I live and work in the Twin Cities area. Happen to run the support department for a medical rental company based out of this area.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I think extraterrestrial life exists, but not sure if there is any life intelligent enough to send us a radio signal. I think if we knew where to send a signal we should send one, but the question is where? The universe is a very large place and we are just a tiny little rock spinning around an average sized star.
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.