Graham Abbot

Iron Folder Questionnaire

What is your OCAU username & Folding name?

OCAU: Graham.Abbott Folding: Originally Graham.Abbott, but now I'm one of the GrumpyOldMen

What is the meaning or significance of your OCAU username, if any?

Graham.Abbott was my folding name, before it was my OCAU handle. I started folding when Google were pushing it as part of the Google Toolbar and so just plugged in my name. When I found OCAU I decided to do something radical and keep my own name, rather than use a handle.

Which month and year did you win Iron Folder?

September 2010

How many F@H points do you have?

10,000,000 odd of my own. For the GoM I'm not sure, guessing about 18 mill as I have been pushing 25-40Kppd for about 18 months.

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

Just two, both my own: they are in the Mega boxen wiki: • i7-2600K/16GB/2x GTX460 • Q9400/8GB/1xGTX-460

When did you start folding for Team 24?

Somewhere around 21 October 2005 if you believe EOC

What is your average F@H points per month?

Guessing it was about 900,000, but this should head north with the recent addition of the 2600K which sees me doing around 75K ppd so say 2.2 million/month.

Any other DC projects?

Nope, was involved with SETI back in the days of 386s and 486s (I think that's the right era)

How many boxen do you have running the following clients?

regular client — 0

SMP client — 2 (1 x bigadv, 1 x A3)

GPU client — 2 (1+2)

PS3 client — 0

What operating system do you primarily use?

Win 7, with VMWare Workstation running an instance of Linux Bigadv

Name:

Graham Abbott (duh)

Location:

Tarneit, in Melbourne's west

Occupation: ' Telecommunications Consultant

Hobbies:

Folding, and being a firefighter with the CFA.

Are you married, single, etc?

Married, for just over 25 years, with two daughters 18 and 15.

Does your significant other, assuming you have one, support your F@H activities?

Yes, with some mild concern. She and I have both lost lots of family and friends to cancer, most recently my Dad, as well as older relatives and friends suffering Alzeheimers and Parkinsons and so she sees and understands what drives me to do it.

Congratulations on being chosen the Iron Folder for the month. How does it feel to be chosen by your peers for such a prestigious award?

I was greatly chuffed :) Any time you receive something denoting respect from a worthy bunch of peers is a good reason to feel pleased.

Why do you think you were chosen?

Truthfully I'm a little surprised. There are others that have put in a lot more effort than me...

Why do you participate in Folding?

See my answer to the behaviour of the significant other.

If Folding could find a cure for just one disease tomorrow, which one would it be and why?

For me its a tie. Cancer because it kills so many people, and Alzheimers because of the way it can reduce proud, intelligent people to a shell of their former selves.

What would you like Team 24, to know about you, that might surprise them?

As a guy who works in telecommunications - networking and voice systems - I have a shocking memory for phone numbers and IP addresses, yet I can quote stupidly long passages of movie dialogue and books nearly verbatim. Go figure....

Where do you see your folding activities in the next year or two?

Keeping on with what I'm doing now. The significant others machine may cop a 2600K upgrade at some stage, but probably only after some more solar panels go on the roof.

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

Not especially. I left just one borg at my last place of employment which continued to produce for over 18 months before it was rebuilt.

Any ideas on improving the DC subforum, or suggestions or improvements for our Team?

Keep the competitions going now that they have restarted (Good work, Retard).

What challenges have you faced in your F@H efforts?

Heat. My study/office is small, and the heat gets bloody unbearable some times, particularly late afternoon, cos its on the west side of the house with little shade.

How much do you spend on F@H? If you consider equipment, electricity, and other activities that support F@H... how much of your life has DC’ing consumed?

A good chunk. Fortunately my business allows me to claim much of my hardware and software expenditure. Typically I spend about 2-4 K a year on hardware. I'm guessing it comprises about half my power bill, so say 350-450 a quarter. Plus the solar panels on the roof, which largely feed the folding habit, rather than generating credit into the grid (4.5 MW.hr so far, less than 100KW.hr to the grid). And sometimes a large chunk of my time, particularly in recent weeks, getting this bigadv box behaving.

Do you have friends, family, or neighbors that know about your F@H activities? What do they think?

As many as I can make aware. Most agree that its a great thing to do, but my conversion rate of getting them to run it is poor, unfortunately.

Do you game? If so, how long and what types do you prefer? Consoles or PC?

I used to be a moderately serious player of Counterstrike when it first appeared. I remember being introduced by some gents at Monash Uni who had a server on Campus. That was very early days - around June - Sep 2001, I remember the excitement of the upgrade to CS 1.3. Just recently I actually sat down and played Crysis end to end - figured I had a dual 460 equipped box, I should give it a run. Tinkered with some others - mainly Splinter Cell - in the interim.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Yes: Lets keep 'em Turning and Burning peoples!! :)

On behalf of Team 24, I thank you as well for your contributions to this team and I thank you for your time to talk about it. Keep on folding!