Join the SatelliteGuys Folding@Home Team!

[Foxbat]

I was going to suggest using the Console/Service version. That's what I have running on my HP that I lug between home and work. It starts up when I boot, shuts down if I disconnect the AC (no folding under battery is set) and runs in the background at idle priority. (It's a good thing this is a hyper-threaded P4 because the crud that we have to run as part of the IT infrastructure is pretty ugly.)

Today was not a good day for me. First, there was the whole Mac crashing and I forgot my wallet & mobile when I left for work. I checked on the status of my HP and how it was Folding and found that it was not able to grab a WU before I left home (no access through the firewalls at work) so there's another loss of computing time. Then, halfway through the afternoon, my HP decides that it wants to emulate my home Mac and blue-screens (some device driver issue, says Microsoft.) It hasn't BSoD'd since last year. Maybe the folding is getting to it...

Before I left work, I had to reboot one of my servers because a process wouldn't shut down properly. It took the reboot, then sat there for 25 minutes, totally unresponsive. I finally had to hold the power button in for twenty seconds and force a hard power cycle. Of course, it came back up, all happy-happy...

Ever had one of those days?

 

[SatinKzo]

Foxbat, man, I share the feeling of when you have to hard-boot a server. Man, sometimes those drives just don't wanna spin back up. I don't mind reboots, but a hard shutdown is nerve racking at times.

Hey, your location is Michiana, so I assume northern indiana or sw lower michigan, where you from?

Edit:

Hey I just got some AWESOME news for myself and for the folding team.

A former co-worker called me and he won a PC that he wants to GIVE TO ME this weekend.

He won a system with the following specs

Abit KN9 SLi mainboard
AMD 64 X2 5400+
4 gig DDR2 PC2-6400
dual 250gig sata drives
600w power supply

From what I gather, it's a barebones system from Tigerdirect with some things added.
Here's the link to what I think he won
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3074349&CatId=1916
then some stuff was added on as this was a Safety price giveaway from his workplace and the total prize values were $500 thru $1000 depending on drawing.

Either way pretty cool and I tried to talk him out of giving it away as it's a nice system for free, but he said he had no need for it and since I hauled his butt across the state when he moved that he felt he owed me.

Looks like I might need to add my own vid cards (it is SLi afterall) and maybe some cooling fans to the CPU and case. Not sure what all it has yet as he won't receive it until tomorrow, but either way, I can swing some money if I get all that for free.

Before you ask, yeah, I'll be puting F@H on it for Team Satguys. I'm geeked to see how this thing folds compared to my current systems

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I was going to suggest using the Console/Service version. That's what I have running on my HP that I lug between home and work. It starts up when I boot, shuts down if I disconnect the AC (no folding under battery is set) and runs in the background at idle priority. (It's a good thing this is a hyper-threaded P4 because the crud that we have to run as part of the IT infrastructure is pretty ugly.)

Today was not a good day for me. First, there was the whole Mac crashing and I forgot my wallet & mobile when I left for work. I checked on the status of my HP and how it was Folding and found that it was not able to grab a WU before I left home (no access through the firewalls at work) so there's another loss of computing time. Then, halfway through the afternoon, my HP decides that it wants to emulate my home Mac and blue-screens (some device driver issue, says Microsoft.) It hasn't BSoD'd since last year. Maybe the folding is getting to it...

Before I left work, I had to reboot one of my servers because a process wouldn't shut down properly. It took the reboot, then sat there for 25 minutes, totally unresponsive. I finally had to hold the power button in for twenty seconds and force a hard power cycle. Of course, it came back up, all happy-happy...

Ever had one of those days?

I had one of those days, but it wasn't related to the computer. My wife calls - she has a tire that is flat on her CRV. I tell her to put air in it, and then bring it to the tire shop. I figured she had a bad valve. WRONG. She had a big wood screw in the sidewall. Tire was completely ruined. $593 later... all was fine. 4 new tires. At least I could pay it with cash. I planned on putting $650 into savings this month; I guess I'll put $50.

But I am glad your server booted. It is scary. Not quite as bad as restarting the computer on Apollo 13, but always nerve-wracking

 

[SatinKzo]

Rocky, you were on Apollo 13?

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Rocky, you were on Apollo 13?

LOL. It just came to my mind - the image of them cold-starting that computer, with it all icy. Kevin Bacon had that look of fear down perfectly.

 

[Foxbat]

WRONG. She had a big wood screw in the sidewall. Tire was completely ruined. $593 later... all was fine. 4 new tires.

That's one thing I dislike about radial tires... Puncture the tread, put a plug in it for $15; puncture the sidewall and it's game over.

It's too bad you didn't have the luxury of being able to shop around for replacement tires; dropping almost $600 on tires is something I used to do when I was single. Now, I'm fortunate to live scant miles away from The Tire Rack. Here's what they offer for your wife's ute: Tires sorted by Price for 2004 Honda CR-V. (I'm assuming the previous generation CR-V which yields the 205/70-15 tire size.) It looks like the Bridgestone Dueler H/L Alenza is a favorite of those surveyed.

Sorry to hear about your bad day. I was afraid to touch anything tonight! Here's to a better tomorrow!

 

[rockymtnhigh]

That's one thing I dislike about radial tires... Puncture the tread, put a plug in it for $15; puncture the sidewall and it's game over.

It's too bad you didn't have the luxury of being able to shop around for replacement tires; dropping almost $600 on tires is something I used to do when I was single. Now, I'm fortunate to live scant miles away from The Tire Rack. Here's what they offer for your wife's ute: Tires sorted by Price for 2004 Honda CR-V. (I'm assuming the previous generation CR-V which yields the 205/70-15 tire size.)

Sorry to hear about your bad day. I was afraid to touch anything tonight! Here's to a better tomorrow!

Geez, those prices make it even worse. But you live in the heavily populated mid-west. I have limited options (although I am sure if there was more time today (and Julie had Nick with her - he's been sick with a ear infection most of the week - so there was not the time to really search). And its even worse since Julie didn't see what the problem was (although I am hard-pressed to understand how she didn't see the screw) until she was at the garage.

Oh well!

 

[Foxbat]

Tire Rack will deliver to a service location near you to have them mounted & balanced, but I've not had to make use of that facet of their service. Punching in the Zip Code for your location, it looks like installation (Big O) would be another $150 on top of tires + $45 shipping. The Big O Tire in Delta charges $10/less per tire for mounting, but Tire Rack says it 36 miles away.

So, I guess you don't have to feel too bad about what you paid after all. And now, back to folding...

 

[Foxbat]

I was supposed to take today off as some comp time from work and do more painting. However...

I go downstairs this morning to get breakfast and find my wife has emptied all the plates, dishes, and glasses from the cabinet just to the left of the kitchen sink. I see that it is hanging rather precariously by I'm not sure what. With her help, we get the doors off and the cabinet off the wall. Some screws were Phillips and some were square-head, so I had to hunt around for a square-head driver. I broke out the Makita at this point. F$*&%@ particle board and fiberboard on the back and sides. The only "real wood" is the front carcase, the rest is processed wood product. It was also held together with staples, which pulled right out, only being a 1/4" long. This cabinet had lasted 20 years, but I'm looking at it thinking "how did it stay up with only three screws?"

So, now we are looking at starting a kitchen remodeling project that wasn't on the radar until next year or later. The particle board is shot, and I broached the idea of having her dad re-build the frame and shelves out of real wood, reusing the front, but I think the blood is in the water and she's thinking "new kitchen" new cabinets, new floors, new breakfast nook, new... Well, you get the idea.

Oh, the Mac completed another WU this AM. Looks like our points production has leveled a it. We also got passed by "PS3 - Clan Nexus" because they are zooming along at almost 10,000 ppd more than we've been going lately. The good news? SatelliteGuys.US should be in the top 1,000 by midnight, barring any unforeseen drop off in points production! We're almost to 500,000 points and 1,500 Work Units as well!

 

[SatinKzo]

My systems are almost all doing Big WU's now, so my points are not as frequent, but hopefully more plentiful when I do update.

I got my new system today from my friend (see earlier post) and as soon as I get an OS on it and running, F@H is going on it, hopefully it can produce some nice numbers

 

[Foxbat]

Man, this is like breaking through the sound barrier... It seems like we've been stuck in the 1,000s for days now. Depending on when you look, we're either in 1,006th place or 1,009th place.

Almost there.... (stay on target) ...almost there...

Also, even thought we have 58 Team Members, it looks like 21 people have not gotten credited for any WUs this month. I hope it's becasue they have big, honking WUs underway...

 

[tonyp56]

Foxbat,

You've probably been asked this, but how in the world have you gotten so many points. You've done 48 WU's, and your 17,296 pts ahead of Gbjbany who is number 2, whom has 54 WU's. Not to even mention Scott, who has fallen down to the number 4 spot. 24,898 pts behind you with 119 WU's. (Scott has done about 2.5 more WU's than you, but he's more or less 25,000 points behind.)

I'm just curious of what your secret is. Not that I'm looking to be number one, I would just like to get more points. My wife's Dual Core P4 I know would (according to info here) run faster on SMP client. However, wifes computer isn't set up with password, and unable to set up SMP (already tried). Don't really want to have to change settings.

And my computer, I tried running console version, but couldn't get it to load at startup, even though I configured it to do so. Couldn't really figure it out, so went back to previous, Windows version.

And now it shows us at 1011 place. Got to remember, as we gain more points, other teams gain points too.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Its because Roland (aka Foxbat) is THE MAN. He is our inspiration when it comes to folding.

 

[Foxbat]

Thanks, we does our parts...

I could go all Mac Fan Boy here and claim some processing superiority, but I think it has to be that the SMP client was designed for the Two Dual Core Xeon's that are in the Mac Pro. Granted, other manufacturers have Quad cores, and now there are single chip Quad core boxes available. If you can run the Linux SMP client on such a box, I think you'd get more PPD.

Your wife's Dual Core, is it yours or her work's PC? I ask because if you're running into password issues (Vista?) then maybe you could download the OverKloptix (sp?) that is basically a bootable Linux OS on a CD-ROM with the current Linux Folding Clients on it. Some storage space (thumb drive, perhaps?) or a folder on the disk and you could boot into that whenever you wanted to fold.

There are some 1,760 point work units for the SMP core, but I've never seen one on my machine. I think Sam Patterson got a couple of those. My Mac Pro keeps on getting WUs that are worth 1,440 points. I run two instances of the SMP client because one instance leaves my machine with about 30% idle time. Two instances increases utilization up to 97% but slows my completion rate from 1.2 WU/Day to .75 WU/Day. However, since I'm running two copies, that works out to 1.5 WU/Day and if I'm lucky, they complete about every 16 hours or so.

So, as long as the Mac Intel SMP client is in beta and Standford keeps on handing out the juicy 1,440 point assignments, I ought to keep on running away out front. The HP I run sort of smooths out the hiccups in the SMP client when it stops folding because of queue corruption or other warts in the beta.

Oh, and everyone should run out and get their kids a Sony Playstation 3. Then tell them they can't play with it because you're going to Fold with it!

 

[SatinKzo]

Overclockix works well, I run it on one machine myself. I also am running Mandriva Move (another bootable CD, etc Distro). I am getting better performance from the mandriva machine than the overclockix.

I was all ready to fire up my new machine tonight (AMD 64 X2 5400 see earlier post), but got everything unboxed and was missing the RAM. Maybe tomorrow it'll arrive and I can get things installed and running.

 

[gbjbany]

TonyP56

The secret is the SMP client. It has it's issues though i have to restart it about every 3rd or 4th WU.
I run about 1 WU per day on my Dual core, each is worth normally 1535 or 1760 (wu 2610) points. My cpu is 100% but i still do other things without any hassles, one catch with SMP WU's they have to be done in 3 or 4 days.

 

[stone phillips420]

told ya so
now were rated 1,000
a day earlier than foxbat thought
lets keep truckin

 

[Foxbat]

It's official! SatelliteGuys.US is one of the top 1,000 Folding Teams!!!
:up:up:up

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Congratulations everybody. Now we need to double the size of the team...

 

[Foxbat]

told ya so
now were rated 1,000
a day earlier than foxbat thought
lets keep truckin

Well, since most of the tracking sites use UTC, it has been Friday for a couple of hours. So, technically, it is "Friday"...

Also, we had a heck of a Folding Day, over 21,000 points so far.:up :up :up