I am 44 years old, live in Minnesota. I make my living as a network engineer which is why I have a bunch of old PCs to run Seti@home. I have been an amateur astronomer since 1977. I am also a Ham radio operator (N0VTN) so Seti@Home ties several of my interests together.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I think ET exists but I don't think he is going to be easy to detect. Perhaps sometime in the next 50 to 100 years. Such a discovery probably won't have much effect on people in general but it will have an effect on how we view our existance.
I don't think we should bother with a beacon because we are transmitting so much already.
I feel that Seti@home is a neat idea. I have computers running at my home anyway, they might as well be doing something useful rather than propelling imaginary fish around a make-believe aquarium.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
