Profile: KWSN THE Holy Hand Grenade!

Personal background
I am Paul Sullivan, 59, from just north of SETI@home's home base. (U.C. Berkeley)

I am a truck driver (class A) and photographer.

My hobbies are home computing, home computer building, amateur radio, woodworking, short wave listening, and photography. Oh, and I am a Monty Python fan, in case you hadn't noticed!

Former main computer is a home-built AMD x3 455 triple core CPU (but all 4 cores work...) running at 3.41 Ghz, 7 hard drives, (4 SCSI, 1 PATA, 2 SATA) 2 optical drives, (1 LG DVD Multirecorder Lightscribe, 1 CD-RW [usb]), with 4 Gb of ddr3 1333 memory. Motherboard is by Gigabyte. (880GA-UD3H) OS is Win XP Pro x64. There is a Nvidia GT 240 video board for CUDA crunching. All but one of the SCSI drives, including a tape backup drive and the USB CD-RW, are external to the main computer. Also on or near the desk and plugged in to the main computer are a scanner, a stereo system, and a VHS player. (none used for BOINC...) This system is currently dead, as I moved it, and the SCSI drives refuse to work correctly in the new location...

Main computer: a home-built Inte£ Cor€ I7 4790K running at 4 Ghz, Gigabyte GA-Z87-HD3 mb, with 16 Gb DDR3-1800 RAM, 320Gb, 2Tb, and a 1Tb SATA hard drives, 2 Nvidia GT 770 2Gb video boards (running CUDA and Open-CL), Sony DVD±RW, LG Blu-Ray writer, running Win 7 Home Premium (x64) Liquid cooled.

I acquired my father's computer, after he terminated internet service and was no longer able to get to it, due to advancing old age. (his computer room was in his basement, my old darkroom… Sadly, my father died on 7-22-13…) A Compaq CX5000 series with a Athlon X2 215 dual-core, a 500Gb hard drive, 3 GB main memory and a Lightscribe DVD multicorder. The computer now has a EVGA Nvidia GT 640 1Gb card inside for CUDA work.

My laptop, no longer used on the road, is a Toshiba C655D, running an AMD C50 Dual core at 1 Ghz, with 3Gb main storage. Its video board is running an ATI chipset (an ATI 6310) for OpenCL GPU work. This was bought for not a lot of money (~$350US) when I was still fairly broke...

Another build is an AMD FX 9550 8-core machine, with the motherboard by Gigabyte - a SATA 500Gb HDD, a DVD± re-write drive, 16 Gb main memory,an MSI Nvidia GTX 640 video board for CUDA, all running Windows 7 x64. This was thrown together with cheap components from a failed attempt at upgrading my father's machine, (above) then upgraded.

Another build is a low-compromise machine I'm calling the 20mm (as in cannon) Ammo Can, as the case is an olive drab color, about the same size as an ammunition container for such. Mainboard is by MSI, (Z77A-G43) CPU is by Inte£ (an I7 3770K) with 16 Gb of memory, a 120 Gb SSD and a 3Tb HDD, a Blu-Ray Re-writer, and 2 ATI 7850 cards in Crossfire, running Windows 7. The CPU is liquid-cooled on this one. This computer has crunch power of about 4500 credits/day on the CPU and about 9000-9500 Credits per day on the two ATI cards.

Newest working build is an AMD Phenom 2 1035T 6 core machine I've dubbed "SnowWhite", as the case is pure white. This has (besides the 1035) an EVGA Nvidia GTX-660 GPU, a WD 2Tb drive, 8 Gb main memory all running on a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 motherboard supported by an LG Blu-Ray optical drive. OS is (for a change...) Win 8.1. This replaces the Dell P-4 that was found on the street and isn't fast enuf to justify the electricity it uses any more. This will eventually get the GTX-660 from the Q9550 added to it (in SLI) once I get a faster card for that (Q9550) machine. This machine may eventually wind up with an FX-8350 CPU in it... This machine came back online after a one-month hiatus caused by a bad power supply (died after only one month) and two DOA replacements. (all from Corsair!)

A new laptop has joined the mix, an Intel cor€ I3 3110...

Also running BOINC are two tablets, a Samsung Tab 3 8, and a Kindle Fire HDX 7". The Samsung now runs SETI Beta. Also running Android is a Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone, this one running SETI. I can't get the Kindle to complete a verifiable SETI WU, but it runs WCG. Update: changed after SETI 8.0 was implemented: now slowly accumulating WU's verified.

All the above computers are networked, (laptops when home...) sharing a Motorola cable modem, (along with file and printer sharing) through a Linksys router and a Trendnet switch. Backups are archived on the Q9550's 1 Tb hard drive.

Printers: an inkjet [13x19 capable], a laser, [with duplexer] another letter size inkjet strictly for photo printing, and a color laser, all networked (through one or another of the computers...) and available for printing on any of the computers.

You really don't want to see what's in back of (and between) the computers, which is a computer engineer's nightmare (particularly the power cords!) - with nothin' labeled, yet! :-)

The weather data in my message board signature will be the last place I checked the internet from: this will change when I'm in the road...

picture taken 9/15
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I think, with the "billions and billions" (Carl Sagan) of stars in the Milky Way, not to mention the other galaxies, there have got to be other intelligence(s) out there - and if we are the best the creator can do, then he/she/it is not as omnipotent as some of us claim... :-)
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