I had heard BitCoin brielfly mentioned a couple times in the last year or two but never thought anything of it.
Then back in June of this year, while at work and checking money.cnn.com for stock prices, I saw an article on BitCoin and it blew my mind. I spent almost the whole work day reading about BitCoin and alt coins and mining and the concept of crypto currency. My head was spinning all day!
I have a pretty easy job in desktop support and we usually spend at least half the day doing absolutely nothing but collecting $18 an hour. Not bad!
So I started doing my research, and scanning eBay for good deals. After some RMA headaches on parts I bought, I got it sorted out and after more headaches while transitioning from BitMinter to CGMiner and figuring out what driver versions worked and how to code the specs into the CGMiner startup script, I got things humming.
Now I mine LiteCoin at 3 Mhash/sec, with another 1.0 to 1.5 Mhash coming online in the next week. I have about 57 LTC now and more coming!
But DAMN do I wish someone had told me to mine BTC back in early 2009 and hold it until April 2013 and sell it all at $250+ per coin! DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT!!!!!!!