LWD - Featured Cruncher - Friday, March 26, 2004

Hidely Ho folks... I meant to post this last week but one thing lead to another and I had a bout of short term memory loss and totally neglected my posting responsibilities... BUT... I'm over it now... whew. Anyways, you may have seen this guy tearing through the rankings, and maybe you haven't, but if you are the latter of the two, then take notice... ONEFAST1 is exactly what his name says... So watch out! YOU WILL BE PASSED ;-) Oh... and have a great Friday!

Nattiebo: So, Onefast1… Give us some details about yourself… - Age, Sex, Student/Career?

Onefast1: Well I’m the 39 year old divorced father of “DYPHERON”. I’ve been working as the Director of Technical Services at a large leasing company here in sunny Phoenix, Arizona for ten years now.

Nattiebo: Do you have any hobbies or interests other than computers?

Onefast1: Oh yea! You bet, one word … Hockey! You can catch me at the Arena on any hockey night and I will be front and center (GO Yoties!). I also like go mountain bike riding and hiking. I take a lot of photographs and movies and I love to travel.

Nattiebo: Did you or do you ever play or are you strictly a fan of the game?

Onefast1: Strickly a fan, Penguins are really the home team.

Nattiebo: Favorite travel destination?

Onefast1: Santa Monica.

Nattiebo: I haven’t been to Santa Monica so I’m not familiar with it, but what makes it stand out the most out of the places to which you have traveled?

Onefast1: It’s a short flight from Phoenix and the beach is really nice. Venice Beach is just south of the pier so you can checkout all the CrAzY people there.

Nattiebo: Oh, then I know that area… It’s been a while though, but Venice is a blast! What is your favorite pastime whenever you are in Santa Monica?

Onefast1: Spending time on the beach and hanging out at “Rusty’s” on the pier.

Nattiebo: How did you get the name Onefast1?

Onefast1: Well now that could be a long story … See along time ago in a place back east I was once a DJ. There was this girl named Cindy that always hung around (groopy). One night she came blowing in the door and said “hey fast freddy”. It just so happened that a friend of mine was standing there and kinda repeated her like you are a fast one aren’t you? After that it took hold and I was nicknamed fast freddy. So at the same time I was involved in car audio competition and one of the systems I was working on at the time went to and placed 7th in the nationals. The license plate the customer had made was 1LOUD1. Flash forward to 1994 when I got my first internet account and thus you have a spin on fast freddy and 1LOUD1 and I came up with onefast1. Now I’m known as the fastone.

Nattiebo: Did you do radio DJ-ing or private party DJ-ing or another area?

Onefast1: No Radio but everything else in between. It was the best time of my life.

Nattiebo: What made you decide to stop DJ-ing and go into your current industry? Or were there other fun things in between as well as those two?

Onefast1: I just did that on the side as well as design car audio systems too. My main career has always been computers. At the time I was a Communications Specialist working with IBM VTAM and related stuff. After the company went to satellite communications I was out of a job. So I moved west and here I am.

Nattiebo: When did you start running SETI?

Onefast1: I dunno? Something like 479 hours ago …

Nattiebo: Where did you hear about SETI?

Onefast1: My son was begging to have his ass kicked. AGAIN!

Nattiebo: Have you ever had the urge to let him win because he’s your son or are you two way past that?

Onefast1: Sure, he’s a winner regardless of our competition. We like to have fun and besides that, he started this one.

Nattiebo: That’s awesome that you have such a great relationship. Is it just you and Dypheron or do you have other kids, he have siblings??

Onefast1: Just me and Dypheron. He was enough, at 5 he was tearing apart radios…

Nattiebo: Did you put them back together again or did you wait for a few years more when he was able to reassemble them?

Onefast1: Trust me when he was done there wasn’t much left to put back together. He hasn’t outgrown this either. When he left for boot camp I had the job of cleaning his room. If I had a dollar for every little screw I picked out of the carpet . . .

Nattiebo: How many machines do you run now?

Onefast1: 2 Sun Micro E10000’s, 1 running 28 400Mhz procs and 1 with 48 333Mhx procs. I also have a SunFire 3800 with 4 750’s. I also have a few MAC’s running at home.

Nattiebo: Are you an overclocking "Freak" on your home boxen?

Onefast1: Daa. NO. Just lots of cycles

Nattiebo: What is your secret to dropping so many WU all the darn time??

Onefast1: I have lots of hardware that needs lots-o-testing and I found a great solution to test with.

Nattiebo: After the “testing” is all said and done are you still going to run SETI on all of these machines?

Onefast1: No, after the process is complete the machines are broken down for inventory. They are either sold or leased, which means more testing… But as an example the 2 e10ks running now will be recycled and there are 4 more behind it so next week I’ll be running double the processes… along with some v880’s 8 x 1.2 ghz

Nattiebo: Do you use SETI Queue or any other add-ons?

Onefast1: yes, I’m using SETIqueue and I must say without it I wouldn’t be crunching.

Nattiebo: What do you hope to accomplish by running SETI?

Onefast1: My goals are one to pass DYPHERON (already done) and to average 100 WU per day for one month. That’s it in a nutshell. For those who wish to cache WU just to get top cruncher is fine by me…lets see who can crunch the most in 30 days.

Nattiebo: What would your ultimate SETI Crunching machine be?

Onefast1: Oh yes it wants a Sunfire E15K.

Nattiebo: How close to getting one of those are you?

Onefast1: My estimate is about 12 – 18 months out. This is still current hardware and they won’t start returning until early 2005.

Nattiebo: At the rate SETI is going, it will still be running then. How quickly do you think the Sunfire E15K could pump out a work unit?

Onefast1: Well it depends on what processor your using of course but the 1.2 Ghz can dump a WU in about 5 hours. I’m in the process of testing a few this week so I will know for sure in a couple of days.

Nattiebo: In very the near future, possibly as early as later this month, SETI will be ported over to the BOINC Platform, with Astropulse and the Southern Hemisphere Projects coming online shortly thereafter. Can we count on you to switch to one of those when the ßeta test is over? Which?

Onefast1: Anything is possible but from what I have looked into I don’t think it has the functionality I need at this point IE: Proxy.

Nattiebo: Are there any goals you would like to meet before SETI comes to a halt (whenever the heck that might be!)??

Onefast1: Not really but the feedback I get from people makes me think there are a few out there that wish I would turn up the other 2 E10k’s I have in the lab.

Nattiebo: What do some of your good friends think about SETI?

Onefast1: It’s the talk of the office and everyone’s reading the Daily Biscuit.

Nattiebo: Have you had any success in recruiting people to LWD?

Onefast1: Not really a goal but some of my technicians are getting sorted ideas on how they can make their mark or dent if you like.

Nattiebo: If you could improve anything about the SETI@Home Project, what would it be?

Onefast1: Well let’s start with replacing the Seti servers.

Nattiebo: What do you think the best thing is about LWD?

Onefast1: The Daily Biscuit.

Nattiebo: Do you read it daily?

Onefast1: Yes, and so do many of the people at work too.

Nattiebo: Well, thanks letting us get to know you a little better. Do you have any final comments (free reign here)?

Onefast1: Thanks for the chance to chase down some-o-you crunchers and to fathertyme … I will get that top spot, it’s only a matter of tyme.


Telling it like it is...