NEWS

Hardware freaks trying to make some sense out of a bunch of numbers

So...How is Team Lamb Chop Doing?
Well that is tough to say right now. From my daily graphs it is hard to tell how we are doing compared to Team MacAddict and Team /. On the daily stats page it looks like we may be very slowly gaining on /., but not gaining at all on MacAddict. But...the main problem is in the stats right now is how the SETI@home servers update their stats pages. Over the past week the team stats are really only updating work units for the top 100 members of each team. Work units for the rest of the team do not show up on the SETI@Home stats updates due to the way their servers are configurated. Right now updating the *entire* team stats are not a high priority on their servers. Usually, they catch up on the stats processing once every 7-14 days....this ends up in a huge increase in each teams WU numbers. When that update happens Team Lamb Chop usually posts big gains on both /. and MacAddict (Lamb Chop members not in the top 100 usually are more productive than their bottom members). We ARE gaining on /. and (probably) MacAddict....but it is usually confusing from the graphs and the SETI updates. I am trying to be patient waiting for the SETI@Home guys to get things straightened out with their statistics and database upgrades....BUT I WANT THEM FIXED NOW! :-).

patience grasshoppa.....

THUD!
That sound you hear is the sound of SETI.Germany's WU total hitting the floor.They took a hit yesterday...most likely losing one or two memebers. They dropped out of the club team #5 spot and dropped down to #7 losing something like 18,000+ work units in the process. The Planetary Society and Powerbook moved up a spot to the #5, and #6 spots.

Stats Back Online
Some of you may have noticed that the Team Standings and individual team pages over at the SETI@Home offices were not up yesterday. They were offline because of alittle housecleaning with the teams by the SETI guys. Hopefully this cleaning will help out on their stats updates and help get rid of the problems I mentioned above!

STATS TEMPORARILY OFFLINE: We are currently cleaning out the stats directories in order to increase efficiency in stats page generation. Some of the pages below may not be available at this time. Hopefully, most will be back up by the end of the day today (11/19/99).

The teams and stats pages are back upline as of this writing. Happy day.

Team Sthuffffff
There is little to report top 20 wise........D²TLM has moved past tron and is now #13. Something I noticed today...and is hard to tell from my graphs is that leech is about to overtake AutoLign for the #4 spot. Right now leech is only 27 work units behind....and may take over the #4 spot tomorrow!

Blah.
If you may have noticed.....there was not an update yesterday. On Tues nite around 11pm my phone line went out. My girlfriend's line went out at the same time. I was without a phone/internet access for all of yesterday. They came sometime this morning and fixed it. All of the numbers may seem to be alittle high for everyone...that is because the update is a combo of data from yesterday and today.

Sun Shines on SETI
The SETI servers were down a bit this afternoon, because they were changing their data server. The new server is a donation from Sun Microsystems......here is the note on the SETI site:

SERVER BACK ONLINE:: The data server was down today (Thursday 11/18/99) for three hours (10:00AM - 1:00PM PST), during which we upgraded the SETI@home data server hardware. Previously the data server was a Sun Ultra10. This has been replaced by an Enterprise 450, recently donated by Sun Microsystems. Due to the long backlog of failed connections, you may still experience some problems reaching our server for the next few hours. We apologize for any inconvenience, and this new hardware will go a long way towards resolving our client/server connection problems.

Easy Go....Easy Come....
Once was gone is now back.....Benjamin R.D. Alarie appears to have rejoined Team Lamb Chop. He brings back 872 Work Units and sits at #33.

Top 100 Newcomers Vomesh and Zorro456 are making a big splash. Over the past two days they have posted top 10 numbers for WorkUnits/(2)Day(s)......with a total of 104 and 59 respectively. Over the past two days Vomesh has moved up 27 places, and Zorro456 has moved up 15 spots.

In top 20 news......Guidant moved up two spots and is now #18. D²tLM puts alittle room between himself and Grimas...and is comfortably (today at least) at #14.

Easy Come....Easy Go....
Some changes in the top 100 again. Team Lamb Chop had a defection in the last couple of days. Benjamin R.D. Alarie has left the team. He takes with him 843 WUs. If someone leaves....someone has to take his place.....new to the top 100 so far this week are: Zorro456 and Vomesh.

Movin' On Up......Guidant breaks into the top 20 today....at #20. He may not stay there for long since he is fighting pretty good with Clayton Olley for the #19 spot. Grimas roughs it up and loses today. He was passed by Dan² the Linux Man. The two of them have been doing a tango between the #14 and #15 spot.......Today Grimas plays second fiddle.

Shoot for the Stars...Fall Flat on your Face
A couple of days ago SETI@Home Poland hopped up into the #12 Club Team spot.....but yesterday they had a major freefall....falling all the way down to the #24 spot overnight. I am not sure why, but maybe there was some defections from Poland to Germany. SETI.Germany had a good day....posting big numbers and passing up both The Planetary Society AND Powerbook. They are now in the #5 Club Team spot.

SETI@Home Resource
Found on the alt.sci.seti newsgroup, there is a FAQ for SETI/SETI@Home on the web. This is a pretty extensive FAQ, I havent delved into it much, but there is alot of info. If you have a question about the project or the SETI@Home clients, there may be an answer for you in it. You can find the FAQ here or you can get a text version here. A word of warning because this FAQ is also a FAQ for the alt.sci.seti/sci.astro.seti/alt.info-science.seti newsgroups....so you may have to wade through alot to find what you may be looking for.

Something Interesting
Instead of looking at who may post the most WUs in the top 100 or has the fastest times.....here is a list of members who are in the top 100, but have pretty high average time/WUs.

Weekly Stuff
Gonzo again takes the WU crown for the week . He was followed up by leech and Guidant. The Phrog was the top mover for the week...hopping up 18 notches! You can see them and other top movers and producers on the Weekly Stats Page.

There has been a bit of shuffling in the past week in the top club teams. The Planetary Society has moved past the Powerbook team and now is the #5 club team. Also Team Canada has moved past OS/2 Warp into the #9 spot.....and finally FreeBSD was blindsided by SETI@Home Poland. The Poland team has now moved into the #12 club team spot.

On the overall team front Sun, even with help from davycroc and guru, was passed up by Compaq again. Compaq now takes over the #2 overall team spot.

Team Stuff
There has been alot of competition in the top 20 recently. Alot of close races abound! romkey is now in the #7 team spot after moving past cthulhu overnight. Grimas slides past Dan Dan the Linux Man for the #14 spot. In addition FluffyPants passed Caesar for the #18 spot....but Clayton Olley is will be right behind him. There will be a bigger fight this week for the top 20 spots because Guidant and Perb are at #21 and 22.....and are looking to move in on everyone's fun.

On a different note Ben Cornett has been steadily lowering his team best (top 100 best) time per work unit. Right now he is averaging 4 hr 52min per work unit done.

New Addition to Team Lamb Chop
Early in the morning on Nov 12th, The Little Bastard joined the team. Devin Eric Nadeau the son of benchmarking guru Rat Bastard was born...weighing in at 9 lbs 2 oz. Congratulations go out to both Rat and his girlfriend!

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