Through a bunch of trades, mining, and other crap, I managed to scrape up about 1.7 bitcoins in total. Had a great time spending them. I just thought it was the neatest thing being able to spent this "fake money" and actually get physical electronic goods shipped to my house. So slowly little by little, I managed to spend all of my bitcoins on electronics and pirated e-books. (Happier about some of the books then even the electronics.)
So after spending all of the coins, and trying to mine more, things kinda dried up for me. Couldn't make any worthwhile trades, can't mine bitcoins anymore... (Mining about 0.25 cents a day), tried Litecoin for a while, but didn't really find it to be worth mining on my current hardware either.
So I can't figure out is it's the fact that I'm bitcoin broke that's keeping me away, or if it's that I no longer want to mine on my current hardware, and therefore don't have the feeling of accomplishment anymore? At my current position, would it be worth it to get a Erupter block? I can't see spending $250 on a Jalapeno. Hell, spending $60 on an Erupter block doesn't make a lot of sense to me either, though it's almost double my current 5770 hash rate.
I was just wondering if the bitcoin train is still picking up steam, or if it's pretty much coasting right now for other people.
The bitcoin train is absolutely picking up steam. Bitcoin is becoming more widespread and accepted as a viable currency. However mining profitability is going down as more coins hit the market. So I think what you really mean to ask is, how much longer will mining be profitable? and the answer to that is not very long if you don't have a powerful asic working for you.