Woohoo! Oh, I added another machine today, but I lost one last week.

Excellent!

My machines took a week off for Christmas, but they are all up and running again now.

The FlyerTalk Team is now 995 of 35454 aggregate. :)

really making some progress now, thanks to SteveinSTL's Hotel PC's. Great work. I manages a 600 point work unit yesterday - that really helps push things along as well! Its a pitty some seem to have dropped out of the team, but maybe they will be back soon :cool: .

Just joined today. I don't have a workhorse computer but hopefully it'll help a little.

I joined yesterday. My name isn't showing up on the FlyerTalk team page, but is that just because I haven't finished any work units yet?

That's right, nerd, your name doesn't show up until you get your first work unit.

a thousand two ways
 

Way to go, as already reported we're in the top 1000 of teams, and making steady progress. And another milestone will fall in the next 24 hours - completion of the first 1000 work units. Now that we're adding people at a good clip, that's just great.

As far as my hotel units go, I really took to heart the idea of leaving footprints everywhere FT'rs go. There are now pc's churning away in Naples, Mississippi, and soon to be New Orleans. With trips in the next 30 days to LAG, ATL, OMA, MCI, it will grow more. Yet most of the machines I added were right in STL, near my work or on the way home. Quite literally, I walk into business centers and hop on the Pc's. Some have some security barriers in need to get around, and I've picked up a few tricks. A few seem to also purge out the F@H software, and i've needed to restart it. Some, however, are unbreakable to me.... So if anyone else wants to really bolster their numbers, think of what 6 or 10 hotel pc's in your name could do to your numbers!! ^ ^ My goal is to have 100 pc's working by year end. I figure I've recently added 10 more that haven't reported in yet, so I think I've loaded this onto about 25 so far. If only we got miles for all this!! :D

Anyhow, keep growing along, and thanks for the great idea percussion king. It's really helped.

Dormitories

Want to share a few "common problems" and workarounds? I think some of us here would want to try to do the same, but probably need some tutorial to get around some common barriers.

In other news, I had a problem with my F@H installation - had something like 350/400 frames completed, then on a restart, i lost my tray icon. Restart didn't fix it, so I had to end up reinstalling the program to get the icon back.

Good: The F@H icon is on the desktop or Quick Launch toolbar for easy access.

Better: A shortcut has been placed in your Startup folder so the program will automatically run every time you log in.

Best: A shortcut has been placed in All User's Startup folder so the program will automatically run no matter who logs in.

common problems, some solutions
 

OK, here's what I've found. First of all, some hotels have really really antiquated computers.... trying to quickly & without drawing attention install the program, I initially downloaded the F@H 5.03 for WinXP, etc. Wrong! Many many computers are still earlier versions so you need to install the lower version. Secondly, many computers are blocked from downloading programs at all - from explorer drive C doesn't even show up, and on some you cannot even open explorer at all. For those, I've downloaded the program to the desktop, then launched from there. Thirdly, if you can install to C drive, F@H is default setup to install in "program files". Most hotel computers won't allow it, and give an error message. So, click on "browse" and install somewhere else on C drive. Fourth, even after successfull installing the program, the icon doesn't show up in the tray. If you hypothetically installed into "drivers" folder, you need to go into that folder & dbl click on the F@H icon, and then it'll install to the tray.

What I've not solved: some hotels I strongly suspect have either IT people or programs that review & purge unauthorized programs. There is a "non graphical" version of F@H, but I just don't trust what I cannot see! Maybe it's a good solution for hotel computers that repeatedly close this? I like earlier post about good/better/best - I might have to modify a few of the computers nearby that I can frequent.

Some observations about hotels: very high end hotels are the worst! :td: Yes they have computers, but either for a fee or they are well blockaded. Midrange hotels are reliably strong: Hilton Park Inn, Wingate, Doubletree, Sheraton, Holiday Inn's all have business centers. I've struck out at all: Courtyards, Hampton's, Drury. Many Comfort Inn's do. I've even managed to "borrow" a hotel office's computer that didn't have a business center! ;)

So I continue to run in & out of hotels. If you cannot install in 3 attempts, move on. If it's not at least Win98, move on after 1 attempt. Think about this: if most people on the Flyertalk team have 4-8 computers in their lair, imagine what you can do with even 1/week add'l computing time? Even if only half of those actually stay installed & produce, you now have lots of computers/year you can get working for you. If you are in the road warrier status of being out 60-200 hotel nights/year, the opportunity is immense.

I'll admit being a bit jittery the first few times - will I get caught, what will I say, etc. Well, I've only been denied access a few times, never caught, and since I firmly believe we're doing no wrong, what's the harm?! Good luck adding to your numbers! ^ ^ ^

the real reason.....
 

It's easy for competitive people (me??) to get caught up in the race. But the real reason I want to do this, and am thrilled with our progress in 4 MONTHS, is what Blindfaith said above. So, how'd it go with the school council? Maybe a lifetime of harnassing computers to do work units will never produce a verifiable gain, but just imagine what it could do? I'd be forever proud if our team somehow contributed to some major medical breakthrough. Sorry for missing your post Blindfaith during the holiday rush. You gave a real nice reality check. :)

And now for the fun part... here are the latest rankings.

Flyer Talkers

Date of last work unit 2005-01-11 17:15:17
Active CPUs within 50 days 50
Team Id 39124
Grand Score 103142.9 (certificate)
Work Unit Count 1080 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 916 of 35558
Home Page http://www.flyertalk.com
Fast Teampage URL http://vspx27.stanford.edu/teamstats/team39124.html


Team members
Rank
(within team) User Score WU
1 WinkyDink 22324.6 275
2 birdstrike 21506.2 232
3 FT_User 12197.0 93
4 SteveinSTL-hotels 10400.6 112
5 tlglenn 6843.0 76
6 OnAMileHigh 6317.44 71
7 NickW 5418.72 30
8 work2fly 3932.0 51
9 percussionking 3882.0 35
10 SuiJuris 3115.07 18
11 shell_nyc 2205.0 25
12 elCheapoDeluxe 1902.0 19
13 MapleLeaf 1159.24 13
14 blindfaith 751.0 21
15 nerd 642.0 3
16 roundtheworld 547.0 6

I've just setup 3 machines to work on this...

^ :D

I wonder if Randy is aware of this endeavor?

Imagine the exposure if this got a mention in TailMail?