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: I thought I would add my two cents worth, or perhaps it's only a wooden nickel, after interacting with several Helix
people that are dear to me today.
I arrived after being a "lurker", with no clue as to what I was doing talking to people on the Internet. But, the obvious generosity and kindness of Team Helix members never ceased to amaze me, no matter what the cause. Team Helix simply seemed a natural place for all of these people to congregate- like all of the distributed computing projects,
Helix attracts folks of good heart and social consciousness.
When I first encountered distributed computing, I learned nothing about it. Since Folding@Home only uses spare cycles that no other program or function is asking for, I figured, "Whatever- might as well have it running as not."
Since I have always had a number of machines that have to work 24/7 with a minimum of failures, it was a great way
to get a new machine up and running (or not, as it might be). I ran it for a long time, folding for the entity Helix
might call the "0 fairy" until a thread on a science technical forum I read specifically discussed the FAH project. Don't even remember which forum- I read a number of them and never, ever post, but it had me intrigued. Except for my younger bro, all of my sibs and I are in the sciences, and we were all acutely aware what was ultimately at stake with the success of the FAH project.
It is rare to find something useful to do with anything "spare". Spare usually means throw-away, and occasionally
worth a minimal effort to pass off on someone else whether they want it or not. I should know- I have a house full of everyone's "spare" effects that they are merely storing here. Forever. Artifacts from an an archaelogical dig, I say. There is no way on Earth that I can pass those "spares" off on anyone, even their original owners. Generally, their original owners are either living outside of the United States or have died.
It is also unusual in this life to have an opportunity to directly affect, in a positive sense, the world that seems so chaotic around you. Entropy increases, and with the increasing complexities of time and age, it also speeds up.
It is so very easy to add to the negative side of life- it takes some thought and a fair amount of letting things go
to simply keep life neutral. Positive contribution requires a decision that you have something to contribute, and an absolute realization that the size of the contribution never matters. Time is relative, and like it as we may, it passes. I am not worried about the passing of time, only the wasting of it, and of the failure to take hold of an opportunity to leave this world better than when I arrived here.
Folding@Home gives me a place to put my "spares", slow down the choas, and thoroughly enjoy the people. The forum is like coming home to your favorite chair with the good view out the window. It is a nice place to be after a day of the usual hassles. The choice of Team Helix is an obvious one for me. I hold all distributed computing teams in the very highest regard, but find the dynamic of Helix much to my liking.
I also fold for two special people, my mother, Jeanne, who lost a 20 year battle to MS in 2001, and my nephew, James, who lost his battle with diabetes at 19 in 2005. [reply]
: I fold because my dad, grandfather, and my brother suffer from asthma, as do i to some extent. My mom has type 2 diabetes, and my maternal grandmother died from liver cancer(from what my mom tells me, she didn't drink often). My brother's friend from pre-school died at age 8 from brain cancer. He underwent Chemo-therapy, and a whole list of other drugs. I myself have A.D.D. so i want to find a cure for that too.(Oh look a shiny ball) sorry lol couldn't resist [reply]
: Here is my two bits worth of commentary. Please feel free to use any portion that is useful. ~ linicx
If someone asked me to explain how spare computer cycles and binary numbers are used to benefit mankind I would be at a loss to answer. Quite simply, I do not understand it any more than I understand Neap and Ebb tides or why the color of grass is called green rather than red or yellow. I accept these things because I have no reason to dispute them. Factually speaking, it doesn't matter whether or not I understand computer cycles or scientific research.
Conversely, if someone asked me to explain why I donate spare cycles to a project I do not understand, I would truthfully reply that I am really not sure. I could say that I feel compelled to do it. I could point out the number of medical maladies among my family and friends, or I could testify as to why I feel comfortable with the Team Helix family.
The truth is complicated as it always is. I was aware I could use spare cycles to do various things for many years beginning with Seti@Home when it was first announced. I was also aware of the problems associated with it, and based on this I wasn't interested. I also did not have a computer that I felt comfortable enough with that I was willing to share cycles. I was not savvy enough to use command lines to set it up or secure the computer, but all of this happened years ago when the fastest Internet connection I had was through a Motorola 28.8 modem.
Today I have a Macintosh G-4, multiple hard drives, multiple operating systems, DSL, and enough spare memory that I can easily compile several Work Units simultaneously The FAH Mac GUI is incredibly easy to use to set up and install FAH - even for a new Mac user like myself.
I donate spare cycles because locating and tracking the path of a wild protein might result in the discovery of a cure for a disease that currently has none. I do it because is the right thing for me to do.
Team Helix invites everyone interested in Folding, and all who are just plain curious to visit our forum. Bring your coffee, kick off your shoes and get to know us. I think you will like what you find. We would like you to join Team Helix because every spare cycle is one cycle closer to finding a cure.
Posted this for linicx at his request! SF. [reply]
: My Mother died of lung cancer, my Father of cancer of the colon and I lost my only brother to AIDS... I have emphysema. Need I say more? [reply]
: I am sorry to hear of your losses in your family. Best wishes for a happy new year. Somehow that seems a bit empty as I type that, but its the best I can do.
Regards,
Phil [reply]
: I fold for Team Helix because I want to help people. I've known too many people that have suffered from conditions that will soon be curable. I don't want to see the people I care for suffer and want to make the cures of tomorrow happen today. [reply]
: OK I meant to add my story earlier but it went bye-bye when BBR/DSLR went down a few nights ago.
In 2000, I first discovered BBR/DSLR. I was looking for links to sites about DSL for a section of my website. I didn't visit the site that much. In November 2001, I discovered that I was going to be one of the millions of cable modem users who were going to be impacted by the @Home bankruptcy. That's when I joined BBR/DSLR. My actual join date was November 28, 2001. For a couple of months, I was a regular in the Comcast forum. I needed to know information about the transition from @Home to Comcast's own network. Transition came and went for me without any problems. Thanks to the folks in the Comcast forum, I was well prepared.
After the transition, I started looking around other areas of BBR/DSLR. Right around the transition, I started looking at a new computer. I couldn't decide if I wanted to build or buy. I got some advice in the hardware forum. I ended up buying since I didn't have the time to build one. (If anyone is around KC and would like to help me build one, I would like to build a pc with a dual processor in 2004. I am looking to get a new pc next year. Who know? I might even add a couple of folding blades if someone helped.)
Right after I got my Dell in early February 2002, someone suggested I try the United Devices (UD) project. I was very skeptical at first and wondered why that person was not running it and wanted me to. In mid February 2002, I discovered BBR/DSLR's Team Discovery forum. Lo and behold, the project at the time was United Devices. I fired up United Devices and started crunching. I enjoyed crunching for a cure for cancer. A couple of days after I joined, UD went down. Someone told me about TEN (Team Ecology). I joined that a couple of days after joining Team Discovery. I first started crunching UD. After a short time, Team Discovery added another DC project to the team. The members voted to add the new project, TSC (Tuberous Sclerosis Complex).
I became very active in TD. I was one of the people instrumental in getting TD Project Hope off the ground. I was elected TDPH's treasurer in May 2003 and served as its treasurer for six months. In my six months as treasurer, I collected over $4,500 in donations. In that time, the project was able to put eight blades together (with four more in the process of being ordered).
In mid November 2003, I decided to start looking at other DC projects. As we all know, BBR/DSLR supports many DC teams. Since medical science appealed to me, I joined Team Helix. I liked the idea of folding for not just for helping finding the cure of one disease but for several diseases. With some help from the folks here in the TH forum, I had the pc with H/T (hyperthreading) set up to run F@H.
In late November 2003, I saw a plea to join Team Starfire (BBR's Seti forum) with its drive to finish ahead of its rival, TeAm AnandTech. I joined to help in the cause. I know that I am using a processor to help find extraterestial life in our universe and beyond.
There are soooo many benefits to participating DC projects. You can help find cures or other forms of life with your spare CPU cycles. I don't have time to go out and volunteer for organizations so this is my way of volunteering.
Kristi [reply]
: This was originally posted when TH member and moderator sortofageek prompted many Team Helix members to post personal experiences and sentiments which have led us to Folding@Home. At sortofageek's request, it is reposted here. I apologize for the lack of paragraphs! ------
For a long time I have thought that just about all of us pass from this plane of existence without ever causing a ripple in the fabric of space and time. Those individuals who do affect that fabric usually just rip it, causing damage which takes time to repair.
Human progress is a fabric too, an intricate weave in which warp and weft create patterns of infinite variety. Most patterns are dull and lifeless. Sometimes it is a crazy quilt. Often enough, though, a pattern leaps from the weave in an explosion of brilliance or emotion. The individual threads are still the same; but they have come together in a totally unanticipated way.
I have come to think of distributed computing projects in much the same way. Distributed computing is to me (a non-programmer) the epitome of structured programming. It has to be highly structured, or it would not work. Each work unit depends on, and builds upon, its precedent and companion units. The individual work unit is not very important, but as it is completed it is woven into a fabric the patterns of which even its planners cannot have imagined.
In the DC project known as protein folding the fabric is the biomechanics of an incredible number of human proteins. The varied patterns consist of gyrating proteins which dance in front of our eyes -- on the nanosecond scale. Discovering the mysteries of the fold may perhaps tell us nothing at all -- or it may lead to cures for some of the most insidious afflictions that in some way have touched the lives of us all.
It is my hope that those who have not yet tried any DC project would consider joining Team Helix at BBR. We are not intending to siphon off from other BBR DC projects. Every DC project -- whether SETI (Team Starfire), Discovery, RC5, Lifemapper, and several others -- is important in a very real way. But thousands of BBR regulars do not DC. If even a fraction of those users devoted their idle cycles to folding, our fabric would so much richer.
Will the fabric be complete in my lifetime? Of course not. Will patterns develop that justify the hope that thousands of computer users have invested in the project? I think so. For me it costs nothing but a little California electricty, and it leaves me with the thought that perhaps my thread is woven into a pattern that will make a more beautiful world for my children. [reply]
: I have been with this project since day one 3 years ago.
The Team Helix Forum is a family of people working toward the goal of finding cures for diseases that I pray never come near you or your family.
I believe that it will happen.
I have hope that more people will donate their spare cycles to a project they believe in.
As long as there is a chance to help just one person, wouldn't that be worth it to you? I will be folding Proteins for the Stanford project as long as they keep sending them to my machine, and now my son's.
One cure at a time. [reply]
: Once I got DSL I was looking around to join Seti. I already belonged to BBR, so opened the distributed computing section. WOW! There was a program I could run on my PC that might help lead to cures for diseases that some of my family and friends have. Me. My PC. We could do it. One little part at a time. Add that to all the other people with their parts, and no PhD required to actually help! So I started folding and bending. I will continue as long as I can and as long as needed to help find the cures. Together, we can all do it! [reply]
: Not a good writer but here is my attempt,
I have know about Distributed computing for a long time and even played around with it a bit a few years ago when i first got a home computer but it seemed to slow the computer down and playing games seemed more important.
My outlook on what is important has change a lot this year. My 18 year old son died in June after battling kidney disease for a number of years. He went through a transplant and then several years of suffering through the side effects of the anti- rejection drugs. The drugs didn't work though and he slowly grew sick again. He didn't want to spend a life connected to a machine 12-14 hours a day and was just to tired to fight anymore...he died on June 6th from heart failure.
I don't know if this project will help find a cure for illnesses like my sons but if the spare cycles can possibly help someone else's suffering and maybe keep another family from having to watch a child die, then its well worth the effort. [reply]
: Well this was a little hard to write but I tried anyway... Please forgive if it is ran together but it came from the heart....
Many many moons ago I came across what appeared to be a really cool little screen saver and that cool little screen saver was none other than Seti at Home. I crunched a few thousand work units and then stumbled across Team StarFire back in 2000 while looking for help with my new DSL. They looked like good people so I joined the team. They grew on me and I became great friends with several of them. I hold those friendships amount the best that I have. Times changed and so did my interest as the different DC projects started springing up all around us. Folding was the next project I settled on. This project was unlike anything I had ever thought possible, finding a cure for some of the worlds many afflictions by running a program on my PC? I liked the project at the time and joined it. Thou many have come and gone, all are still like family even to this day. Over the years I have been around to watch great excitement, great sorry and friends pass on from this world. Thru it all we have been here to support one another. I have cried to my friends here is desperation and been at my lowest only to have them help me. Lifting me up and walking with me thru trials and tribulations, as I have them. We have witnessed births, many more deaths than we care too and are helping those during their everyday struggles.
Life progressed and I crunched on.
Well my life took a very heart wrenching turn back in 2001. My daughter Kaci, then 6 started having problems with her kidneys. This problem was finally diagnosed as IgAN which is a genetic defect causing your immune system to slowly destroy the filters in her kidneys. This process of discovery took 2 years and more tests than I care to talk about. Watching her get very ill, blood in her urine, and loosing 20% of her body mass was more than I could bear! My heart longed for, no it hurt for a cure! How could this be? How could this have happened? After searching and reading up on this disease I believe Folding at Home and Genome at Home are projects that could one day find a cure for her problem. With that said you maybe asking yourself
“What is folding and genome at home?”
Well folding at home and Genome at home are projects that help scientist try and understand how proteins fold and miss fold. Folding is a program from Stanford University that tried to understand how proteins miss fold. This miss folding of proteins causes things like cancers, Mad Cows disease, and Alzheimer to name just a few.
The goal of Genome at home is to design new genes that can form working proteins in the cell. This process helps scientist understand and determine how proteins are going to fold. With this information along with the information from folding at home scientist can have the insight needed to understand and eventually cure these mistakes in the folding process.
All I would say is look into your child’s eyes and imagine them very ill to the point that you could do nothing to help them. No medicines you purchased and no one you spoke to could give you any answers. If you could do something would you? Me being a parent of a child like I just spoke of, I have been doing something!
I do not want my children to have to look at their kids and feel the way I feel now. The pain of not knowing and the utter helplessness is more that I ever want them to feel, or you to feel. I Fold for my children, their children and YOUR children. [reply]
: A long time ago, in a forum far far away, I was running SETI@Home. Then I got a letter from a good High School friend of mine, who had been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (often called Lou Gehrig's disease). So I discovered the Team Helix forum, and started to run the Genome@Home client .99 to try to help find a cure. I got into it, so I added a second computer to run the Folding@Home client (even helped beta test the FAH3 client). So far I've stuck with it, because it's something I believe in, and even though she passed on a year ago today, I'm still going on fighting to find a cure for not only ALS, but plenty of other killer illnesses.
I firmly believe we WILL be able to help find a cure for ALS, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, and others, if we just keep at it, and find others to help us & Stanford out in the search for a cure.
I thank you, Team Helix thanks you, and those who suffer would thank you also. :) [reply]
: To all who care enough to share:
I joined the Folding@home Distributed Computing Project, for several reasons. The first and foremost being that I worked as a chaplain in hospitals and nursings homes, and have witnessed the ravages of diseases such as Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, and various forms of cancer first-hand.
There are no words to adequately describe watching a person slowly slip away from reality as a disease such as Alzheimer's begins taking its toll on an individual. Or to watch the hands of an artist or musician tremble so severely from Parkinson's disease that they will never practice their art again - what words can one use?
There are no words to describe watching a young mother with a whole in her head the size of a fifty cent piece, allowing drainage for the cancer seething beneath her skull, meticulously cleaning, treating, and wrapping her gaping wound with courage that defies reason. Her pain was excruciating, the morphine no longer helped, but she continued her fight undaunted. The young mother lost her hearing, partial sight, and most speech, but she survived beyond all our hopes. Her neurologist had no words for her survival except to say, "I don't know how she survived. It's just a miracle." And indeed I witnessed many "miracles" in the oncology field.
Observing a surgery for pancreatic cancer in a middle-aged man one day, about four hours into the surgery, the surgeon looked into my eyes across the patient on the table, stared at his hands, and looked back at me saying with tears in his eyes, "These are not my hands right now. They are God's. I don't know how I do this - I can't do this! It's all God's work. Right now, these are God's hands."
My mother suffered from emphysema, and I was diagnosed twice with cancer. One month before beginning a position as an end-stage oncology chaplain, I was in Memorial Sloan-Kettering having my second cancer surgery. I had faith in my doctor, faith in God, and faith enough in myself that I refused to be frightened, intimidated or stopped by a group of mis-folded proteins and cells gone wild.
Perhaps it is because of one of these distributed computing projects that my life was saved, that I don't know. I don't need to know the answer for myself. Yet, if I can offer just a small service to help others complete research that can help ease and/or eradicate any disease, I don't need answers - just faith and a spare cycle on my computer.
Consider joining us today - you will never regret it, and perhaps the very protein you are assigned to fold today will be the one that will save thousands of lives tomorrow. I have always been taught that the definition of a "miracle" is a natural phenomenon taking place at the precise moment you need it. Help create a miracle today!
For additional reading:
Unraveling the Mystery of Protein Folding
by W. A. (Bill) Thomasson [reply]
: What better reason to fold than to help humankind out. [reply]
: My wife's family suffers from colon cancer and thyroid, it is hereditary. [reply]
: My father passed away from chronic renal failure due to diabetes among other things. I also have diabetes. This is one way for me to contribute. [reply]
: I was taught to always be kind to others and help them when I was able to.
I cannot take away the diseases, but maybe my computer will find a way. I cannot take ease someones pain, but maybe my computer can. I cannot find a cure, but maybe my computer can.
I Fold with a wish to help others. I Fold because it's the right thing to do. [reply]
: My mother spent the last months in a nursing home because her third time around with breast cancer it broke her back. She spent the last months of her life on a morphine drip with an occasional pill to help. [reply]
: I Fold for those that can't. I Fold for those that can but don't. I Fold for those I have lost and for those that I will lose.
I mainly Fold because I am not a doctor, so this is the only way I know of to contribute to science. [reply]
: I lost my mother to a rare form of cancer when she was a mere 51 years old. I am also a cancer survivor. Unfortunately, I discovered that my cure was the result of animal testing... I can not tolerate that. What we do here is saving the lives of our dearest dependants and companions. Creatures who do nothing but love us for simply being there.
I fold to save more than human lives.
Dave [reply]
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