Probably the easiest way to verify your setup is to run testnet (testnet=1). But use a different BTC address then and backup your synced mainnet blockchain first, not sure if this wouldn't get overwritten by the testnet sync.
In regards to the shares, the "Accepted" value will only increase when a block was found. On solo, it's all or nothing Smiley

Last but not least, you can also try to run a more recent version of the bitcoind with cgminer, using my coinbaseaux flag patches (which include some display optimizations for solo mining): https://github.com/vthoang/cgminer/pull/12
Haven't tried yet if these patches apply cleanly also on the lastest cgminer code with GSF support, but probably it will work just fine.