Stupid question: Are we in a drought or are we just suffering from a lack of miners (with heavy iron)?
What coin / net are you on? I say Jtoomimnet looks strong compared to mainnet, for BTC mining. If you are on mainnet, I suggest just getting on Jtoomimnet now. I tell everyone about the two nets, but I push people to go with Jtoomimnet. They blocked not to long ago and seem to be in the 16day range of estimated block times, while mainnet is 93 days EST. I say, hop on the stronger network.
On the LTC p2pool side, we just hit 4 blocks so far today. Last week was one of the worst weeks Ive had mining LTC on p2pool in my 3 months time on the pool, but again it comes back around. When I first hopped on p2pool LTC, global hashrate was 20GH with 3 day block times. Today, we are between 200-300GH, with 14-20hr block times crushing it. The payouts just get better and better for miners the more hash p2pool gets. Its just peoples patients that will be tested, in the age of instant gratification. But more and more people keep staying on building trust in p2pool based off the payouts they receive, heh. More coders have joined us(p2pool), and now we have block announcements in our discord channel for p2pool LTC blocks. I know it could do it with mIRC, but most seem to favor discord now days. One guy even put together a more modern looking p2pool LTC node scanner. Jtoomim and any other coders or p2pool miners, you are always more than welcome to join us on the discord. Pm me if you want it, I don't want to break any rules here.
LTC p2pool node scanner
http://mine.demon.nl/ltc-nodelist.htmlHe is tweaking it every day it seems.