Had a slow start, but pretty much ever since then seems to have been pulling in way over the average.
Reason I mention bring this up again is that I'd have assumed buffer should be +/- 50 (on average and tend to zero), it's now running at +250

Bah. I'm not going to quibble about the change as: a) it's not my pool b) you're not charging me to use it and c) I support anything that provides competition to the big pools.

but..

I liked the completely random payouts. The main reason I switched was (well OK, that was for the block bounties, but the other main reason was) just for a bit of a gamble. Days after day of nothing and then days where it came pouring in. Being a small pool the randomness was even more wonderful.

I can understand the change, and my love of variance isn't quite enough to drive me to mine solo..

How about bolting on something interesting to separate yourself from the other pools (I'm sure you're just twiddling your thumbs with nothing better to do). Opt in a lottery - say donate 10% of profits to a pool and then randomly give the pool (less admin costs naturally) to somebody in the round (each share gets one ticket).
 

It's a VTX3D 6990 card and I'll ship it boxed as new with all the various leads and other bits and pieces.
Seal is still in place on Bios2, so no warranty issues.

Message me your best offer. I'll include next day signed-for shipping within the UK. An extra bitcoin for Europe and another one for world-wide.

If anybody is feeling untrusting, I can add pic etc.

I agree. I've still got my Nexus 1 - and occasionally I may browse for an upgrade, but there's nothing that's obviously better out there.
Nexus S is nice, but a little plasticky. If you're not too bothered about a Google reference model, then maybe Samsung Galaxy S2. Looking at that price on Amazon for the N1 though - not going to get bigger bang for your buck.

It's a VTX3D 6990 card and I'll ship it boxed as new with all the various leads and other bits and pieces.
Seal is still in place on Bios2, so no warranty issues.

Message me your best offer. I'll include next day signed-for shipping within the UK. An extra bitcoin for Europe and another one for world-wide.

Seems fine for me.
On a vaguely related note, I was using the same password on slush as I did on MtGox (yes yes, I know).
Anyway, seemingly somebody tried to alter my payment address on slush - I have a non-dictionary password, so somebody has been hashing.
Unlikely to be the case, as I think arsbitcoin does same as slush and mails you through confirmations when somebody has tried to change something.
Actually - not even sure what the point of this post is now...
...basically, I'm fine. It's just you.

That was a pretty nice surprise to wake up to.

Although thinking how many those couple of guys with proper mining rigs just picked up (yes, I mean you ampeater).. *JEALOUS*
I can always find the bad side

Congratulations - you complete jammy bastard

Putting aside my understanding of probability, I quite like the small pool thing.
Actually fun crossing fingers for a good block or cursing a bad one.

I was just about to say exactly the same... 'Something' seems to have happened.
Not sure if it's connected, but I had 'problem communicating with server' popping up about 10 mins ago.

I prefer to think of it as character-building.

I was about to ask if the pool was actually working
Still I'm in this until somebody finds that f'in block. This has become personal.

We shall be fighting on the leaderboard..

Checked you're trying to connect on the right port?
I just signed up and forgot to alter the port when I cloned my batch file.

Me as well.

If I were in charge of a market that was re-opening after a dive, I might wish to ensure that I allowed the net buyers on first to get the price up to an attractive level - and then allow the net sellers to trickle in.

Of course this is just wild speculation on my part and the devious methods I'd run my exchange using are sadly, as yet, uncoded and launched.

ATI ones.
6990 is obviously the fastest - but expensive.
All depends how much you have to spend, whether you care about power consumption, fan noise, heat generation, playing games, selling the cards on afterwards blah blah.
If you just want to go mining, mid-range ATI is probably your best bet.
Easiest thing would have been just for me to point you here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Same here.
Deepbit says it paid out at 21:17 - as of 23:06 BST, nothing's showed up in my wallet.

Just me - or is the instant payment button not working at the moment?

I've got absolutely no idea what's going to happen - but I'm guessing it's not going to be smooth.
My plan is to completely ignore bitcoins for the next 48 hours, drink heavily and then peer at the new price between my fingers when it's all over.

First up, I use Mt Gox, but keep balances in BTC/dollars as low as makes no difference if it all vanished.

We all rushed into this happy anarchistic world of 'our money' without big brother looking over our shoulder with glee and excitment - the shackles falling from our feet.
The relished the startup trading sites and the idea of shadowy Keyser Soze masterminds lurking behind the scenes making out like bandits.

The moment something goes wrong, we all immediately start reaching for our pitch-forks, demanding regulation and over-sight and bleating about our consumer rights.
Nobody apart from me seeing any irony in this?

I assume the next step is that the exchanges will be stressing that they're based in the US, comply to all US laws, are audited by the banking authorities and withdrawals are only allowed upon the recipient faxing in a copy of their passport..

Either bitcoin is free-market-anarchy, Mt Gox can do what they want and we decide whether we want to use them, or another site, following this - we have the right to choose, but that's about it.
Or we regulate the arse out of it and make the entire thing pointless.

Possibly the (good) outcome is that it'll just fragment the trading market - you want to use the one that charges 1% on transactions and under-writes your cash, or the nice scuzzy one that runs in Belize.

My understanding of what happened at MtGox was that somebody hacked their way in, got a load of BTC, flogged them all trashing the market and then found out they could only pull out $1000 of their BTCs?
If this is the case, rolling back everything seems the only sensible thing to do - with MtGox covering any of the coins/cash that left their little ecosystem out of their own pocket.
Assuming the limit on withdrawal is $1000 with of BTC though, was that worked out on the average over the last 24/48 hours, or at the last traded price the market was pushed down to?
Anyway, I've wondered away off the topic now.