What i'm curious about is what people like kronut actually do. Do they buy and hold until a specific price? Do they just watch? What is the actual thought process and the actual facts because talking is always easy, but i consider that learning never stops and i'm always open for improving stuff.

When I made my first cables for my Merc I needed to splice a couple of PCI-E connectors, cut from video card test cable sold on ebay, to heavy wire that I would run to one or two power supplies.  I bought a 15 amp extension cord and cut pieces.  Figuring 15 amps should be heavy enough I found I could run the Merc on a single supply.  The lines were a little long and I had the 12v line bunched and tied.  I was running firmware 0.94 and drawing about 260 watts at the wall.  I happened to place my hand on the bunched 15 amp capable wire and it was quite warm.  I immediately put together a double 15 amp cable for the single module Merc and that was cool.  When I added a second module I again used a double cable but it was less necessary as I was now running 0.98.  Figure the one module was running 4x~50amps@.9v for 180watts, figure efficiency of the VRM in the high 80% so call them 88% efficient for 204½watts at 12volts plus there'd be something for the BBB and controller board which we'll discount, so 17amps@12volts - and it was a 15 amp extension cord.

pays to have a "chip maker" as a partner don't it...like bumping your production of chips to the head of the line (just saying)

We weren't compensated...that's just when the delivery dates were announced.

None of that matters. You simply do the math for when your miners will stop being profitable (when you'd stop mining), and instead buy btc and hold until that time. You will always end up more profitable that way than if you buy hardware to mine.
I didn't do this the first time and instead bought miners from KnC. I will now be lucky if I make half as much btc as I could have if I just bought it at the time I placed my order. The only true winners in the mining game are those who make the miners. The rest are just chumps regardless of how you try and spin it.

Like any good investment you dollar cost average in, and do the same going out.

When you have a basis for your BTC of about $100 per (assuming you bought some) and its $850 today, if you don't start slowly getting out then you are just a greedy bitch who doesn't know what they are doing.

I have X in cold storage and now I just start selling when the price is favorable every few days.

You don't get the "R" in ROI unless you take some profit.

This is actually a great point, who knows if I would have sold in stead of investing in equipment, with it stuck in hardware, at least I can't spend it on something else.

BTW, anyone up for the frankenminer? : http://www.ebay.com/itm/301026517238

I gave up on Eligius a day ago. Can't stand all the variance, and luck seems to be crappy lately. Switched to 7.5% fee BTC Guild PPS for now.