If you are reading this post then chances are you have come here from one of my listia auctions. If not then you should visit this link and sign up for an account before reading further. It's good to sign up under me because I get a few points for each new member I bring to the site that I can use to buy more items for my project. If you already know about listia then skip the first paragraph of this post. If you already know how WCG and folding@home work then skip to the third paragraph.
Listia is an auction site similar to eBay. The only difference is that it uses a point system instead of money. You can buy points through the site if you wish but I generally advise people to not do this since a $1 amazon gift code usually goes for between 1,000-2,000 during a weekend auction as of the date of this post. I'm sure if you are reading this post years after the date I made it this has gone up significantly as points seem to lose their value as time goes by. This shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't sit on your points for many months though. I generally like to bank my points but won't hold onto any large amount for more than six months.
While most people use this auction site to sell items they don't need for points and then spend the points on other auctions I use it to buy items I can have to either give to cancer and disease related charities or to use them as prizes in data crunching contests where members of my world community grid team or folding@home run these programs on their computers. When they have these programs running their home computers are actually becoming research computers. Basically the severs at WCG or F@H are sending your computer small pieces of raw data called work units that your system does the number crunching for. When your computer or smart phone completes the number crunching of these work units they are sent back to the home computers at Stanford University and the completed data is pieced back together. After researchers have a chance to look at this data they can get a better understanding at the shapes and interactions of different proteins and molecules so they can develop new drugs to fight and cure various diseases. This is a slow painstaking process but if enough home computer user can join the fight we can do a lot in the coming decades to help this endeavor move forward.
If you want to double your $1 amazon gift code to a $2 code then all you need to do is download the world community grid program here.
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/reg/viewRegister.do?teamIDha=2H274R71S1
Then just join team Endthedisease through this link.
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=2H274R71S1
Post the username you used when you signed up for the program below. You now just have to complete a small number of work units to get you second $1 amazon gift code from me. Right now you only need to finish 25 work units to get your reward from me but in the future I might change that. From my own experience it takes an average computer or laptop 24 hours of running this program continuously to complete 25-50 work units. Of course if you have a much older system it could take longer. You can also go into the advanced preference menu after you install the program and set CPU time to 100%. This will make your work units finish much faster. You will only be able to do this once when you win one of my listia auctions for amazon gift codes I will be keeping a list of users that have done this but from time to time I might delete this list and start over. Remember that most computers use less than half the energy of a child's nightlight so even leaving your computer running 24/7 will only cost you pennies every month. Plus you can prevent much damage to your hard drive by avoiding shutdowns and rebooting of your system this way.
Remember that all the point I accumulate from listia go towards sports cards like baseball, football and basketball cards and other items that I use as prizes in contests that support disease research through world community grid and folding@home. The only cards I get are high value relic and autograph cards. You can keep track of future contests and even get a chance to be in them by visiting this blog for updates. The best time to check in is towards the end of a month because each contest always starts on the 1st of a month and runs through the entire month, so announcements and posts would usually happen a week or so before the end of the month.
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