Yes.  I was paid out on the most recent 4 according to p2pool's block chain.

Why does p2pool currently show "current payout: 0.0000 BTC"?  Seems a little low...

I started and stopped it like 10 times and it didn't crash.

Isn't supposed to restore the GPU settings though?  It still leaves the GPU at its mining settings (a minor inconvenience).

Exactly.  It's very easy to run the bitcoin client through the Tor proxy.

The commands "bitcoind getbalance" and "bitcoind listtransactions" are your friends.

You're going through just what I did a few days ago.  You'll find much more day to day variability in what you collect as compared to say deepbit.

Bitcoind is kind of a pain because it doesn't print any helpful messages on the console like "done synchronizing" or "ready for use".
Here's a hint to know when bitcoind has finished and is stable to use:

1. Run bitcoind from a command prompt.
2. From another command prompt type "bitcoind getblockcount" (This communicates with the instance you started in #1)
3. Keep doing #2 until the displayed block count stops incrementing.
4. Bitcoind is now ready.

If you go to http://blockchain.info/ you'll see what the current world-wide block count is.  The final block count reported by bitcoind should equal this value.

Really the only "money services" are thoses that convert BTC to fiat currencies.

Why use them at all?  Why convert to fiat currencies (i.e. "funny money")?

Just sit on your BTC and only spend it in direct transactions for goods and services.  With no intermediary involved, there's no way to regulate BTC at all.

When I restart everything do I get a new address?  Would the pool still know the address I was using when I interrupted it?

I was asking because in the p2pool output there's a "shares" field that was 3 when I stopped it and went to 0 when I restarted.
I wasn't sure if it was just for that session or what.

Another noob question.  If I stop my miner or p2pool for a few minutes and start back up again do I lose anything beyond the lost few minutes of mining?

Clearly being honest (i.e. not hopping) doesn't pay since everyone cheats, huh?.  A lonely feeling.

The paper wallet is just a paper backup of your wallet.dat file.

If you have a HD crash and lose your bitcoin client install you can just re-install bitcoin and import the data from the backup.

They say the paper wallet is the safest but I guess it's just preference.  I store multiple encrypted copies of the wallet.dat file around the internet and on a USB drive.

Thanks for the feedback.  I kind of figured p2pool was more like solo mining than traditional pool mining.

Heck, I'll give it a week instead of 24 hours.  I understand that the variance is greater with this approach; I  just didn't have any idea how much it would be.  Now that I know I'll be more patient.

For anyone interested, here's my cgminer command line:

cgminer -o http://127.0.0.1:9332 -u xxx -p xxx --auto-gpu --gpu-engine 750-960 --gpu-memclock 250 --temp-target 80 --gpu-vddc 1.1 -g 1

Even though I set a high temperature limit of 80C, I generally run around 70C with my PC's case opened.  My clock ends up always at the max of 960.

BTW, since I'm using proportional at deepbit instead of PPS.  Prop has a much lower fee (3%) than PPS (10%)
I realize I'm something of a piker at 200 MH/sec so 3% fee doesn't really matter that much.  But I find this interesting at least.

My bitcoin client did instantly receive the few payments I was sent.  I know it takes a day for them to mature.

The 2 back to back payments were about 10PM east coast US time last night so that could very well be it.

BTW, I also had a bitcoin gui client crash yesterday.  Turns out I needed to use bitcoind to avoid a known crashing problem.

It sounds like I won't be getting the regular payments I'd grown used to with deepbit but on average I'll be making about the same.

Thanks for the help, I'll give it another 24 hours.

I'm a bit disappointed after trying p2pool for 24 hours but maybe my expectations are wrong.

I'm running the latest cgminer 2.2.6 as well as the latest p2pool and bitcoin clients.  Everything is set up correctly and the various programs are reporting being happy.  However I've only been paid 4 times.  Cgminer reports "accepted" about 2.5-3 times per minute (I'm running a single 6770).
While using deepbit I was being paid about 0.13 BTC/day.  On p2pool I seem to be making about 0.02 BTC/day.

The weird thing is that yesterday I was paid twice while I sat there watching after restarting everything.  Then after running all night there was nothing.

Go visit the cgminer thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0

You're going to have to experiment with different settings.  Just don't go crazy; try them one at a time.

5770 should be getting around 200 MH/sec.  Try changing some of the cgminer settings like intensity.

Also, run one of the ATI tools to make sure your GPU clock speed is correct.

I'd like to ask a couple of naive questions but first here's my background:  I am in fact using the 2.6 SDK and I'm mining productively using cgminer and a 6770 GPU.  I'm using phatk instead of poclbm because I read somewhere that it was "better".  At intensity 8 I'm getting right around 200 MH/s which isn't too bad for a 6770.

If I keep the 2.6 SDK, would switching to poclbm from phatk do anything for me?  The latest version favors poclbm for the 2.6 SDK but I don't know why.

If I downgrade my SDK from 2.6 to 2.5, what improvement might I see?

I recently got started mining with a 6770 using cgminer to regulate the temperature.

I realize now the advantage of having an external open frame setup.  With the 6770 board plugged into my motherboard with the case closed I couldn't run at max GPU clock speed due to high temperatures.  I ended up taking the side panel off of my PC to improve air flow and it made all the difference.  Before, I was running around 83C with a reduced clock speed of about 870 MHz.  With the PC case open, I run at the max speed of 960 MHz and my temperature is always about 78C.

So there are a few pointers from a noob to help out.