Profile: Terry Ritchie

Personal background
The very first time I saw a home computer I knew where the future was heading. That was in 1979. I was 12 years old and a little computer known as the TRS-80 Model I captured my imagination. From that point on I knew I wanted a career in computers. Now, 22 years later, I am a high school computer instructor. I get students prepared to get their Aplus , CISCO, Network plus and WireU certifications. The path that led me to my current position was a winding one. From the age of 12 to 18 I taught myself to program in BASIC, Assembler and Pascal. I just seemed to understand the computer's language. I did not have the funds to enter college after high school so I joined, of all things, the Marine Corps. During my six year tour with the Marines I was an Aviation Electronics Technician on A6E "Intruder" bombers. Simply put, if any electronics systems failed I would troubleshoot and repair them. The A6 had 36 million dollars worth of electronics. Plenty of work to go around. The A6 proved itself once again in the Persian Gulf War with Iraq. We had very few problems with them as they "ruled the night".

After the Marine Corps I secured a job as a computer repair technician and programmer. As my skills and knowledge increased I moved my way through better opportunites. At one time I was the programmer, network specialist, computer repair technician, CNC programmer and PLC programmer all rolled into one for one company. The local school system was looking for someone to teach their CCNT (Computer Communications Network Technician) class that had real world experience in all aspects. My name kept coming up so they gave me a call and I agreed.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
When I first discovered SETI@home about a year before its launch I was all for it. I have always been an astronomy buff. I remember growing up watching shows on public television like Nova and the series called Cosmos (by Carl Sagan!) that absolutely fascinated me. In recent times the Discovery and Learning channels have fed my interests.

So, for the year I had to wait for SETI@home to come "on line" I went on a scavenger hunt. I gathered computer parts from where ever I could and built four Pentium class systems for the task. I already had three computers connected to my home network, making a total seven for SETI work. The day SETI@home started allowing downloads I must have fought that server for hours trying to download the file. So many people were downloading that the system could not keep up! I finally got it, loaded my systems and the rest is history. I just purchased 25 brand spanking new Pentium IV 2.8Ghz systems for my classroom, all BOINCing in the name of SETI.

The idea behind SETI@home, distributed computing, is in my opinion a forerunner of what's to come. Super computers are amazing, but so are their price tags. Distributed computing makes sense for budget minded researchers and companies alike. I believe it was NASA that pioneered this process with their "Souper computer", using DOD throw away computers to create one large distributed computing platform. The SETI@home project not only improved on this platform but has proven that regular computer owners around the world are willing, more than willing, to lend a hand. I remember watching a show on television that talked about SETI@home before it started. The creators were "hoping" for at least 50,000 participants over a projected two year period. Well, that number was surpassed in a big way, both in participants and years!

The picture I have included is of my son (April 2001) and I. He's at the perfect age to become one of the world's first Martian astronauts! Lucky him!

Update: I stopped using classic SETI@Home 3.08 and switched to BOINC on July 8th of 2005. I accumulated 67,669 classic work units over a six year period.
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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.