Introduce yourself!

[NoahJ]

Hello everyone.  I am continuing to try to bring our team together so that we can know who it is that we work with in order to be the #1 Mac team overall.  In the spirit of this I am starting this thread.

What I am asking is who are you and what do you do?  You can be as specific or vague as you like.  I would appreciate it if only those who have contributed to the team would respond.  I will start.

My name is Noah and I work in IT at a large truck manufacturing comapany.  It is a microsoft shop, but I have talked a few of the people into using Macs.  

I currently host these forums, and the team homepage on my Powermac at home.  I am 27 years old and have done many distributed networking projects before I landed at Folding@Home.  I enjoy helping people work through technical issues as much as I am able and also like nothing more than a good competition.  If I were not the #1 folder on the team I would be competing with whoever was ahead of me to see if I can beat them, or the person behind me to see if I can stay ahead.  What about you?  

[ohairy1]

I'm Bob.  Educated as a physicist but I spent my career with the title "Senior Materials Technologist" in the advanced materials engineering labs of one of the major gas turbine engine makers.  I worked for their Florida division which until they slowly began shutting it down in the late 90s, was largely responsible for military engines.  I basically became an applied/experimental physicist solving high temp materials problems.

Since my early retirement at 55, I've done some work as an Apple Rep and DemoDays Rep, and have a small consulting company helping people keep their Macs in good shape.

I don't get into the competition too much because it's not skill, but the speed and number of CPUs that does the trick here. I fold what I can with CPUs I have and I try to encourage others to help as well, whether they're on our team or not.  But I don't have the $ or interest in buying boxes simply to increase my points per day.  Actually at this point with Tinker being so poorly optimized for the Macs, I would probably buy Athlons, for the competition.  I am hoping that Gromacs will give us a big improvement for G3s as well as for G4s/AltiVec.

I also saw a rumor this week that suggested that Jobs will announce not only 10.3/Panther at WWDC, but that Panther will be 64 Bit to take advantage of a new PowerMac based on the 64 bit IBM 970.  I hope there's some truth to that!

I also publish data from my Macs in the Mac OS X forum, and have collated/graphed the benchmark data people have sent in, from Adam Beberg's benchmark routine.  It's easy to run, and we could use data for many more machines to fill some gaps.  You'll find all that here:
F@H OS X Forum

[ken]

Hi Bob, and all folders

My name is Ken, I'm from Southern California, "Orange County". (A home to "Tech" as well as "Micky Mouse") Have had the opportunity to travel the world some. (Europe as well as Asia) My professional life has been committed to being a photographer. (committed being the key word) For the sake of it I'll say that I'm 39. (But I've been 39 for several years now) My commercial use of macs go back to the Quadra. (Was a big step up from the Apple 2) Its been exciting watching the MACs progress in processing prowess and the intergration of usefull / helpfull Apps.

I've been at this folding thing for a little over a year now.
My reason, I guess, it just can't be a bad thing and
at the days end if this research ends up for the good,
I'll feel I've done somthing totally unselfish and beneficial for mankind.
All in the efforts of just leaving this "ol' dog" of a computer on
and running a "F @ H" client application.

Bob Mentioned "I fold what I can with CPUs I have and I try to encourage others to help as well, whether they're on our team or not."

Now, that is in the spirit of it all -- Cool

Found Bob's link to be interesting. Went ahead and did the test, hope it helps.
(Below is a quick link to his string)
 

I also publish data from my Macs in the Mac OS X forum, you can contribute and it isn't hard to do.  With this method you only need a G3 or G4 Mac, including laptops, running OS 10.1.X or higher.
You do NOT have to install the Developer Tools.
To help forum.folding-community

Hope there's some truth to Processors rumors!

Keep on Folding

[Coffey.m]

Hi All

I'm a 27 y.o. pharmacist from Syracuse, NY and recent "switcher".  I have a dual 1 ghz MDD doing the main grunt work (eventhough folding only using one proc) but I have a gaming comp running a p4 2.6 ghz folding sometimes as well (hmm, and suddenly my score shot up...weird).  Anyway OS X beats windows anyday so I'm folding in this team...

Must pass team 2ch and Germany!
Lets get folding guys!!

Coffey.m

[NoahJ]

Welcome Coffey.m!  I believe tomorrow we shall get some interesting news on Gromacs for OS X.  I will keep you all posted.  

[ken]

Hi Coffey.M, See you've been plugging away, currently at 1,604 points with 70 units completed, GREAT. Heres to a warm welcome and keep up the work.

Also a hope the New Things coming down the pipe will sling shot us (the Team) along to higher scores.

Hope to hear more from you in the Forum.

[Macaholic]

Christian here.  I'm a 33 year-old dentist.  I've used Macs in nearly every incarnation since 1987 (still have my Color Classic).  Computers and vintage autos are my passions.  I've been a SETI cruncher for almost three years (nearly 26,000 WU) and have decided to move on to a more "earthly" cause.  I hope to see the community grow and contribute.  Keep on folding!  

[ken]

Hi Christian, glad to see you move to a "earthly" cause, although your scores are in the stratosphere.
Keep "drilling" away.

[Macaholic]

5,200+ points in a little less than 7 weeks is not too bad.  Watch out Noah!  Let's hope GROMACS will help boost the Mac numbers.

[NoahJ]

Good, it is nice to have someone else gunning for me.  I would not want to become too relaxed with my lead.  

COME AND GET ME!!!