Is there anyone willing to spend a half hour chatting with me to point me the right direct? I would like to start mining litecoin, just to get my feet wet for now. I really don't even know where to begin, except I have a windows 10 machine. Will pay for time if needed.
You are in the right place, but why you didn't try to find any info here without asking first. Read and learn first before asking. So other people wouldn't say something like me. You need to know a basic knowledge about cryptocurrency itself, especially mining technique. After that, you can go to the next step. Some people can direct you to some product, but it will don't worth if you know nothing. You can read and learn as much as you can, and then implementation it with learning by doing. Good Luck!