I started out joining a pool about a week ago myself. I have netted about a whole BitPenny so far... so, at the rate I am going, will have a whole BTC in about a year...
That doesn't seem right. You should be making a bitcoin every three days or so. How quickly were you generating shares? Were your shares being rejected?
I am using CPU because my GPU doesn't seem to support any of my attempts (on either of two computers). I am generating at a pretty steady 3.0Mh/s with a 7 day average of about .0013 or so.
Perhaps I just don't have something set up right just yet... before going and asking a bunch of questions, trying to suck all the info I can find out of these forums.
Oh, yea, I have that sucker running 24/7 too.