The best thing I took away from your tale was how you made mining and bitcoin a family activity.  When I first started with bitcoin I let it consume me, and I began neglect other things around me, including my family.  I was going through a pretty dark period and I lost sight of the important things in life.  I plan to now use bitcoin to teach my wife about internet security and identity protection, and my son about cryptology, philosophy, and technology as he gets older.  Thank you for this inspiration, I almost gave up on this activity because of what I went through.  Now I have a reason to enjoy it and make a stronger bond with my family.

Besides, my wife has always been better at managing money than myself!   

Dave

Trading my 42.8k Doge for your pandacoins on coin-swap!  https://coin-swap.net/trade/publickey/7BKrZL2B

Hashrapid has also consistently provided payouts, another good pool to try!

Big drop in network hashrate today.  I've been getting a similar payout to before the halving at http://mnt.coins4everyone.com/index.php - With the lower network hashrate there is still an opportunity for new miners to join up and make a good quantity of mintcoin!  coins4everyone's pool is fee free and has never missed a payout to my addresses.

Taking PMs for a little bit if any new miners have questions.

My BTC for your Mint on Coin-Swap.net!!!

https://coin-swap.net/trade/publickey/1UcPPKKn

https://coin-swap.net/trade/publickey/klTDifKB

My 3800 Doge for your Mint!

Aside from a few growing pains from the pools, I am glad I got in early on this one.  The benefit of very little energy over-head for a crypto is not lost on me.  That's the biggest cost hurdle to overcome as a miner.  Hopefully we have a smooth transition to the PoS method!

A perspective to add to the difficulty:price debate: exchanging currency for bitcoin in an exchange that waits a significant amount of time to allow that transaction to be proven in the registrar is significantly less expensive than instantly purchasing them instantly off of Ebay, for example.  I have not checked on the success or exact rate difference of these auctions, but the price differential between an instant (assumed more risky) exchange and an exchange that that has a much higher liklihood of being proven in the registrar was telling me there is still a major demand for BTC even at much higher prices.

Also to consider:  If a greater total hash rate (greater difficultly) does directly increase the value of a bitcoin, mining returns would only decrease in quantity of BTC you would likely be rewarded.   I feel as though a greater total hash rate WILL improve the exchange rate of national currencies to bitcoin, in favor of the bitcoin.  However, I also feel it will promote the micronization of bitcoin denominations.  This in turn,  I theorize,  will increase proliferation and accessibility of the currency;  which could serve to increase the intrinsic value of what bitcoin stands for.  This means more transactions in the registrar that need confirming... I would keep going but it's all theory and I think you can see my point by now.

^^ This.. I was able to add golang as a proficiency while learning about mining.  The cost of my hardware was less than a few credits tuition.  While I hope to eventually turn a profit (who wouldn't) there are other advantages to learning and setting up a mining rig right now; chiefly keeping the system from centralizing itself around the major data centers being built just to mine coin and the promotion of diy home, renewable energy innovation & application.