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Landshark?

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I hit him up on facebook, will update here if I hear from him. Status says he's busy and has a stack of movies from Netflix to watch! :beer::beer:
 
CW tracked me down from facebook.... :p

I'm all good and still kicking..... just RL and work have been really busy for me (partly due to the holiday season...). however, I do have a bad news for you guys/gals.....

I've decided to shut down 2x TriGPU+QuadSMP dedicated folder in my house this past week thus my production is being down a lot! mainly b/c the up keeping cost of folding is starting to get on my nerves (my house is gas heat, with no a/c running at all last month, my power bill is still over $300 for my regular size townhouse!! in summer, I was hitting $600 range!! :eek: ), the hardware is cheap, at least when compare to my other hobbies; however, the up keeping cost is quite a lot (I've calculated at least $150-200+/month!!). plus with 30mills approaching soon, I really don't have much, if any, goals left besides hoping one day we can find a cure! therefore, I finally decided to step back and take a break after all these years and free up some of my time and funding. don't worry, I'm NOT quitting folding at all!! I'm still love folding, still want to help to find the cure, and will still be folding along, but just not as "insane" as before that's all!

plus my fiance is getting "worried" with all my expensive hobbies (home theater, a/v equipments, htpc, car, etc.), so I guess I'll have to prioritize and shift the funding around for my other hobbies. and just spent a couple-Ks for a new sound system for the living room really wouldn't help too! (btw, I'll be selling off those two TriGPU folder to help fund my new subwoofer for the living room, anyone wanna help? :p )

I'm still around, and will still be your resident sharky moderator, and will still bringing in the brews, and will still helping the team in whatever way I can, and most important, will still be your wingman and folding along with you all! but I won't be competing for the Top 5 anymore (at least for the moment....)! who knows? may be one day, I'll challenge the almighty ChasR again! :D

foldon.gif
 
Definately glad to hear that you are ok. :) And I understand about having to cut back on some of the expensive hobbies.

But it feels damn weird to be in the #4 spot....and I still have another 9800 GX2 that will be going into production on Monday...

I'm guessing that Wicked Pixie is cutting back some too. :(

Good to know you are still going to be around! :beer:
 
Yeah, just because you cut back on folding doesn't mean you have to cut back on forum-ing. ;)
Forums are free, heh.
 
Glad to see that you're still with us, Gary! :welcome:

I share all the concerns you mentioned, 'tis a shame that such an important endeavor be curtailed for economic and/or domestic reasons.

We'll stil get-em-folded! :attn:
 
Well as long as your still folding there's nothing wrong with that. On a side note if the price/specs is right I might just try and put aside some money for one of your tri-gpu quad rigs. Might as well keep em in the folding family.
 
But it feels damn weird to be in the #4 spot....and I still have another 9800 GX2 that will be going into production on Monday...

I'm guessing that Wicked Pixie is cutting back some too. :(

Good to know you are still going to be around! :beer:

I know right... I checked the stats this morning to find myself in the #5 spot. :) However, this is not how I wanted to get there. :(

I'll try and see what I can dig up on Pixie... I've heard similar concerns from her in the past.

Hear... Hear... glad to know you're still with us LS! :beer:
 
With all that moeny being spent you might as well start generating your own power. Put some of the money you would have spent on power from the grid in to a wind farm. If you over produce power it could be fed back to the grid and start making you money!
 
With all that moeny being spent you might as well start generating your own power.

Seriously, with all this folding, I'd be inclined to think we can use the heat to our advantage. There has to be a way to convert all that 60-70C heat to electricity. All we would need is a few things. First setup a massive water cooling setup, but instead of water find something with a lower boiling temp. Then we can have a gas running through the entire thing, from there gasses expand, so the more you are running the hotter and faster the gas is going, then simply put in a turbine and watch the power be generated, then ontop have some radiators cooling it down again, and the liquid flows back down to the CPU to get hot then the GPU to be super heated again!

I bet we could design this whole thing without even a pump! If only I had not sold my radiator I'd be all over figuring this out, but I've sold my water cooling stuff..
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_engine

This is an idea i had, mostly i was planning on something that would utilize the differences between ground temperature and air temperature. In the winter it gets very cold here, -30 and -40 are common, and the sterling engine is designed to work with low amounts of thermal defferential between hot and cold sources with great effeciency.

The design can be fairly simple, you need a cylinder that has an insulated seperation between a hot and cold side of the cylinder with a piston in the middle. When the hot side warms up, the gas inside expands and drives the piston toward the cold side, once the piston makes it past the insulation toward the cold side, the gas inside would cool, and the loss of pressure forces the piston back, and the cycle repeats, heat/expand/cool/compress. They're not very high rpm, but they provide alot of torque, so it would probably require some set of gearing in order to gear up to something that can make power.

The smallest example of this that i seen really quite small, and all it took was the temperature difference between the heat in your hand, and room temperature to turn it over, not that it would have output much, but it just goes to show the small temperature difference necessary to make it move. And with the temperature a pc puts out, especially with a crap load of video cards stuck in it, its not hard to imagine that you could probably output a nice bit of power from one of these.
 
well, believe it or not, I've been running DC (distributed computing) projectors for about 10 years non stop now!! I started running SETI back in Jan. 1999! back then, I remember I was still living w/ my parents, and have about 6-8 rigs inside my room with most of them stuffed under my bed :p , climb up the ladder to the top, then Folding, keep on climbing again, blah blah blah.....

I think after all these years, it's about time for me to take a break, step back and relax a little. you know, it is a weird feeling that I don't keep looking at the EOC page every 3 hours, not check on Fahmon, etc.

but again, I'm just taking a little vacation time only! I'm sure I'll beeeee baaaaack before you know it....!! :cool:

Yeah, just because you cut back on folding doesn't mean you have to cut back on forum-ing. ;)
Forums are free, heh.
yes, I'm still "forum-ing", but spent most of my little free time over at avsforum lately.... :p

Well as long as your still folding there's nothing wrong with that. On a side note if the price/specs is right I might just try and put aside some money for one of your tri-gpu quad rigs. Might as well keep em in the folding family.
I sure would love to keep those rigs w/in the folding family too! I'll try to post up the for sale thread later on the week for you guys.... (just bought the sub, so, need $$ now... :p )
So how soon can you send that rig to PA???;):santa2:
if you are ordering now, we'll guarantee it will be arrived just in time for your x'mas!! :santa:
 
Nothing wrong with taking a break. I spent a good 3 years, and alot of time into the teams folding endeavour, fended off multiple attempts to take our spot from us in the top 3, and almost made a clear shot for 2nd. Most of the people that were around back then have either moved on, or idle along with a couple of PCs here and there. A good bunch of them lazely idle around in our irc channel, (you guys do know about that right? or did that become taboo lol).

Point being, all that time spent managing clients, recruiting, flinging poo at other boards and such, eventually took its toll, and i had to take a break. Hopefully your break isnt as long as mine, it was almost 3 years before i got back into things.

Folding should be a hobby, not a job!
 
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