Hi Luke-Jr, first of all thank you for doing all the work you do for this pool.  As a new member who joined less than 2 days ago, I have a few questions / suggestions.

Being located in North America, I started using your US pool to do my mining.  Having a relatively slow vid card at the moment (processing around 80Mhash/sec), it took me 2 days to amass about 0.2455 BTC in the US pool before you closed it down.  Now I'm forced to mine in the EU pool and made about 0.1265 BTC so far.  I'm sure I'm not the only one in this position, but many of us would like to donate a portion of our winnings so you can continue to improve on the pool.  I'm also sure a lot of us newbies have just recently started mining with relatively slow rigs, and as such have not received any payments yet.  These current server issues is delaying our first payments even more, and until I make my first BTC, I have 0 BTC to send away or to donate.  I was hoping to get my first payment by the week-end, but with switching over to the EU server, I don't think that's going to be possible.

1. Would it be possible to combine the earnings of both pools so those of us mining on slower rigs can reach the 1 BTC cash-out amount quicker?  Or create a button on the

In the US pool, there is mention of two different metrics: value and earnings.  When I check the http://eligius.st/~artefact2/us/ website, I can only see my unpaid reward, which is basically the total of the lowest of both value and earnings.

2. Would it be possible to display both the earnings and the value in the report so I have an idea how much more BTC I can expect to gain on future long blocks?

I think one complaint people have is the lack of transparency we have in the process.  Your US pool's HDD was running out of space, so you shut it out.  You mentioned it would be good for another 48 hours, then a few moments later you shut it down anyways.  Those 48 hours would've made the difference for me and I'm sure many others of getting near the the minimum payment quota.  You gave us no ETA on when the US pool will be re-opened, which is a first step for us to begin mining so we can generate enough shares to get our first payment.

3. Would it be possible to give us an ETA of when the US pool will re-open?  Will the upgrade you are doing solve the HDD issues, or are you also waiting for a new / additional HDD before you can reopen it?  Is the EU pool at risk of closing down due to lack of HDD space also?

I understand running a pool comes at a big time and equipment expense from your part, which I'm sure is appreciated by everyone, but if you want the pool to be successful and the donations to come in, you have to help your miners be successful, the large miners and the small miners.