Welcome to the Guru Mountain DC Team Site News weblog. This is where we post current team and project news, editorials and hints and tips for getting the most out of the BOINC platform. This site is intended to be a resource not only for our team members, but for anyone interested in distributed computing. Feel free to browse our site, register for the forums and get involved. You do not have to be a member of our team to use our discussion forums. Although there are a few private forums, the majority of them are public. We welcome your participation.

We recommend that when you register for the discussion forums or comment to posts on the weblog, that you use the same nickname that you use for BOINC or Folding@Home if you are already an active cruncher. This will make it much easier for us to sort you out from the constant spammers. If you are not yet crunching for distributed computing projects, now might be a good time to consider what you’d like to use for a nickname on the projects. You can use your real name, some variation of it, or anything else that you wish to use.

Our team currently participates in about three dozen projects running under the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform. We also participate in the non-BOINC Folding@Home project. Getting involved with distributed computing is easy and we’re always happy to help you out in any way we can. You do not need to be a rocket scientist, a computer genius or a wealthy jetsetter to participate. All you need is a computer, an internet connection and a desire to help increase scientific knowledge that benefits everyone.

We have done quite well for a small team. At the time of this writing we are ranked in the top one hundred teams, overall BOINC world rankings. It is our desire to continue to grow as a team, while maintaining the small team atmosphere and sense of family that we currently enjoy. You won’t find our members squabbling like children on the forums or plastering them with huge signature graphics. We don’t need or want your money. We’d rather you spent it on keeping your electricity and internet access bills paid up, so you can continue to contribute to these projects.

Some of our members are quite knowledgable about computers, others can barely find the on/off switch. We’re glad to have them all. This is a simple hobby that anyone can, and should, enjoy and feel good about doing. We feel that the team you join should help to make your contribution enjoyable and meaningful, not detract from it. To that end, we try to be as helpful as we can and to keep things running smoothly. No, we don’t always agree on everything, but we do make sure that we do our best to keep everyone happy. If you have not yet chosen a team to join, or are unhappy with the one you are in, then we hope you’ll consider ours. You are just as welcome on our site, though, whether you are a member of our team, another team, or no team at all (it’s not a requirement to join one).

Enjoy your visit to our site, and feel free to ask any questions you may have about our team or about distributed computing, or just pop in on the forums and say hello.