So I have about 35 coins which are now about 32 days old. I have a few questions about coinstake minting.
Do my coins have 35*32 coin days or do 35*2 coin days? In other words, does coin age only start building up after the 30 day waiting period?
My wallet is not encrypted, when I run the client, do I get any indication that the client is minting? I would at least expect to see some CPU activity for the process, which I don't.
Once I do find a stake block, and after I wait the 520 block stake period, do I have to wait another 30 days before I can start trying for another block?
You have 35*2 coin days, and yes, you'll have to wait for another 30 days (at least) after mining a stake block. The probability to even find one within a year with such a small amount of funds is fairly small.
This seems odd as it would encourage people to wait the maximal amount before trying to mine a stake block, since every time you do, you lose 30 days of interest. So under ideal conditions, the interest is not 1%, it is about 0.75% interest, and only if you can reliably mine your stake near the end of the 90 day cap period.
Any idea why my client does not appear to be stake mining? (CPU usage is zero)
Wait, there's a misconception here. It's 35*2 coin days for the purpose of difficulty, but 35*32 for the amount of interest calculation.
If you don't have many unspent txouts older than 30 days, the CPU usage will be fairly low. The whole point of proof of stake is that it reduces energy consumption by
being processing power bound, but rather time and money bound.