I don't know whether this means anything or not, but it's been nearly 24hrs since the pool went down. While down I switched over to DE since it was still working. Being in the US I didn't think that DE would do very well for me, but in one day on DE I have no stales listed. I normaly average about 4+ stales a day. Does this mean that my S3 is hashing better on DE?
Luck, coincidence, random chance, moonlight, starlight, solar flares...
No, you're better off in the long term mining to whichever pool is closer. The main pool was not disconnected for that long.