I hit 20 years of SETI @ Home today (PST). Amazing what listening to Art Bell one night started. And we still haven't found any aliens. Oh well, we'll just have to keep looking.

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I started way back in 1999 with my amd k6-2 450 mhz. Havent given up on finding them aliens. Cheers from SWEDEN

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I have never listened to Art Bell but crunching Seti seemed like a good idea to me.

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20 Years! How the years have gone by. From my 486-50 to a couple of TR3's and i7's, it has been fun.

Hope to see you all in 20 more!

It's been 20 years for me....just...WOW..

I remember back in 1999 when I downloaded the original Seti@Home program and stared at the screen saver for hours hoping to see something, haha I enjoyed looking at the "interesting results"

Folks, "they" are out there...but by now probably aren't even using RF for comms....although those old old signals might just started arriving any day now from their long interstellar voyage..

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I am so very happy to be able to join this special club during the very 24 hours of my 20th anniversary of becoming a SETIzen.

Although I read the forums often, I don't get on them that much. So, I thought, on this 20-year anniversary, since so many of you have shared so much with us, I might share a little about myself.

It was a very turbulent time for me. My beloved wife of 22 years had died suddenly just three years earlier, leaving behind our precious 19 1/2 month old son. I was, therefore, a single dad, devoting the majority of my personal time raising our son. My mother had also died suddenly just five months earlier. At work, we were feverishly wrapping up the Millennium Project. The U.S. ABC News program was preparing to do a Christmas week interview with my little son and me for an expose they were going to do on the dangers of the pharmaceutical that killed my wife. I guess you could just say I was very busy!

However, as soon as I heard about the SETI project, I knew I just HAD to join!

So, according to my personal logs, at 18:24 GMT, Thursday, November 11, 1999, I accessed the old www.seti@home.com website and signed up. Within a few minutes I began processing my first unit.

Things were so different then. My home PC was a scathingly fast (for the time) Acer Aspire Pentium 200 (that200 was the CPU speed in Megahertz)! From the first unit I became a 24/7/365 SETIzen. By Saturday, September 18th, I had written, tested and implemented an interface that recorded the results of every unit. The first unit I recorded that day was 18my99ab.18558.12304.953400.125. It took 186,812.089 seconds (2 days 3 hrs 53 mins 32 secs) of CPU time to process that first unit!

I know my total and average cobblestones aren't very impressive compared to some of the people who are just as committed to SETI, but also lots of resources available. In my defense, I will say that I have done everything on my home computers, with limited resources. Today, with fewer resources than ever before, I manage to keep three machines going, with two waiting for resources, which may never come, to acquire parts.

I am proud to say that two of the three machines still operational I built myself from the case on in (or the motherboard on out, if you prefer). ;-)

I like and respect all our fellow SETIzens, especially those who constantly respond to requests for help (we all know who you are).

Now that 20 years have passed I might even put up my profile soon (in some things I am an -ultimate- procrastinator, eh?).

I might even share the true story of an event that occurred when I was a child that would make even the most dubious UFO doubters do a double take.

I have the good fortune of having extensive knowledge and experience in electronics, computers, radio and lasers. I mention this because that background provided me my proudest moment in SETI.

Back at the beginning the SETI staff had the time to personally communicate with SETIzens. Dr. Anderson and I had been communicating about SETI issues via email for a while. On Saturday, March 18, 2000, at 21:38:06 CST (2000-03-19 03:38:06 GMT), after several days and many hours of contemplating alternate communication methods other species might utilize, I sent an email to Dr. Anderson, which described in detail a possible alternative communication technique.

I proposed that a large amount of data could be transmitted via very short duration bursts, using a very large frequency range that, in effect, flip-flops our narrow frequency, long duration signals. In other words, the data is vertically stacked across the frequency spectrum, and the signal duration contains the digital information for each specific data bit.

Dr. Anderson liked the idea, and he responded that they were considering adding a search for it. I think we all know what that data pulse eventually became known as in SETI.

I know my contribution is not nearly as great as all the thousands of hours so many of you have spent contributing to SETI, but it is something I was able to do, and I am so happy I could add my small part to this great project.

Very interesting profile. Congrats to all of the 20 year members. In just 2 years I will be joining you.

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SETI@home classic workunits 4,019
SETI@home classic CPU time 34,348 hours

20 years ago, today.

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A Living example of Artificial Intelligence.

congrats 528

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My anniversary is now more than 2 months in the past - but i didn't know about this thread until now.

The day of registration was random - but looking now on the date i'm happy about all these 9's ;)
(19.09.1999)

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Congratulations, MagicEye!
I wish you many more 9's, and I plan on congratulating you in the 30 Year Club, too!! ;-)

Strangely I remember seti@home going on in the mid 90's, might still have my old files on full hdd/os backup to 640mb cdrom. Can't remember the name of my old account though, probably imagekiwi!

I joined the club a few days back.

Cheers.

Looks like I hit 20 in Nov. Wow, time flies.
Greetings to old friends. I've been doing some catch-up reading on forum posts and see lots of great optimization work going on.
So many more platforms and ways to contribute over the past several years. It's fun to see!
Best,
Gecko

20 years already! Started as a member of HCC also the biggest computer club in Europe then I think.
Highest total members for SETI was only 217. Now we're only with 34 members of which 4 active.
Read the forum maybe 2 times a year now and currently crunching only 8 hours a week :-)

20 Years... How time flies!

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I Desire Peace and Justice, Jim Scott (Mod-Ret.)

SETI@home member since 28 Jan 2000

w00t! Im 20! Next year i'll be able to drink!

/edit: blast. im late darnit!

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SETI@home member since 28 Jan 2000
w00t! Im 20! Next year i'll be able to drink!
/edit: blast. im late darnit!

But you're old enough to remember Tradewars 2002 (man, the hours I played that BBS game! Can it still be played somehow, somewhere?), so I think overall you have the credentials to qualify as an honorary member ^^

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Apr 3, 1999 - May 3, 2020

When SETI@home goes into hibernation on March 31st, I will be at: 20 years, 6 months, 5 days.

Quite amazing.

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20 years today. The day I signed up was one day after my 37th birthday.

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