, etc?
All of them are running windows, except the i7 980, it runs Ubuntu so it can host my ZFS, which makes it an ideal box to run bigadv on (while I can with 12 threads). The i7 920 is currently running win 7 as a stability test to dial it in, but will be moved to server 2008 r2 in the next few days to take over all of the roles my C2D windows 2003 box currently has.
Have you been successful borging? If so, what kind of borging worked for you? (For example, friends, family, and/or work?)
Well, quite a bit actually. When I was in school I was able to run clients there no problem, and these days some of the little businesses I do network stuff for on the side don't mind me running the clients on their boxes. At previous jobs when I have had several desktops I would always put clients on them, but currently I only have a laptop, and it folds rarely as laptops are just not that great for this stuff, cooling, noise, heat, power, etc.