yes, I wondered if my little bit was really making a difference now that my daughter is using the (laptop) adapter for her lappy almost all of the time that I'm not (her one exploded rather dramatically) so I'm not crunching much anymore.
But, in the end, we can never know just which unit will be the one that brings a cure, & every single negative result means years of research & funds that aren't wasted in a laboratory somewhere to find out that something doesn't work. Every unit matters. & even though I don't get much crunching done these days, one thing that I learned years ago, "just because I can't do it all, is no excuse not to do what I can".
And the whole esscence of grid computing is that it's thousands of people, like you & me & all of us, who each do what we can, wether it's lots or little, who add up into a computing force that it would be impossible for any university or scientific institution to fund or maintain. We make a difference, we might never see it directly, but what we do saves lives. That's something to be proud of
& yes, Homer is real... Isn't he?