2012
Recently i was looking for an old wallet i had on one of my servers. I knew it had to be somewhere, and i knew there would be more than one. So i started an adventure into finding it. Since i am a developer at core, but also have done some sysadmin stuff, i've had a linux server since redhat 5.0 (no not the enterprise linux version, plain old redhat 5.0). During the course of time that server has had various hardware upgrades, software upgrades and even complete OS replacements. I knew that i fiddled with mining in the early days of bitcoin since i wanted to see what it was all about. Unfortunatly for me those where also the days that cpu/gpu mining got replaces by FPGA's and ASIC's where slowly coming on the scene. So after a few weeks i stopped with only a couple of coins mined. That wallet, i never looked at again, because at that time it would have been $10 to $20. Seeing the price of bitcoins skyrocket made me think of that wallet more often. So i decided to do some investigation, and found an install with the following log file ending (don't worry, the wallet was empty).

So now i needed to know the address that was attached to my wallet, since that would allow me to go into the block explorer and investigate if there was anything on there. Unfortunatly, my address 13i6yz3JEBmVXZQYLe5Sxp1sH3Gn4qsPZL was never used for a transmission. So this was the one i had running as a daemon on my server to support the network.

Thanks dad !
Since my first attempts at mining wasn't as successful as i hoped, i wanted my second time around to be different.Like the logical person i am, i base my decisions on facts not fiction, and to do so i needed input. Now there are different types of input, good input, bad input end wrong input. The trick is to try and filter out what is good input, and move on from that. Now my dad teached me a valuable lesson in the late 90's when that dotcom thing was booming. We had telemarketers calling the house to sell stock's because of the 200% gains etc. And every time they called them he'd listen to their story, and at the end tell them this and i quote. "So you are telling me, i can get rich very quick if i do what you tell me ?". The person on the other end would confirm that because that was the product they where selling. So he followed that up with "Then why are you wasting time calling me and not investing it yourself since you so clearly state there is almost no risk and i'm certain to get very rich?". That was the point where he hung up. Now before you say "he's a fool and could have made a lot of money investing". Before he died, he owned 33 apartments that where all rented out. He built those with his own hands, made clever deals with the city and made sure my mom was financially independent when he was gone.

But what has this story to do with crypto and mining ? When you are gathering information, and people start promising you returns, promoting products, and not addressing the risks attached to that you might be in the risk of being scammed or misinformed. So you have to invert the data to make good data out of bad data. People asking you to use an affiliate link, probably are using that to gain wealth. Now if their knowledge is so good, would they need the extra few bucks that affiliate link brings them? In this case i'm talking about the links to lending platforms, exchanges and online wallets. An affiliate link to amazon has nothing to do with the advise they are giving you about what or where to mine, but still indicates that their advice about bringing in the big bucks might need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Data gathered, lets build!
So with an excel filled with data of hash rates, hashes per watt, bang for the buck, return of investment, daily, monthly and yearly returns and costs across all major cards and system builds i decided to build a 9 card rig. One would have 6 1070's and the other 3 1080's (and a little extra room for some more later on). The local hardware store gave me more than enough angle brackets, i got screwed there ... i mean screws (damn second language). Placed my order for mainboard, CPU's, RAM, SDD , PSU's and GPU's, and while i was waiting for that to be delivered some day later i started to build my frame. After assemling, it looked something like this :

The fans on top where initially placed on the front, but somehow sucking away hot air along the cooling fins works way better than blowing it perpendicular to the flat surface of the first fin.

The actual mining.
Although i am not giving any tips as to what coins to mine, where to mine them or what my profits are, i do have a few tips for those wanting to do mining themselves.

Look at simplemining OS, it has all the software, runs stable (at least for me) and is a dirt cheap solution
Don't accept mine or anyone else's advice as the truth. Seek out what is the truth for your use case.
Don't use a single source of input, but use anything you can find. The good, the bad and the ugly.
Try mining with your underpowered cpu / gpu / phone to setup mining pools, and investigate their workings. Do they mine straight to wallet or do they have a payout policy?
Use desktop wallets, avoid leaving crypto online or connected to the internet. Do not trust sites creating paper wallets, you will put your funds at risk! Use a ledger when possible, and big numbers are involved (unfortunatly not all crypto is supported by ledgers). I use separate wallets for mining and cold storage to avoid the major part of funds being at risk.
Inspect the product you are mining, don't be fooled by a beautiful website, flashy wallet or great YouTube presentations. Investigate like you are looking for proof against a murdering maniac that slaughtered your family. If after that research you are still convinced it is a good project you've at least made a decision base on facts.

Too long did not read.
I'm living my mining adventure, you live yours. Be careful out there and have fun.
This was just my try to put something on here after getting my steemit account.
May the hash rates be forever in your favor!