How I Turned a Soul-Sucking Office Day Into a Monero Mining Experiment (and Didn’t Burn the Building Down)

in LeoFinance4 days ago

Ah, another glorious corporate office day. You know the type—endless meetings filled with meaningless buzzwords, awkward coffee machine small talk, and the annual “We Had a Great Year, But…” speech from management.

"We made good profits and saw excellent growth, but challenging times are ahead, and we need to be prepared… which is why we’re cutting costs, but hopefully not jobs!"

Translation? “We’re about to squeeze you harder, but please act grateful.”

Yeah, no thanks. I decided to use my time productively. And by productively, I mean turning my PC into a Monero mining rig.


Step 1: Fire Up the Miner (While Everyone Else Pretends to Care About “Agility”)

Since sitting through corporate double-speak wasn’t an option, I fired up an SSH terminal, connected to one of my servers, and installed a Monero miner. You know, for fun.

It’s a simple process:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y  
sudo apt install git build-essential cmake libuv1-dev libssl-dev libhwloc-dev -y  
git clone https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig.git  
cd xmrig  
mkdir build && cd build  
cmake ..  
make -j$(nproc)  

And just like that, I was ready to roll.

To start mining?

./xmrig  

Boom. Now I was mining Monero.

But mostly for the Monero community… not for myself. Yeah, turns out the default settings are basically charity work. So unless you enjoy giving away CPU cycles for free, you’ll want to update the config file:

{
    "autosave": true,
    "cpu": true,
    "opencl": false,
    "cuda": false,
    "pools": [
        {
            "url": "pool.supportxmr.com:3333",
            "user": "YOUR_MONERO_WALLET_ADDRESS",
            "pass": "x",
            "keepalive": true,
            "tls": true
        }
    ]
}

Quick note: If you don’t already have a Monero wallet, grab one using MyMonero. Unless you like the idea of mining for sport.


Step 2: Optimize or Die (a Slow, Hash-Rate Death)

Of course, if you’re gonna mine like a pro, you need to optimize. Otherwise, your CPU will throw a tantrum, performance will crash harder than FTX, and your earnings will look like your company’s real financials after "adjustments."

First trick? Huge Pages.

Because your crypto-nerd friends will mock you relentlessly if you don’t:

sudo sysctl -w vm.nr_hugepages=128  

Second trick? More CPU power.

By default, xmrig doesn’t use all of your CPU power, which is unacceptable. You're here to grind digital gold, not run a potato farm. Adjust the config file to make it work harder:

"rx": [1, 2, 3, 4, 6],

Why? Because blindly throwing all cores at the problem is a rookie move. Trust me—I tried, and my hash rate dropped by 70%. Turns out, L2 cache matters, and hyper-threading can be a sneaky little performance thief.

After three meetings’ worth of tweaking, I found the right balance of actual cores vs. HyperThreads to avoid my CPU running hotter than corporate gaslighting.


Step 3: The Heat Problem (Or: How Not to Melt Your Rig)

At this point, my CPU was cooking. Like, "someone just microwaved a fork" levels of overheating.

Solution? Throttle before your system throttles YOU.

Because if your OS decides to step in, it’s not gonna be pretty. Best case? Your machine turns into a sluggish disaster. Worst case? Fire drill for the whole office.

Install sensors if you haven’t already:

sudo apt install lm-sensors  
sensors  

And to manually throttle your cores so they don’t become lava bricks:

for i in {0..11}; do sudo cpufreq-set -c $i -g performance -u 2800MHz; done  

(Replace 11 with your number of cores minus one. Unless you enjoy kernel panics.)

And now? Pray to Linus. Adjust. Repeat.


Step 4: Sit Back and Enjoy the Digital Pennies Roll In

With everything set up, I went to supportxmr.com, entered my wallet address, and watched the magic happen.

Except… my hashing rate tanked. Again.

Cue another round of tweaking, testing, and wondering why I even bother. But after a few adjustments, I finally had a steady 1,000+ H/s hash rate without my machine spontaneously combusting. Success!

Will I Be Rich Next Week?

LOL. Unless you’re running a 512-core CPU at 8000MHz, you’re probably not quitting your job tomorrow.

But let’s be real—that wasn’t the point. The real win? Turning a mind-numbing office day into a tech experiment.

While my coworkers were busy pretending to care about “leveraging core efficiencies,” I was out here leveraging my CPU for Monero. And honestly? I think I made better use of my time.


Final Thoughts

Look, I’m not saying you should mine Monero at work. (But if you do, be smart about it.)

Optimize your CPU.
Keep temps in check.
Don’t let your boss see your electricity bill.

And most importantly, find ways to stay sane in the corporate circus.

Some people scroll social media during meetings. Others doodle in their notebooks. I built a crypto-mining rig.

Just saying. 😏🔥


📸 Captured & Edited

Shot with: Apple iPhone 14 Max Pro
Edited using: Lightroom Mobile & Skylum Luminar AI

All photos are my own work. Dive deeper and explore more on my website or check out my links.


🔍 Gear & Tools

Curious about the gear I use?
Find out everything about my photography tools here.


🤳 Let's Connect!

Follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/bjornbeheydt
Join me there for behind-the-scenes, exclusive shots, and more!


🤖 Vote for Botlord – Because More Nodes = More Power!
Hive needs strong, reliable witnesses. So, I launched Botlord—because if anyone should command the bots, it’s me. 🤖💪

✅ Click here & vote:
👉 Vote for Botlord

More nodes = More decentralization = A stronger Hive. It’s one click for you, but a giant leap for Hive stability. Botlord approves this message. 🚀


💥 !INDEED/@indeedly Tipping Bot

Discover the !INDEED tipping bot and add a bit of fun to rewarding your favorite creators!
Start tipping and earn tokens just by engaging with the community.

Learn more about it here.


🌈 !HOPE/@hopelizer Tipping Bot

Spread some positivity with the !HOPE tipping bot!
Start rewarding content that inspires and uplifts with !HOPE tokens.

Learn more about it here.


🤪 !WEIRD/@weirdly Tipping Bot

Embrace the weirdness with the !WEIRD tipping bot!
Tip and share the quirky side of the Hive community with !WEIRD tokens.

Learn more about it here.


🔥 Support BBH Witness

BBH is here to support the Hive community, and every vote helps us keep growing and making a difference!
Consider voting for the BBH witness to support decentralization and the awesome Hive community.
Learn more and cast your vote here.

Sort:  


The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @x-rain ) sharing the post on Reddit as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com. Otherwise, rewards go to the author of the blog post.

Don't get caught bro i don't think your boss would be happy. 🤣

!ALIVE
!BBH
!LOL
I will be including this content on the @heartbeatonhive curation collection
@benthomaswwd (5).png @borniet


Made in CanvaProject Moderator - @benthomaswwd

How do locomotives know where they're going?
Lots of training

Credit: reddit
$LOLZ on behalf of heartbeatonhive

(1/10)
NEW: Join LOLZ's Daily Earn and Burn Contest and win $LOLZ@borniet, I sent you an

That's for sure!!! But no worries, they won't catch me, there's tricks to that ;-)
!STRIDE
!LOLZ
!WEIRD
!DOOK
!MMB
!INEEDSLEEP

I wish I could clean mirrors for a living.
It's just something I can see myself doing.

Credit: reddit
$LOLZ on behalf of borniet

(8/10)

PLAY & EARN $DOOM

@heartbeatonhive, I sent you an

Oh, good old times... You reminded me of days when I was mining ETH with dozens of GPUs all around Europe... lol... I am not sure which part was more interesting, the struggle to find a good GPU in the market where everyone wanted them, or setting up "home-made" GPU rigs using my non-existent carpenter skills... 😂
But, on a positive note, I remember one winter when I spent 0 euros on heating, but over 300 euros (monthly) on electricity bills... 😂 But, I was happy to pay it! 🤣


I have picked this post on behalf of the @OurPick project! Check out our Reading Suggestions Posts!

Comment Footer.jpg
Please consider voting for our Liotes HIVE Witness. Thank you!

lol!!! Yup!! I totally remember those days!!! I've been building and trying out several miners, but electricity costs in Belgium are so incredibly high that it totally wasn't worth it. But the kids have really great gaming PC's now!!! :-D
!STRIDE
!LOLZ
!WEIRD
!DOOK
!MMB
!INEEDSLEEP

but electricity costs in Belgium are so incredibly high that it totally wasn't worth it.

It was the same case here in Spain, but during the winter, it was nice to use the heat from rigs instead of turning on the (conventional) heating... 😂

That I can totally imagine :-D
But didn't the constant humming of the fans kill you mentally??? :-D

Hahahaha... I got used to it...

But, it was very awkward when I turned them off... 😂 Complete silence after months of "sound of fans"

untitled.gif

Lovely!!! You had created your own real life Noise Cancelling Room :-D

What is in the middle of nowhere?
The letter H

Credit: reddit
$LOLZ on behalf of borniet

(7/10)
Delegate Hive Tokens to Farm $LOLZ and earn 110% Rewards. Learn more.@ph1102, I sent you an

!PIZZA
!LOLZ
!INDEED
!HOPE
!LUV
!PIMP

!DIY
!HOPE
!PIZZA
!INDEED
!ALIVE
!BBH

Don't be shy - share some DIY!

You can query your personal balance by !DIYSTATS

@borniet just sent you a DIY token as a little appreciation for your comment dear @cryptoyzzy! Feel free to multiply it by sending someone else !DIY in a comment :) You can do that x times a day depending on your balance so:

PIZZA!
Hive.Pizza upvoted this post.

$PIZZA slices delivered:
(2/15)
cryptoyzzy tipped borniet
borniet tipped phillarecette @borniet tipped @cryptoyzzy

Learn more at https://hive.pizza.

!LOLZ
!INDEED
!HOPE
!ALIVE
!LUV
!PIMP

!DIY
!HOPE
!PIZZA
!INDEED
!ALIVE
!BBH

Don't be shy - share some DIY!

You can query your personal balance by !DIYSTATS

@borniet just sent you a DIY token as a little appreciation for your comment dear @phillarecette! Feel free to multiply it by sending someone else !DIY in a comment :) You can do that x times a day depending on your balance so:

LOLOLOL!!! I love it, @borniet! Isn't Linux cool?!? It's fun building things from source, and it's something that I do often in Arch Linux! I used to mine monero on an old laptop years ago, and I wish I knew about some of those tweaks back then! This post was quite fun! 😁 🙏 💚 ✨ 🤙

!ALIVE
!BBH
!INDEED
!LOLZ

Glad you liked the post! :-D
Yes indeed, same thing here, I mined monero before, but then fried the old laptop before I even made enough for a payout :-D
That's why now I saw it as a challenge to get it done without killing any hardware :-D
!STRIDE
!LOLZ
!WEIRD
!DOOK
!MMB
!INEEDSLEEP

I'm a crypto-loving tech geek, so of course! Hehehe...that's certainly motivation to find a way to do it in a hardware-safe manner. Where there's a will, there's a way, and I've gone through similar processes in finding the sweet spot where things actually work. It can be frustrating and fun in equal measure...lol! 😁 🙏 💚 ✨ 🤙

!DIY
!HOPE
!MMB
!ZOMBIE

Well, it was fun, but very frustrating indeed! Luckily less frustrating than the meetings, so I continued :-) And it worked! Running smoothly now for a few days, without rising temperatures or anything. It's running at about 65% of (unsustainable) max, but the projected earning are at about 10$/month or so :-D
!STRIDE
!LOLZ
!WEIRD
!DOOK
!MMB
!INEEDSLEEP

I asked my dog what's two minus two.
He said nothing.

Credit: reddit
$LOLZ on behalf of borniet

(2/10)

PLAY & EARN $DOOM

@tydynrain, I sent you an

Hahaha...yep, I figured! Less frustrating than your meetings, man, it sounds like you need a more aligned job! Well, at least it was a good catalyst for motivation to dive in and find a solution, and now you've created another income stream. Excellent! 😁 🙏 💚 ✨ 🤙

!DIY
!MMB
!STRIDE
!WEIRD

Don't be shy - share some DIY!

You can query your personal balance by !DIYSTATS

@tydynrain just sent you a DIY token as a little appreciation for your comment dear @borniet! Feel free to multiply it by sending someone else !DIY in a comment :) You can do that x times a day depending on your balance so:

I don't know why I can't fit this upside boat on my head
It is clearly capsized.

Credit: reddit
$LOLZ on behalf of tydynrain

(5/10)
Delegate Hive Tokens to Farm $LOLZ and earn 110% Rewards. Learn more.@borniet, I sent you an

When you are a computer guru, impossible becomes nothing when it has to do with computer

Thank you! Not sure if the term "guru" is appropriate, but I do tend to have my way with computers indeed ;-)
!STRIDE
!LOLZ
!WEIRD
!DOOK
!MMB
!INEEDSLEEP

I mean expert, don't mind me,
!LOLZ

lol! Guru nor Expert I reply to ;-)
!STRIDE
!LOLZ
!WEIRD
!DOOK
!MMB
!INEEDSLEEP

Why do astronauts use Linux?
Because they can’t open windows in space.

Credit: reddit
$LOLZ on behalf of borniet

(1/10)

PLAY & EARN $DOOM

@ijelady, I sent you an

I appreciate your kindness

You're welcome ;-)
!HOPE