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.
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.
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."
Because your crypto-nerd friends will mock you relentlessly if you don’t:
sudo sysctl -w vm.nr_hugepages=128
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.
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.
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!
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.
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. 😏🔥
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