1. Saturday mornings.  Even though I am actually working this morning, because I have finished Hellacious Project #1 and am now trying to wrap up Hellacious Project #2, I like that I can drift down to the office at a time that I choose.  I have some of the coffee my wife got me brewing up in the kitchen, and am looking forward to sipping a cup as I try to power through a few of the 5,000 items on my to-do list.

2. Folding@Home.  This is a project hosted by Stanford University, where they use computers to simulate protein folding in an effort to identify ways to attack diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.  The neat thing is that anyone with a PC or PS3 can sign up to have their computer contribute during its idle time.  I have our PS3 set up now so that whenever we’re not using it, it connects to Folding@Home and starts grinding away on folding proteins.

I don’t claim to understand even 1% of what this protein folding entails, but it feels good to contribute to something that could help humanity, and all it takes it setting up a computer to run some calculations while I’m not using it.

3. The fact that I don’t have a disease named after me.

photo credit: net_efekt