Here's my dumb question for anyone: If I set up (pool account, config) and start up before launch, will my miner connect and kick in at launch? Or should I wait until launch before setting it off?
I only ask because I shall probably be out at the moment of launch.
Yes it should do as long as you have worker setup and password correct etc.
Cool, thanks for responding.
Join several pools and set up failover in the .bat-file to all the pools you joined,

You can point your miners to "stratum+tcp://mnt.coins4everyone.com:3445" and go have party -> we'll do the work for you ;-)
You miner will retry automatically until it can connect to our stratum.
As soon as the wallet is online, we'll compile it and run the stratum -> then your miner will connect successfully and mine many coins.
Just don't forget to create your account and worker on the pool before leaving and double check your miner's parameters (address, port, username, workername & password).