I was watching tek syndicate on youtube and did some mining for him while watching his show. after that I started asking myself why am I doing this for someone else to benefit and started doing it for myself. although I have benefitted much from it. maybe cut a year off my video card's lifespan

I have been mining with bitminter for about three weeks or so. I have barely made .07BTC but that is more due to the fact that I mine off a single Radeon HD 7850.