I used to mine here at p2pool about six to nine months ago. I'm considering coming back and I have a couple of questions. I am using Ubuntu 12.04.

1: Do I need to use a dummy wallet now that we have the disable wallet feature on bitcoin-qt or do I even need a wallet.dat file at all with the disable wallet command?

Edit: Well I answered my first question on my own I am using QT with no wallet.dat file so no dummy or any other needed.

2: I set a user/password in my bitcoin.conf file but when I try to use it with p2pool.py for example    python run_p2pool.py -a 1blahblahblah --give-author 0.5 -u user -p password
I have it running with no user/pass set and I used bogus user/pass on my miner to connect to my node. Is this a security issue, have I configured something wrong?

3:I'm at about 280GH/s and cgminer keeps changing my difficulty (often) should I set a minimum diff setting and where do I do that? I know there was a way in the past I just can't remember.

Edit: I answered my 3rd question you just append +xxx to your user name for the miner pool credentials and it adjust the difficulty accordingly...

4: My latency is about .3s, that seems high should I be concerned about that and start tuning a little or is that acceptable?

Thanks,
GrapeApe

BTW: The conversation going on beneath my post is the same one that was going on six months ago just different people.....BORING