Greetings Team!
We're getting ready to go BaseCamping! :08:
We've been aware of the BaseCampers for many years now and have seen the fruits of their labors for many of the Cancer Research Teams that we've been associated with.
The two main teams for us here on the FF were PCQ&A where we got our start and BitBenders where we finished up after I retired from Florida and our old Corr_Ofc_Fla team was turned over to BuckFan1.
Over the next weeks you may see a few new FF members who are associated the BaseCamp Trek and you will likely see most of their activity stay in the "Cancer Research Team" boards... other areas of the FF will be open to them of course, but their interest is in the cancer research so that's where their focus will be.
You'll also begin to see more emails/newsletters from me over these next weeks as we prepare for and then go on the BaseCamp Trek.
I would like to invite all FamilyForum members to join in with us in this good work, it's easy to do and it's a 'set it and forget it' kind of thing that you can do with your PC and it doesn't effect or hurt your day to day computing, or place anything unsafe on your PC. GrandMa Kay and I have had it on all of our PC's for years now with no ill effects.
This is a fun and easy thing to do with your computer that very well may help to find cures for cancer and it's something that we can all do that takes very little effort and doesn't cost us anything.
You'll be able to see weekly stats and status reports here on the forum and we'll be tracking the BaseCamping efforts as well as our own FF teams progress.
Plus... you can look for more detail here.
Ready to get started?
We have a how-to topic where you can read up on the details:
WCG How-To Install InstructionsOr... if you want to skip the details and jump right in, go to this next link where you can install the WCG utility and join the FamilyForum Team all at the same time:
Download the World Community Grid SoftwarePs: The Tiger & Dragon avatar that I used in my CorrOfcFla persona seems like an appropriate 'back in the day' tribute to this effort, so I'll run it for a while.
Here's a little history for FF members who may not be aware of our cancer research efforts over the years.We first got involved with
Distributed Computing way back in 1999 when I started with the SETI project and then switched over to the
United Devices cancer research project after joining the PC911 computer help site. (the name was later changed to the
PCQ&A computer help forum)
So when we first started we were known as 'kenk' and there was only one old Compaq PC with a dial-up modem, but then family members like
kcranch,
bigbad-d and
cowboyup30 and his wife
Jennifer started to join in and before you knew it we were starting to have a real Team going on! And then shortly after family the folks at my job started to join in, including BuckFan1 and that's when things really took off. After a while we decided to rename the team and because so many of the members were from my work we called it Corr_Ofc_Fla (later it was CorrOfcFla) and that name stuck until we retired. Through the years we had lots of help from lots of folks, but our biggest contributor was always BuckFan1 and because of his efforts we grew to a team with over 200 active PC's at one point and that made us one of the heavy hitters in our little world, but mostly it gave us the opportunity as a team to make a significant impact on the good work that this program has been doing throughout the years.
After retiring we turned the COF team over to BuckFan1 and started the TobaccovilleKAC team with a few family members and then after a while we changed that name to Our 'FamilyForum'. At this point our team is still very small, with 5 family members running about 7 PC's, but we'll put on a push for more members for the BaseCamp Trek, starting with this post.