I truly appreciate the assistance. With your guidance, I have it all up and going, and understand the fine details a lot more. Thank you again.

As you will be able to tell by the nature of this post, I am just starting out bitcoin mining... never done it before.

I have spent days now trying to find my answers on FAQs all across the internet, and having only bits and pieces if am lucky, and most of the time the information is irrelevant, or is not specific enough. I am feeling truly frustrated after reading literally hours of the exact same "join this pool because solo mining is worthless, you suck, go die" bs. I need facts, not opinions.

I want to solo mine, and I am not interested in your attempt to talk me out of it. Now that that has been settled, I amtrying to set up a solo mining operation.

I read that the first thing I have to do is download the "bitcoin-qt.exe" ... or "Bitcoin Core". I have downloaded the "Bitcoin Core", it is fully updated (took two days), and calls itself a "wallet". I have a wallet already, it is through CoinBase. I am running it as a "server" ... but it still calls itself a "wallet". What is its purpose specifically when related to solo mining? Why am I keeping this running?

As I run GUIminer or BFGminer with solo settings, and am able to do thing "mining thing" ... but if I actually find a block, how does the "reward" get awarded to my CoinBase wallet? I have a wallet address, but do not know how to link the two. Currently, I suspect that if I find a block, and get awarded the prize, it will go in to the "Bitcoin Core" wallet program I have running, and I will be permitted to transfer that out to my CoinBase wallet address. Is this the case?

I am sure these questions might seem silly to some who have worked this stuff for years, but, please, release this tension headache I have and answer a couple simple questions for a guy?

Thank you in advance.

Llizardman