Welcome to PoppaGeek's 

Name: Scott

Forum name: [XC] Serlv

Occupation - I am a government employee; I've worked over 26 years for the USPS as a blue collar worker. I work in the main mail processing facility and, primarily, drive a fork lift, moving large quantities of mail to where it is needed. Not very intellectually challenging, but I'm good at what I do. I know I am very much counted on and respected.

I live in "the Southwest", Las Vegas, Nevada to be exact. Las Vegas is about 270 miles from the Pacific Ocean ( LA, CA ). It is a desert environment; from mid-May to mid-September I'd say we average well over 100 degrees, Fahrenheit. Winters are usually 40-50 degrees (F). 
AC is a must, really, to live here; "crunching" adds significantly to that requirement. It is hard enough to keep things cool when you're only dealing with external heat. Add to that heat sources inside the house ( i.e. overclocked computers... ) and the cost of AC really gets heavy. This is the first time in over nine years that I haven't had to run AC in the winter! I'm "only" running five or six rigs, instead of the eighteen (+) rigs I used to run.

what got ya into crunching? - short answer, my Dad's Lung Cancer and, ultimately his death from that. 
I was always involved in computer enthusiast and help forums. I was a member of, first, pcnineoneone.com and then bitbendertech.net. These two forums ran, as a team, the distributed computing project called United Devices, an earlier program looking for new ways to treat, and/or, eradicate, Cancer. 

I got involved once my Dad fell ill, and this happened to coincide with my going to school to learn computer networking. I "needed" a couple more computers to set-up a networking lab, at home, so I used that to justify building a few more rigs. Naturally, one of the first apps I installed on any new rig was whatever DC project I was running at the time. 

There is a desire, on my part, to make a difference. That is what, initially, got me involved. It was like "oh my God, this disease sucks! What can I do?' This semi-evolved into "what more can I do?". There is also a competitive aspect, between different forums teams. Great rivalries sprung up, with each forum's teams seeing who could outproduce the other team's body of work. Within teams, oftentimes, there is intra-team strivings. People can sometimes get carried away striving to contribute more and more. This oftentimes brings other, new team members in, and can have a snowball effect. I have often enjoyed this teambuilding and have actively been involved in encouraging new members and urging team members to strive for more. I did this at a few sites before I landed at xtemesystems, and continued once I made XS my full time home. This may be my greatest strength as a cruncher, though I've tapered off some in the last year or so as various life circumstances intruded into my time and life.

why you still crunch? - cause I believe in the worth of it all. Also, I want to contribute. I like being a part of this team. Though I can't contribute with the amount of rigs I used to I still want to be part of this team's effort.

Is it hobby, personal reasons or both? - definitely both. My Dad's death from cancer was the initial, driving force, but I like the camaraderie, joint striving, good will and "drivenness' of being on such a focused team. 

a little about your hardware  - Well, needless to say, my hardware has changed over the years. At one point I used to run 25 highly overclocked, single core Athlon XP rigs. Then it became "an army" of Athlon X2's and Opty 1xx's ( with a few dual processor Xeon rigs thrown in for good measure ). Shortly before I became ill last summer, my "farm" consisted of, exclusively, Intel quad cores. I was running a few "octocores" ( dual quads... ), and a whole bunch of Q6600's and a couple of newer quads ( two Q9550's and one i7 920 ).

Currently, I am running two i7 920 rigs ( which I need help overclocking!... ), two q6600 rigs, one Q9550 rig and a dual Harpertown ( that has been down for a few weeks npw,  ). I also have a few quad rigs placed with friends, kind of on perma-loan ( just don't sell 'em, kind of deals )

 I'm exclusively interested in distributing computing projects that deal with medical issues, mainly cancer. Although the concept of little green men is interesting, I'd rather devote spare CPU cycles to medical research.

I've run, in order, United Devices ( with pcnineoneone and bitbendertech ). FaD ( FindaDrug...) ( with www.xtremepccentral.com ) and then, finally, D2OL, Rosetta and WCG here with xtremesystems. I also ran a little bit of F@H, both here and before here, but not enough to really speak of.

NOTE from PoppaGeek: Scott recently won a nasty fight with cancer and is now back to work. 

Name: Bryce
Occupation: Business owner
Location: Saskatchewan, Canada

What got me into crunching: they had a membership drive on another forum that I used to visit so I decided to join up.

Why you still crunch: I enjoy the fact that I can combine my passion for computers, cars and "Macgyver-ing" stuff to work and use it to advance medical research. I find it so much more fulfilling and rewarding than simply donating money to charity.

Is it hobby, personal reasons or both: mostly a hobby. I don't crunch for any specific reason or cause.

Hardware:
Personal rigs
1 Intel Q3QP ES 6 core @ 4200MHz on water 
1 Intel Q2WV ES 6 core @ 3600MHz on air 
Farm:
5 Intel i7 920's @ 4000-4200MHz on water
3 Intel Q6600's @ 3600MHz on water

Pics:

Personal rig on water

 Farm with mass water cooling:

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Name: Robert Smura
Occupation: IT Manager
Location: Rochester, NY

What got you started in DC: the idea of distributed computing first got me into crunching. The first app I used was... damn, can't remember the name but it's icon was a cow head with horns

What keeps you crunching: I still crunch because I hate unused clock cycles. Also, I firmly believe that we can make a HUGE impact on society and our understanding of the physical world by attacking these problems with shear force.

Is DC Hobby or personal: It's really for personal resons that I crunch. I, like everyone else on Earth, know of people affected by or afflicted with Cancer, Aids, Malaria, and many other diseases. I also have a deep desire to help further mankinds understanding of things like physics and other sciences.

Hardware:
My hardware consists of desktop machines that are in my place of work. I install the BOINC client on the machines and control / monitor them remotely with BOINC VIEW. When my users aren't using their clock cycles, their computers are solving the problems of the world.

Name:  Douglas
occupation:  District Field Service Manager
area of world ya live in: Chi town
what got ya into crunching:  Movieman & self
why you still crunch: Help medical science improve upon the human condition
is it hobby, personal reasons or both: Hobby, personal (family related illness & passion to help advance mankind
a little about your hardware: Mostly i-860's and Q6600's, i-920 and such...GPU's range from 8800GT's to GTX275 and everything in between (and I really mean everything).

Hardware:

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First name: Jaime

occupation: Owner of a small software development company

area of world ya live in: Israel

what got ya into crunching: liked the idea when first stumbled upon it in UD, then came to XS to be in the first D2OL team, then Rosetta (where i went up to number 9 worldwide at the time), then WCG. Did some F@H in between as well. I also have in the family a scientist that specializes in protein folding, and when i first showed him what we do his jaw dropped, and confirmed *this is the way to go* in order to find cures.

why you still crunch,is it hobby, personal reasons or both: i like to excel in everything i do, i generally invest all my knowledge and perseverance in everything in life, and the good cause involved here is an even stronger catalyst. Of course, i like the points system as well, which will push many of use over the limits time and time again, and last but not least, i am a gadget freak, i love hardware and even more all the extreme stuff we deal with @ XS every day.

a little about your hardware and any links to pics of it: pics will come later. Have at work some old core2duos (many of which got "sick" lately that's why my production was down lately, but will be back to normal very soon ), and at home have one dual harper 5492, and i7 965 Extreme, 2 Q9400 and 2 Q6600...ah forgot my little Libby's (my 2 years old daughter) E8400 crunching at full speed

Name: Joschi

Forum name: jcool

WCG name: therealjcool

Age: 23 (born 1986)

Occupation: Business owner. I run a small company specialized in building high end personal computers. It is both my passion and my job to see this industry progressing as fast as it is, and being in this field of work means I usually get to be one of the first people to play with the latest & greatest tech.

Location: Stuttgart, Germany

What got me into crunching: It's Dave's fault!!! 
I only started crunching in 2008, and I wish I had known about it sooner.
Before that, I was running SETI@Home (yeah, back when I was little and still believed in green men from Mars)

Is it hobby, personal reasons or both: Probably both. I crunch for WCG because I believe we can beat this terrible disease that is cancer. Sometime, somehow - and with the help of crunchers like me, rather sooner than later.
I also crunch because I have seen too many people around me pass away too early in their lives. Two years ago, I nearly lost my father to cancer. I plan to do anything and everything that I can to help rid our planet of this global monster.
And of course, I enjoy running, building, playing with, and re-building all those fabulous machines around me!

Hardware:
Changes a lot.

Pictures of my farm:

16-Cores: Quad Opteron 8347HE - 30 Ghz
12-Cores: Dual Westmere-EP X5650 - 35 Ghz w/o HT
Octacores: Dual Gainestown X5570 | Dual Harpertown X5450 - 55 Ghz w/o HT
Hexacores: Intel Xeon X5660 | Intel Xeon L5640 - 50 Ghz w/o HT
Quadcores: w3520 | Core i7 920 | Core 2 Q9550 | Dual Sossaman (Yonah Xeon) - 54 Ghz w/o HT
 

Note: In daily output or PPD Jcool is #3 on the XS team. His PPD averages over 270,000 points per day.

Name: Bob H.
DC name: "123bob" on the XS team and "123bob_TR" on TechReaction's team.
Age: 48
Occupation: Staff Electrical Engineer
Location: Oregon
Why crunch: I'm about cancer cures. I have lost a lot of family and friends to various types of cancer. It sucks to watch loved ones waste away from this disease. The worst part is standing there totally helpless knowing the person is going to die and nothing you can do will stop it. I have contributed to the American Cancer Society before, without knowing what my money was going for. With crunching, I have control of the money spent and have a direct view into what is being produced by it.
I must admit crunching has become somewhat addicting since new machines have a way of sneaking in.  Currently, I run a crunching "farm" with 18 quad core CPUs and 15 260-216 GPUs on Team XS. I also started up a small team on TechReaction and run one quad there. For projects, I run World Community Grid (WCG), GPUGrid, and do some Folding@Home.
So, if you want to join us, come on by. If you're intimidated by the size of the XS team, join us at Tech Reaction. We could use the help. However, really, there is no reason to be intimidated by either team. Some of the best folks you want to meet are there. We regularly send hardware around to each other to help out in getting things running. This has probably happened at least 30 times in the past six months that I'm aware of. 
We do not treat people like idiots. I was told once that "No question is dumb". If you make the commitment to help cure some of the diseases we work on, you already have our utmost respect....

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Name Jaco

DC Name Jaco_XS
Age : 35 (born 1975)
Occupation : IT system admin
Location : Leuven , Belgium

What got me started : I first got into distributed computing in 2001, when a friend
introduced me to Seti@home. At that time I had a pre- built Pentium3 500Mhz pc.
Not much later I built my first computer with an Athlon XP 2000+ cpu.
Later on I switched to Folding@home and Rosetta@home (around 2005).
Since august 2006 I'm running world Community Grid exclusively.

Why still crunching ?
I want to help medical science and find cures for cancer and other diseases.
WCG does exactly that , with projects which focuses on cancer , aids , muscular dystrophy and Dengue viri.
I strongly believe the WCG projects are benficial to medical science ... todays quadcore and hexcore cpu's are
very powerful and can do a tremendous amount of calculations (the Intel 980X is a beast :-))

is it hobby, personal reasons or both?
The computer hardware is a hobby ... I enjoy building computers , upgrade components ,
install watercooling etc. WCG is the best way I can make use of my cpu power.
Electricity costs are quite high here , so I'm always looking for ways to make it a little 'greener' .
My computers are overclocked , but always moderately with an eye on the
kill-a-watt device. Total power consumption is ~930w now ,my current goal is to bring it down below 900w :-)


hardware :
Intel 980X 6core @ 4100Mhz (watercooled)
Intel Q3QS ES 6 core @ 3400Mhz (watercooled)
Xeon W3520 @ 3900Mhz (aircooled)
Intel L5640 6core @ 3700Mhz (aircooled)

My name is Mike.I'm 50 years old. My lovely wife Donna and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last November 19th. We have two sons.
Ryan is in the US army and is in Kuwait.Goes to Iraq in 5 days.
Neil graduates from HS this Saturday and will be attending Missouri State University this fall.

We live in the St. Louis area. I am a carpenter. My favorite thing to do is fishing.I will fish in any weather or conditions any time.If I could put crunchers on my boat I would.

I don't have a personal stake in crunching except for the hope that it will help my children and future grandchildren and all others have better lives in the future.

Mike

Name:  Stoneageman

Occupation:  Instrument artificer

Area of world you live in: United Kingdom

What got you into crunching:  Easynews .com rewards scheme introduced me to crunching way back in 2002.

Why you still crunch: To accelerate the finding of cures for a variety of illnesses.

Is it hobby, personal reasons or both: My mother succumbed to pancreatic cancer after a grueling 18 months when I was 21 (30 yrs ago). Several work colleagues have also been struck by cancer. I get frustrated that after so much money has been given to cancer organisations, we are still along way from getting it beat. I believe doing computer simulations are our best chance yet, especially using the processing power of graphics cards, hence my involvement with GPUgrid.

A little about your hardware: Cpu's are i7's mostly, three hexes and a quad. Gpu's are Nvidia 260's 275's and 295's.

Name:  Tyler 

Occupation: Industrial Designer

Area of world you live in: US, FL, Palm Beach County

What got you into crunching: XS.org; I knew what distributed computing was because I knew of SETI@H but never knew of all the other great DC projects available. At XS I would see all the DC sigs that members had in all the sub-forums. The sigs led me to investigate DC and find WCG and the XS team. I always keep a sig or some info about DC in my sigs now because it might inspire others to find a use for all these computers we build. 

Why you still crunch: Crunching is great; we spend a lot of resources to build our computers, crunching allows our hobby to contribute back to society in a meaningful way.

Is it hobby, personal reasons or both: Hobby mostly but fighting deseases that affect us all is always personal. 

farm: consist of 15 mass water cooled computers plus a few other rigs. I never would of known how to water cool so many computers had I not been inspired by the photos of others farms from crunchers like Fallwind, 123bob, and Naja sharing their build logs and photos I've also tried to keep the sharing tradition going so other crunchers can benefit from the knowledge.

Build Log of farm