FLECOM Interview ***** HARD DC'er Of The Month +++++ December 2005

Please join me, Pocatello, in congratulating FLECOM for being selected as the [H]ard DC'er of the month for December of 2005. (Yes, 2005. This is not a typo!)

This is quite an honor when you consider that the [H]orde has over 1,100 active folders. FLECOM is currently ranked #1 on our team, and he has 42.2 million points. During 2007 his points fluctuated from a low of ~1.2 million points per month to as many as 3.8 million points per month. He is ranked #5 in the world. No one on our team is set to overtake him.

FLECOM is set to personally overtake "no name / default" {#4} in 3 weeks!

FLECOM is set to personally overtake "OC-AMD" with Team "2CPU.comFolding@Home" {#3} in 4 months.
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http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=45185.
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http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/individual_overtake.php?s=&u=45185.
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Basic Information:

-How many F@H points do you have?

as of September 28, 2007: 42,241,617 F@H points.

-How about United Devices and WCG points?

16,663 United Devices points... I got into the project pretty late in the game obviously.

-How many boxen do you have? Break this number down between borgs and your personal machines.

I actually do not have that many boxes at home, for a few reasons, mostly being the heat here
in Miami. My personal workstation (Dual AMD Opteron 250's) does run the SMP client and meets deadlines. My two servers at home were running the SMP client but they got migrated into the garage due to noise and I was having concerns with the temperature they were running at so I disabled it.

Borgs are where its at for me, I have gotten permission from most people concerned to run it on my machines at work, which consists of about 700 dual core 3ghz machines (not all are online yet!) so that's 1,400 installs of F@H!

A few people ask me why I do not run the SMP client on my borgs, two reasons.
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1) have you tried installing it on one machine? Ok imagine that 700 times!

2) I cannot under any circumstances install any beta software on these machines (besides windows releases obviously hehe).

I manage my borgs with FAHSpy and push out the client via the Ghost Console which makes life infinitely easier I assure you.

-When did you start folding? What kind of project or projects did you participate in?

I started folding in very late 2003, early 2004 around there. A long long time ago I used to run SETI@Home... I was a sucker for a neat screen saver with lots of pretty graphs of strange spectral space, what can I say.

-When did you start folding for the [H]orde?

Same-- 2003-2004ish. I originally started off with my machines at home, and was putting out respectable numbers for the time (my dual PIII 333 was still meeting deadlines back then lol).

-What is your average F@H points per month?

According to [H]ard|Folding - 2,666,576

-Did you contribute to United Devices?

Yes, very briefly.

-How about WCG?

I have played with the WCG client; I like it a lot. I have considered shifting my focus if F@H continues to give me issues.
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Personal Information:

Name: Frank

Location: Miami, Florida

Hobbies:

Computers, Listening to music (headphones and high-end audio I guess would be the hobby), photography, amateur radio, and a few other geeky things I guess hehe!

-What is your [H]ard OCP username? What is the meaning or significance of your [H]ardOCP username, if any?

FLECOM. Back in the day, I was upgrading from BBSs to a shiny new thing called AOL (yes, yes, laugh but it was the only unlimited dial-up hehe) anyhow, I had to pick a username. I used to just use FLE (pronounced flea or flee), my initials, but it was taken or too short, can't remember its been a while, anyhow, I decided, well, let me just add "com" to the end (since the internet was a shiny new frontier for me I figured it should work) anyhow, that was probably 14 or so years ago, with my Apple ColorClassic and my Hayes 2400bps modem so a bit has changed in the years. I still have the ColorClassic though.

-Want to link to a picture of yourself?

I am at work right now, I will have to find a half-decent photo of myself when I get home.




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This is part one of the interview. There seems to be a limit of 20,000 characters per post... and this interview exceeded the limit. See the next posts for the remainder of the interview. I ended up with this interview in three parts.
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On to the interview:

-(which month and year did you win [H]ard DC'er for the month?)

December 2005, the last of the HFOTM for 2005, the first year they were awarded.

-wait... 2005? How come no interview until September of 2007?

Well supposedly I was PM'ed and never responded. Which I guess is entirely possible. I have been so busy with work and the rest of my hobbies its kind of difficult to do it all. But I manage to sneak away to the forums at work

-Congratulations on being chosen the [H]ard DC'er for the month. How does it feel to be chosen by your peers for such a prestigious award?

Pretty freaking cool

-Why do you think you were chosen?

Because I have lots of points duh! No, seriously, I don't really think I have contributed that much except in the way of points so I guess that's got to be the reason, lol.

-Why do you participate in Distributed Computing?

Personal reasons I guess... up until a few months ago I ran F@H just because it must suck to have cancer (understatement, I know) and so I felt if I could do something to help, I should do it.

-If DC'ing could find a cure for just one disease tomorrow, which one would it be and why?

That's a pretty big question; I honestly don't really know how to answer that.

-What would you like the [H]orde to know about you that might surprise them?

I hate computers!

-Where do you see your DC'ing activities in the next year or two?

That depends, probably continuing FAH. I have actually declined job offers because I wouldn't be able to borg the machines there so I guess I care a little... hehe... but Stanford really needs to get their act together. The whole project seems like one giant beta test and if that continues I might look elsewhere to donate my cycles.

-Have you been successful borging? If so, what kind of borging worked for you? (For example, friends, family, and/or work?)

I do borg friends machines, family machines, and work machines; friends and family it's in exchange for free computer work on occasion; work it's in exchange for crappy pay and endless hours and stress, lol.

-Where do you see the [H]ard DC sub-forum in the near future? Long term?

I hope someone steps up to the plate and grabs the bull by the horns, after the DC "big bang" everyone just seems dazed and confused, or silent. The DC forum needs a resurgence and organization. Long term, it needs stability and leadership. Plans for different scenarios like handling different projects, project teams, contests, smack-downs, etc., because the way things went down recently was very disheartening.


-Is there anything else you would like to add?

I don't limit myself to volunteering CPU cycles, I also volunteer in the real world. I am the communications coordinator for the MS-150 bike tour here in South Florida to raise money for research for Multiple Sclerosis... It's a 2 day, 150 mile bike tour from Miami to Key Largo. As of our last MS-150 committee meeting we are at over $1.9 Million collected.

I cannot begin to tell you how much planning goes into this event... let's just put it this way, the next one is in April of 2008, and the committee meetings have already started! I also assist with emergency communications after hurricanes with the Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center and have also done amateur radio demos for boy-scout events.

-Can you tell us more about your interests in high end audio, gaming, as well as amateur radio?

I have been into high end audio for years now; I really can't afford to buy all the multi-thousand dollar toys so I have used my knowledge of electronics to build most of my own audio equipment (amplifiers, DACs etc. pics attached).

I don't really game that much lately; I have been pretty busy at work and with the girlfriend

I have been an amateur radio operator for almost 3 years now. I have used it volunteer with various events as a communicator to assist with logistics and provide communications for the MS-150 Bike Tour among others, pics attached of the MS-150. I also have a repeater at ~500ft on top of a building in downtown Miami that has a pretty decent coverage area of about three counties.

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See below for part 3 of the interview... this took lots of tinkering to get right! Pictures ahead !!!
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Congrats FLECOM...

Now on to the more recent ones?

My headphones:



My “Dynamite” headphone amplifier…



Me @ the MS-150:





My repeater:

Antenna install (Andrew DB224-E… its about 23ft long – 4 lobe vhf antenna)

Duplexer (small black cabinet on the left) and the equipment cabinet on the right…

Equipment (this is a temporary setup)

Duplexer


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Thanks for the interview, FLECOM!
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Pocatello
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bump for 50 million points!