Thank you all! That was a very nice welcome. Gridcoin community really rocks!

As for the pool research, I'm still trying out options of course.

I don't have a lot of horsepower behind it, for now I'm following the old SETI/WCG/BOINC ,mantra of dedicating just the idle power of my main work computer during the day.

My idea is that leaving a computer crunching overnight is wasteful, as the entire power draw goes towards number crunching, but running BOINC to top up your CPU during the day, while already having your computer in regular use, will just burn a couple of hundred Wh extra / day with almost the same results.