FWIW I moved to give-me-ltc.com. I am a small time LTC miner, but have consistently gotten the rewards I expected.

Doesn't matter. If you mine in pools with larger hash rates, you will get proportionally fewer rewards PER BLOCK, but the pool as a whole will find more blocks due to the higher hash rate. In other words, your average rewards over time will be the same (aside from pool fees, whether pools share transaction fees, etc). Only thing is that variance will probably be lower with higher hashrate.

If you go and read the Bitminter pool thread, you will see many pages of people worrying about that pool's run of bad luck a couple weeks back. If you read Ozcoin's thread, they were hacked and the pool operator had to take out a loan on I believe 1000+ BTC. Every pool has issues, grass is always greener on the other side.

People often wonder about Wall St and why stocks go up and down or crash one day or the other. It's the investors. With cryptocurrencies, it's no different. FUD is FUD. DDoS on a pool? People bail and prices plummet. ASICs are really shipping? Prices go up. Vircurex got hacked or Ozcoin got hacked? People panic and bail again. Don't invest with your emotions. You'll just become a Wall St trader.

Odd. You pinged 56.192.78.3

However, when I use the word address

stratum.bitcoin.cz resolves to 54.215.3.100
stratum2.bitcoin.cz resolves to 54.225.116.40

Perhaps you are using older server address? What do other people resolve to?

The other thing I have read, is that because of DDoS attacks the firewall at the server has some routine that can block people from connecting. Contacting Slush with this directly seems to allow him to enter something to let you in (tho Slush seems AWOL).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1976.msg1858637#msg1858637

Can you try a tracert command to the Slush server you are using? Open a Command window, and type tracert ADDRESS and see if it gets stuck anywhere along the line. Maybe you have dropped packets and so have trouble getting work or sending shares back?

I tweaked it a bit on mine to give:

I hear ya I'm having high discarded shares connecting via stratum to stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333

Note that I don't have a problem with rewards on this server, which other people have complained about in earlier posts. My issue is the high percentage of discarded shares.

You can fix this yourself. The Gadget points to an old, defunct link. First close down the gadget if it is running.

(1) Go to:
C:\Users\YOURLOGIN\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\MinerStats.gadget\js

(2) Edit main.js with a text editor.

(3) Find the line that begins with: var SlushPoolAPI ... and edit it to read: var SlushPoolAPI = 'https://mining.bitcoin.cz/accounts/profile/json/';

(4) Restart gadget. Enter your Slush API token. Should now work! Tips appreciated, BTC address below!  

What I don't understand is why I have a high discarded share ratio. My cards are stable, internet connection is stable, and I get 1.8 GH/s over stratum. After two and a half days, I have:

93274 accepted shares (47.7%)
387 rejected shares
300 stale shares
101469 discarded shares (51.9%)

Anyone have any ideas why the discards are so high?

Well I checked a few random blocks, both for short and long rounds. My hash rate is 1.8 GH/s, roughly 0.00018 of the entire pool. So I would expect my share/total share ratio to be roughly the same. I would also expect my BTC reward/total block reward to be roughly 0.00018 as well.

17998    2013-05-12 10:05:52    0:17:52    2561841    462    0.00464295    none    235816    25.30740000    87 confirmations left
17997    2013-05-12 09:48:00    0:15:08    2138520    371    0.00406863    none    235813    25.03670000    84 confirmations left
17996    2013-05-12 09:32:52    3:57:00    31341801    5908    0.00463280    none    235806    25.05710000    77 confirmations left

17993    2013-05-12 02:06:26    0:29:07    4092685    754    0.00509583    none    235748    30.47090000    19 confirmations left

17979    2013-05-11 09:46:21    6:03:56    50172079    9164    0.00441677    none    235630    25.49542000    confirmed
17974    2013-05-11 02:03:08    0:00:24    52466    11    0.00508856    none    235571    25.04650000    confirmed

From my spot check, most of my BTC reward/total block reward ratios range from 0.00016 to 0.00020, which on average is close to the 0.00018 I would expect.

Would using bitmessages rather than PGP-signed emails be more user-friendly?

https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page

17987    2013-05-11 19:18:10    0:42:04    6098743    1022    0.00448891    none    235698    25.33290000    95 confirmations left
17986    2013-05-11 18:36:06    0:44:56    6461795    1127    0.00440168    none    235692    25.59864968    89 confirmations left

(1) You need to measure how much electricity (watts) your miner is using at the wall. Best way is to use a Kill-A-Watt meter. This is your WATTS.
http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

(2) Figure out how many HOURS your miner is running. This is your HOURS.

(3) Multiply WATTS x HOURS / 1000 = KWh

(4) Find out how much your electric company charges you (per KWh). Multiply by above and you get your cost.

(5) You can use this calculator to help as well:
http://bitclockers.com/miningcalculator

But is the NMC generation rate tied to the BTC rate? In other words, if BTC difficulty increases, will NMC generation difficulty also rise, or will NMC generation rate fall?

From Wiki on St. Eligius:
Besides Eligius' self-mortification, Dado recalled his propensity for weeping, "For he had the great grace of tears."

You gotta be careful. Some heatsinks only work with reference design cards, and you have an XFX that has dual DVI ports then most likely it is NOT reference.

I'm still relatively new to BTC, but I still find it hard to think in terms BTC pricing. For instance, if you told me a watch costs $10 USD, I'd say that's fairly cheap. If you told me the same watch costs 1 BTC, I wouldn't be able to say whether that was "cheap" or "expensive" unless I knew what the BTC/USD exchange rate was.

My point is, when I think of pricing in USD, I don't have to convert USD to JPY or CNY or EUR ... I just "know" because I have a feel of what other things cost in USD, so I have a frame of reference.

Anyone else have trouble gauging BTC's relative worth/cost?

Is the pool server's clock wrong? I checked my payout history and received payment at 12:00 UTC, but my wallet lists the transaction occurring at 06:00. I live in the UTC -4 EDT timezone, so why a 6 hour difference?

So I haven't mined on Eligius in over a week, and my stats show that the address has entered the payout queue. However, I cannot access the payout queue to see where I am at.

About how long after entering queue will I get paid out? It's been about 2 days since I entered ...

I bought one AM-PT share last week. Dividends come out today right? But when I check my BTC-TC account, I didn't see any dividends received?