A wallet question

[wevie]

I just started a "hobby" mine.  I'm just diddling around and learning, nothing serious.

So I followed the steps at www.startbitcoin.com

Downloaded Bitcoin-qt, allowed it to sync, and wham-o I have a wallet.

Now, from the tutorial they talk of making a backup of your wallet and creating a secure wallet on a bootable USB.

Imagine I create a secure wallet on a bootable USB.  Imagine I have mined 1 BTC and it is in my first wallet.

Do I need to send the BTC from my first wallet to the address of the USB wallet and then wait for the transaction to be processed?

So if I theoretically mine 0.5 BTC per day and wish to transfer the balance daily to my secure wallet I have to wait for the transaction to be processed each day?  Or is it safe to only fire up the USB stick and sync the secure wallet like weekly? 

The BTC's I send from my first wallet to my USB wallet are just floating in the nether until the USB wallet syncs? 

Is this safe?

[mjc]

You can send to the wallet on the USB with out "firing it up".  All you need is an address to send to.  The only time you'll need to "fire up" the bootable USB is if you want to spend the coins.