As an antedote to some of the trivia that appears on the WCG Forums I thought I'd take the inititive and start a thread on what brings you here to crunch and what drives you to keep on crunching.

OK I'll start.

I discovered distributed computing through SETI@Home but after 111 days of searching for ET I discovered United Devices who were using Grid Technology to find drug molecules to halt various known Cancer causing protein molecules.

I have a large family my Mum is one of 11 Children, in all my Grandma was pregnant for 9 years !!! As such I have a great multitude of Uncles, Aunties, Cousins, Nephews and Nieces. It would be fair to say we stopped counting after cousin number 48 as I sit here tonight I don't know if even today one more might have been added to our number.

Now with a family that big I'm sure you will realise that along the way various family members have had to face the scourge of Cancer and I just wanted to kick back hard.

The World Community Grid just broadens that scope opening the possibilities of putting paid to many of Mankind's ailments.

I have suffered for a number of years with what Winston Churchill called "The black dog" This causes as much pain as any physical illness even though it is intangible. Some days it renders me speechless so if I don't get back to you immediately on that email it really is because I am a grumpy old git . My own selfish hope would be that we find something here to banish that pain.

In the meantime I will give what I can to this great project to which we have already provided a toolkit to be a catalyst for future medical research through the 20,000 years of PC time donated to the HPF project.

Tonight it looks like we'll break through 30,000 years with many drug molecules already removed which would have proved fruitless in the search for a treatment for HIV. As we continue the search 1 maybe more of those candidate molecules will be the one we are looking for.

This is what drives me to keep on crunching

and you?

Dave