I'd have to let folks from that side of the pond answer your question.  Sorry I can't be of more help to you.

A Spoodlie:

An exchange.  coinbase.com is the most popular one in the US... circle.com is another... localbitcoins.com can also work...

lol... I was wondering how long it would take for someone to come on and defend Windows... man Norgz, I was just screwing around...

Get rid of that Windows 7 crap and install a good Linux distribution .  Problem solved.

The block solving hamsters are slacking off again... someone go out back and rattle their cages.

You can set the blockmaxsize on the command line when you startup your bitcoind.  I'm not sure if there's a way to query it via an API call.  If you want to see a pool's block template latency, you can do it like this:

http://some.p2pool.address:port/web/graph_data/getwork_latency/last_hour

That gives you a nice big JSON formatted object with a whole bunch of fun things:
The number you want is the second one in each bracketed set... so in this set:
you want 0.35015082359313965.

I'll answer the second part of your question.  Short answer is no, 0.03BTC is not low.  Under ideal circumstances, 1TH/s expects to earn 0.01257BTC per day at the current difficulty.  Since I don't know which address is yours in the table, I'm assuming it's the one starting with 15SmT... which shows 0.03899263BTC.  Since Friday, p2pool has found 6 blocks.  You're right about where you should be.

I think you're misunderstanding the stats.  As of right now, the wallet for payouts has a balance of 0.49596293BTC.  You can easily verify this on the blockchain.  This exactly matches up with the stats table at the top of the NastyPool PPS Test page.  That table also shows what the payout would look like if it were made right now.  There is no address on that table with an expected payout of what you wrote.

Hope this helps.

I managed to get to your node... no idea why I couldn't earlier.  So... your getBlockTemplate latency is atrocious.  You're averaging 3.59 seconds.  Also, you stated that you're 1000 miles away.  Is your mining gear 1000 miles from your node?  If yes, find a closer node as you're not going to get a very good ping time.  Finally, looking at the payout graphs for the day, it appears only 1 of the miners on your node has found a share today, and looks like one might have been orphaned (or at least it was found almost immediately before one dropped off the chain).

It's not tied to the shares you see reported by your miners on their UI... it's tied to the shares you find that are accepted onto the share chain.  Each share must meet at least a certain minimum target difficulty in order to be accepted onto the chain.  As of the writing of this post, that difficulty is 12291862.97.  You stated you've got a 1TH/s miner.  That hash rate, with the current difficulty, translates into an expected time to share of 14.66 hours.  Also keep in mind that once you find a share, it has to be accepted on the chain.  An orphan share is one that you've added to the chain and broadcast to the network, but was rejected because the majority of the nodes already had a longer chain than the one you're broadcasting.  A dead share is one that you found, but your local node rejected it when attempting to add it to the chain because your local copy of the chain was already longer.

As I wrote previously, it's all about variance.  I think a picture is worth a thousand words... so here's one for you:


Here you can clearly see that even though the miner's hash rate has remained consistent, the expected payout line is up and down throughout the past month.

Well, the first problem is that the node is not accessible.  I can't even ping your IP address, or run a trace route to it.  You sure your node is running?

I'm still not following what you're trying to state.  S4s come with their own PSUs.  Ordering more of them is completely irrelevant to the ones you currently own.  Do you currently have miners in your possession?  If yes, why are they not pointed at your own pool? 

You may think the questions irrelevant; however, people who might be interested in mining on your pool would certainly think twice about it since the pool's owner/operator/representative doesn't even mine there with his own equipment.  I believe this is what aurel57 is stating.  He's trying to help you out by getting you to clarify some of the statements you previously made to help put people's minds at ease - especially given the nature of the promotion you're offering, since a similar promotion in the past was met with such bad press.

It all depends on how many shares you have on the chain.  As mdude77 pointed out, sometimes you have more than expected, other times you have fewer than expected.  I've seen my own expected payout drop to a single share before, and have seen it do exactly the opposite.  It's variance and it happens to everyone due to the very nature of mining.

You're well over a year late to the party for mining BTC with any PC.  There might be some alt coins you can play around with if you're interested - check out the alt coins forums.

I run my own p2pool node, so there is no need for a login.  However, if I were to run a more conventional pool, I would certainly want to have a username/password in conjunction with 2fa.

It's not just about how much money you have to invest, but also in how much hardware you can accommodate.  Are you looking to build your own data center?  Lease space out in an existing one?  Mining at your home, or out in the garage?  Believe me when I say we ALL want what you're asking: the best bang for our buck.  It's also not just about the hardware, but what and where you are mining.  For example, do you mine BTC strictly on your own, taking the chance that you can and will find blocks, or do you choose a pool and join others?  Do you mine alt coins and exchange them for BTC?  Do you play the trading game in addition to mining?  Do you reinvest to get ever more efficient hardware and keep up with the curve?  Can the gear be resold?

You truly need to think about more than simply "what's the best miner?" because the miner is only one part of the equation.

No, it happens all the time.  Old and unnecessary share data files are removed regularly so p2pool doesn't completely fill up your disk with them.  You'll especially notice it if you happen to have shut down your node for a few days, and start it back up.

That's a known problem with the ants.  If you set the pseudo-share difficulty to something other than a power of 2 the best share will show up properly.

Hey windpath,

While I don't often use your node to mine (since I run my own node locally and also on a nearby VPS for when I travel), I do indeed use your services to do things like see payout history, compare my miners' actual hash rate to what p2pool thinks they have, etc.  I know you've done a lot of work and I've personally found great value in the services you've provided.  So, I thought I would be the first one to send you a tip/donation.

Thanks for all the work you've done.