First to the "noob question--" yes that's normal. Your miner is reporting how many hashes it has calculated (whether they resulted in acceptable shares to submit or not), period. The pool is only aware of the hashes you submit to be accepted to the pool. The pool is reporting the rate for those hashes which it is aware of (the hashes you submitted).
EBM,
Middlecoin looks interesting, we might try it. We stopped multi because it was mining too many really obscure ones that are too volatile (so not the best price when actually sold) and a pain to sell. Also don't want to trade without Yubikey.
I tested multipool.in versus middlecoin.com for two days using two comparable hashrate cards for each. I wish I had been more scientific about it--meaning, noted the exact start time of my test, and performed the test with one each of two identical cards (instead of four comparable cards divided), so I can't conclude which was more profitable in the time period. What I can say is that they're both highly (and, it seems, comparably) profitable
Naturally, I'm curious to do that test more scientifically.
I will say that unless/until I find or make a bot that auto-withdraws and sells winnings at the best market price (I've had to miss the best price quite often, by checking the exchange I auto-payout to, and seeing the coin in question was most profitable, say, two hours ago), and unless I can throw more hashing power at the pool so that portions of coins are not straddled beneath 1 (OR if coin amounts lower than one could be paid out manually after they've sat long enough), that other switching pools might be more attractive. That is, unless more scientific tests discover this pool to be more profitable despite those drawbacks
flound1129, I saw what I thought was a good idea in the middlecoin.com developer's plans (as posted at their thread about that pool): seamlessly switch the coin being mined when a block is found. I don't know whether you'd entertained that idea or plan to do that, but to me it seems like a good idea (you can look at the thread about that coin for other details of their plans).
Also, to ask an entirely barbaric question, what are some of the other auto-switching pools (and in particular, which ones are gaining popularity)?