I've always run with 1 main pool and 1 backup.  Today I tried with 3 total (1 main and 2 backup).

I understand that there might be some work leakage if the main pool is slow but I don't understand how cgminer picks which backup pool to leak to.
What I'm seeing is the main pool is priority 0 but the leakage is going to the priority 2 pool instead of the priority 1 pool.

I only checked eligius.st.  It came back soon after I posted.  If you check the pool hashrate graph you can see a down spike in activity.

Eligius appears to be down...

Exactly.  You can make a custom PC with a micro ATX motherboard, RAM, CPU etc and use that as a custom controller.  They can be put together pretty cheaply but they still consume way more power than a RPi or BeagleBone.

A PC controlling an ASIC miner will draw around 100 watts (obviously if it's GPU mining it's way more).
A BeagleBone draws about 3 watts.

At 10 cents/kWh a PC costs about $7/month to run 24/7.

Obviously this is a test of how dependent BTC is upon SR.  However it sounds like SR's management is working on upgrading their system to handle the increased load.

SR isn't the only game in town, merely the most trusted/best established.  If they were to go away the current set of competitors would grow to fill the void.

Nice work dude.  What controller board is that you're using?

It's few enough lines changed that you could just hand edit to add the changes.

Have you tried this?

Real men don't need no stinking GUI!  You SSH into it like a man!

They're $87 if you buy 5 or more. 

Seriously we use these things at work and I use them at home.  They're very reliable, apparently more reliable than the current generation of RPi.

OK I'll change to difficulty 1 when I get home.  Too bad you can't do difficulty 0.25. 

A BeagleBone would be a potential alternative.  I'm surprised noone has mentioned it yet.  They draw about 3 watts, less than the RPi.

Ah got it.  I just figured it defaulted to 1 if I left off the +n at the end.  So I'm worthy of difficulty 2 at 200 Mh/s? 

Oh, I can take it since this is really just a hobby for me.  My little bankroll of 30 BTC gives me a warm feeling every time I see it. 

I guess all our questions will be answered in just a few weeks.

Hah finally found your pool.  I'm a small miner (200 Mh/s) and have been mining straight p2pool for a while.  The variability is pretty high this way so it should be interesting to see how I do here.

I noticed my cgminer (v2.7.6) reports difficulty 2 shares.  Shouldn't it say difficulty 1?

There might be alternatives, but it boils down to trust.  Why do you not trust tormail anymore?  Is it because someone posted some FUD on a message board?

If you find another, why will you trust that one?  Because people on some message board somewhere says they trust it?  How do you know they're not government shills pulling the unsuspecting into their honey pot?

Yes.  Create your own.  It's the only way to be sure.

Ooh ooh I just got a payment from eligius.

Characterizing certain uses of these services as abuse doesn't make sense.  Bad people use legitimate channels for their activities all the time.  That doesn't make the channels bad, nor does it mandate that they "police" things.

The point of BTC and these anonymized shipping services is to promote free commerce.  Period.  If you want policing, charge-backs etc, then buy things on Amazon with USD and ship via UPS.  Even better, use PayPal which restricts whole categories of otherwise legitimate goods from buyers and sellers.