manofthem
WCG-TPU Team All-Star!
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2011
- Messages
- 10,960 (2.16/day)
- Location
- Florida
Processor | 3900X @ 4.0 |
---|---|
Motherboard | Asus ROG Strix X570-E |
Cooling | DeepCool Castle 360EX |
Memory | G Skill Trident Z Neo 32GB 3600 |
Video Card(s) | RX 5700 XT Pulse |
Storage | Sabrent Rocket Q 1TB |
Display(s) | LG 34UC88 |
Case | Thermaltake P3 |
Power Supply | Super Flower Leadex III 750w |
Mouse | Logitech G900 |
Keyboard | G Skill KM570 MX Silver |
Software | Windows 10 Pro |
Milestones Today - March 30th, 2016
@ChristTheGreat passes 20,000,000
Congrats to Our Stoner Tonight!
And a Warm Welcome to @ChristTheGreat on Joining the 20 Millionaire's Club!
I stumbled across this post by @twilyth many pages back in this very thread, and I wanted to share it with everyone because it really is a nice summary of much of what we do.
@ChristTheGreat passes 20,000,000
Congrats to Our Stoner Tonight!
And a Warm Welcome to @ChristTheGreat on Joining the 20 Millionaire's Club!
I stumbled across this post by @twilyth many pages back in this very thread, and I wanted to share it with everyone because it really is a nice summary of much of what we do.
There's a line from Desiderata that goes "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."
Personally, I don't like the language about greater and lesser persons because we all have our own unique strengths and abilities, but this was written in the 1920's and so one has to take it in the spirit it was intended. The point is that if your motivation for crunching is to make a contribution to solving some important problems like clean energy, cancer and aids or to contribute to basic research that will probably have some important real world benefits like with UGM, then there's no point in looking at what anyone else is doing. The contribution IS the reward.
However another aspect of this can the be the competitive aspect. That's encouraged because it helps to build the team and gets people to contribute as much as they're able to. But speaking from my own experience, it can become a bit addictive, so you have to know where to draw the line. That's really important.
I know that I spent at least $5k on my last building spree when I put together 4 servers from used Xeon chips and mostly new parts for the other components. And over the years, it wouldn't surprise me if I've spent at least a couple times that more. But with each new level you achieve, there's always more you can do and for some of us, the temptation to go beyond what we're really comfortable with can be significant. I mostly keep it in check but periodically do lose my shit and go on ridiculous buying binges.
So if it's the competitive aspect that motivates you more, that's cool. That probably applies to most of us to some degree. Just try to remember it's not what's really important. What's important is the mere fact that you have a desire to help and are contributing whatever you are comfortable with. It may not seem that way sometimes given how much we talk about points and work units and hours of cpu time, but in the end, it really is all that matters.