Welcome to the community! If you need any help at all, please don't hesitate to reach out. The 'few false starts' you experienced are very common, especially if you are trying to get set up solo mining. That being said, I see you are in the pool so that should make life a lot easier.

If you would like to discuss projects to pick the one with science that most interests you, or to optimise your daily mining yield, I'd be happy to help out.