Folding Forum

Hello! I am AT3 Reeves and I currently serve in the United States Navy at Naval Air Station Oceana. I also am an active participant of the "folding@home" program. Part of my duties as a member of the United States Navy is to serve my community and I use "folding@home" as a way for me to accomplish this. I have logged approximately 50 hours amassing 46 work units folded and completed 88,000 points thus far. My command has given me the OK to use "folding@home" as a form of community service as long as I can have my hours validated. I was hoping to attain a letter that would state hour logged and contribution given. My projected total hours would tally up to 100 hours by the 15th of June. If there is any way someone could assist me in this endeavor it would be greatly appreciated!

Nobel

PG does provide certificates of points earned or WU's completed from the Official Stats site - http://folding.stanford.edu/home/teams-stats/. Beyond that I don't know of any further validation being available from PG. However the folding client does keep a current log of work, and by default the 16 most recent log files in the F@H data directory. Would those log files be sufficient?

There have been other questions about community service (mostly from students). The answer most commonly given is that FAH has no idea how much time YOU contribute, only how much time YOUR COMPUTER contributes. The latter could probably be estimated, but even if that number could be validated, your computer's hours do not represent your personal hours.

Joe_H wrote:PG does provide certificates of points earned or WU's completed from the Official Stats site - http://folding.stanford.edu/home/teams-stats/. Beyond that I don't know of any further validation being available from PG. However the folding client does keep a current log of work, and by default the 16 most recent log files in the F@H data directory. Would those log files be sufficient?

If I could obtain a letter from anyone even remotely associated with the program it would go a long way in helping me. Bruce replied that the time contributed from me and my computer are not the same but it was something I made sure to make clear to my command when I explained to them how folding@home works and what my actual contribution is. As far as an accurate time goes I have kept a log in an excel sheet when I run the program. Thank you both for your quick replies.

nobomode wrote:something I made sure to make clear to my command when I explained to them how folding@home works and what my actual contribution is.

Out of curiosity: what and how did you explained that ? Most of the time my rig is folding I have to go to work to pay for the power bill (and milk, rice, bread, ...)

ChristianVirtual wrote:

nobomode wrote:something I made sure to make clear to my command when I explained to them how folding@home works and what my actual contribution is.

Out of curiosity: what and how did you explained that ? Most of the time my rig is folding I have to go to work to pay for the power bill (and milk, rice, bread, ...)

I told them I physically do nothing and in its simplest form I donate a resource. They were quick to make the same point that my computer is really the one putting in hours. I compared me running a program with the huge number of sailors who show up at Navy events just to add to the size of the event. They literally stand around and if their hours count I didn't understand why mine wouldn't as well. They really didn't have a counter point and agreed as long as I could get something in writing they would count these hours. Obviously these hours will not hold the same weight as someone who might have built a homeless shelter with their bare hands but it shows that I at least put some thought and effort into representing the Navy in a positive manor. This community service isn't court ordered or anything like that. Its not super strict and it wont hurt my career if I don't volunteer but it certainly helps me if I do.

As I said, I've dealt mostly with academic mandated community service which can be quite different than the kind of voluntary service you're talking about where they want to know how much skin the students have in the game. As long as your command is happy, so are we.

Will they accept a certificate with a computer-generated signature? You can print your own certificates from your official stats page. http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/mai ... e=nobomode (They're both rounded down.) See if the Navy will accept either the one measured in WU or the one measured in Score ... perhaps with your personal log measured in hours.

One nice thing: You don't pay the electric bill ... the Navy does.

A boost in validation could be (a wild guess from my side) if you spend time to active explain F@H to your peers, help them with setup, maybe create a new team for which they all fold for. That could demonstrate some kind of leadership, communication skills and helps the science on the fly.

ChristianVirtual wrote:A boost in validation could be (a wild guess from my side) if you spend time to active explain F@H to your peers, help them with setup, maybe create a new team for which they all fold for. That could demonstrate some kind of leadership, communication skills and helps the science on the fly.

Yes, in this case you could log your time spent researching the topic, speaking/writing about the topic and setting up and maintaining your system. In this case you would have to declare this log as accurate (however this is acceptable to your system). I do suspect this will need to be argued strongly as it is is not the kind of community service your employer envisioned when they set the rules. Hours used by your computer really make no sense in this respect as say 100 hours on a old laptop cannot compare with the science produced by a modern high powered GPU in a similar time. Although your comparison with sailors standing around is a nice barrack room lawyer ploy, I suspect it will be recognized as such... If you want to win this I suggest you show them a value in time they will more easily recognize, with the certificates from F@H as a backup.
Starting a team associated with your effort and actively recruiting for it (logging the time as I suggested) may be the more successful strategy that can be associated with your direct time/effort that those who decide these things will more easily recognize.

Hey guys I appreciate all the help and suggestions. I think I wasn't clear before but my superiors have already said this form of "community service" was fine and they would credit me for it. I did bring them in the certificates at first but they asked if I could supplement it with a letter stating hours because work units and points earned were just kind of ambiguous. It would literally need to be all of 4 sentences long. Any one affiliated with folding@home could provide it.

Without someone spending time searching through logs no one at stanford can tell how many hours your computer has contributed, and unless your computer is folding 24/7 the numbers wouldn't be accurate. All they would know is how long each WU was in your possession. I'm guessing thats not gonna happen.