Nice - I didn't realize Tetris had a lot of different strategies, but I always tried to leave space for the 4-block line.

A benchmark site like this one is usually helpful to compare cost and performance:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html

Thanks for the link - watching it now.

I agree this is the reason for most of the off-topic posts.

I had an account here years ago and it's still difficult to be higher than a Newbie.

Not sure if you realize this, but most people lost any coins they had at mtgox.  Maybe if you pulled the coins to your computer you would still have some, but most likely you would be more upset for the coins you lost.  Even people who didn't have their coins in mtgox seem to be upset because they sold them at some other price --- so don't be too upset, there's always someone who has lost way more bitcoin than you.

Lately I liked listening to the Analysis in Chains podcast and the Neocash radio podcast.

What, no Windows 3.11?

Catan is still pretty good.

Still playing minecraft once every few months - mainly when others want to play multiplayer.
I think multiplayer servers like Hive and HyPixel are still pretty fun.

Let me know if there are other good servers that you or anyone likes.

The movie "Antitrust" seems to match the spirit of bitcoin a little.
It's a mainstream movie that mentions open source (crazy!).
It's great if you hate microsoft, and still entertaining if you don't.

"I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend who work in securities...", Office Space

Seriously though, I mainly just want to pay for my kids college tuition.
After that, maybe I can work at my own company so I can make (hopefully) better technical decisions than a larger company can.

Thanks for writing this up.  I've been mostly looking for super cheap motherboards, etc., and never could find a complete computer on sale that was worth the money.
Definitely an alternative I'll look into more.

Depending on your costs for electricity and hardware, you could still make a profit.
The question is does buying coins make a lot more profit.
Because so many people are finding out about crypto coins at the moment, coin prices are going up, and it seems like buying coins is better for now.
I bought some hardware a couple months ago.  I think I should have started with just buying coins, and waited to buy some mining hardware once coin prices aren't increasing so quickly.

Electricity (mining) is more expensive than natural gas for heating.

I wouldn't buy mining machines just for heating, but if you plan on mining anyway, it helps.

You would still have to figure out what to do with the extra heat once spring and summer come around.

Two for sure: btc and eth.
It's a little unclear what coins are at the next level, possibly monero or a similar coin.

After that, I'm still researching other coins with unique and useful features.  Recommendations welcome!

Good luck with your new coin!

It was pretty easy to setup email notification on ethermine.org.  It says the feature is "beta", but it seems to work.
Since I've enabled that, my rigs have only gone down when I've stopped them on purpose, so it's hard to know if it's working perfectly.

Everyone's a "little" late to this party.

It's important not to get too frustrated.  Even the people who were in really early also sold their coins because it seemed like a lot of money at the time.

People were buying pizzas with bitcoin for what's now 10s of thousands of dollars.  People have lost hard drives now worth millions of dollars.

There's always someone with a worse story, and so don't stress out about it.

No one knows exactly what will happen in the future.  If we did we'd All have kept more bitcoins.

I agree, a decent cpu can at least produce some Monero.  It's still not as great as GPUs, but it's at least something and doesn't seem to impact GPU mining.

Yes, you can picture it as mining and gaming each using a percent of your GPU's cabability.

That being said, not all games and coins are the same.  For example, a 3D shooter will affect your graphics card more than an simpler RTS game with older graphics.