Im a cool kid now! (Milestone Celebration)

Well Steemit - I'm officially a cool kid now!

I recently hit four important Steemit milestones, and wanted to find a way to celebrate =)

It has been two months since I joined!
I gained my 200th follower!
I have bought/earned over 1,000 Steem Power!
I hit reputation 60!

To start with, I want to follow the trend of @dollarvigilante and do a "reintroducemyself" post. I am embarrassed to even link back to my first one, but needless to say - it kind of sucked. I have been interacting with a lot of great Steeminans, and I'm sure some of you are wondering who I am. I also want to introduce a lot of my Steemit friends at the end!

I was recruited to Steemit by my brother - @dogguy. Years ago he called me up on the phone and told me about this thing called Bitcoin. He said he thought it sounded like a good investment, and was interested in figuring out how it worked. We looked into all the technical aspects, and worked through the process of setting up a wallet on his computer. Since then he has been investing heavily in Bitcoin, as well in as several other crypto-currencies. I have learned a lot from him, and have a lot of respect for his investment decisions.

When he first told me about Steemit, I was immediately blown away. I had been toying with an idea in my head for years, of creating an economic based content website where people could pay to increase/decrease the ranking of content. My brother and I had even created a proof-of-concept site called "Tile Takeover", where users could bid for content slots on the site. Steemit sounded like the idea I had been dreaming of, except @dantheman and @ned had ingeniously figured out how to solve all the problems associated with setting up the right financial incentives to encourage mass participation on the site, and inhibit the gaming of the system.

It doesn't sound like much, but I gave my brother $250 to invest in Steem (it was a lot for me at the time). Steem was literally at its highest peak at that point, and my brother tried to convince me to wait a bit for it to come back down. (He is the smart one as far as investments go.) I knew he was right, but I told him I didn't care. I said it probably would go back down, but compared to where it would be in 5 years - I still thought it was a good investment. I didn't want to take any chance of missing the boat!

After buying my 66 Steem, I proceeded to read the white-paper. Once I read through everything and understood how it worked, I realized that I needed to power up. I called my brother and explained it to him, and we both agreed that it was the right thing to do. I tried to sign up for an account on Steemit.com, but they were not allowing any new accounts at the time. I had to wait a few days until my brother called me up and told me that they were accepting applications again. I created my account, and we powered up my Steem!

Since then, it has been an amazing journey! I have created tons of posts, made quite a bit of Steem, and met lots of cool people. I'll tell you more about them in a bit, but first - a bit about myself.

I am 32 years old. I live in New Brighton, MN (USA). I work at a company called Open Access Technology International, Inc. We develop software solutions for the energy industry. I started working there as a software developer about 8 years ago. It was my first job right out of college. My old boss could tell you - I was a horrible software developer when I started. Converting from developing "academically" to developing "professionally" was a big transition. The main two differences were that your program actually had to work 100% correctly with no glitches (A- was not OK), and that you had practically no time to work on things before they were 'due'.

With a lot of mentoring and hard work, I eventually turned into a good developer. I worked my way up the ranks to team lead, and eventually got promoted to manager. My official title now is "Product Delivery Manager", and I oversee the development for several of our company's products. It is a very fun (and very demanding) job!

I am not extremely public about it, but I am married to @artist1989. We have been together for 8.5 years now, and have been married since last December. He is a truly amazing person, and one of the most creatively talented people I have ever met! We don't advertise our 'gayness' much, which is something I wrote about in this post.

Ok, enough about me. More about all of you! I have met so many awesome Steemians on this site! I want to share with you some of my amazing Steemit friends =)

To start with, if you have not checked out my spouse @artist1989 yet, you definitely should! He does not post very frequently, but everything he does post is amazing, high quality, original work. He has written several books, does amazing graphic design and video editing, and makes home spaces look amazing with his interior design skills.
@jesta is my favorite witness. Sorry to all the other witnesses (many of you are very awesome too) but I have just been extremely impressed with @jesta's climb to the top. Unlike most of the top 19 who have been around since the beginning, he started at the bottom and worked his way to the top. I talked to him many times on the way, and at the time, he didn't think he would even make it. He has done so by showing his amazing dedication to the project, and by providing the community with amazing useful tools, and top-notch expertise. Whenever I have chatted with him in Steemit chat, he has always been extremely helpful and friendly. It was a good day when he made it to the top!
@berniesanders is my favorite whale. (Again, my apologies to all the other amazing whales.) Mainly because I think he gets what this site is all about. Before Curie and @robinhoodwhale, he was the curator as far as minnows were concerned. He must have spent countless hours sifting through content and finding things from unrecognized/unknown authors that deserved a whale's upvote. I know many people that stuck around and are still here today, simply because their posts actually got recognition from this whale!
@smooth is another awesome whale! He is someone I have a lot of respect for. @smooth is very involved in the discussions about the future of Steem/it, and genuinely has the site and community's best interest in mind. While you may not agree with everything @smooth has to say, there is a passion, vision, and dedication there that is indisputable.
@patimaker is a talented artist that I met through Steemit. I came across @patimaker's posts when I was digging for content, and immediately followed after seeing their work. @patimaker is consistently posting amazing original artwork, and is definitely a user worth checking out!
@bitcoiner is another up and coming witness. I predict that @bitcoiner will be one of the top 19 witnesses within a year. @bitcoiner is focusing primary on front-end Steemit.com development, and is planning to tackle many of the requests the Steemit community has been asking for in the Steemit Wish List. I am beyond excited to see more of these features come to life!
@pixielolz is another artist that you must check out. Truly amazing artwork!!
@anyx is one of Steem/it's core witnesses. @anyx developed Cheetah (Steemit's spam detection bot), and helped to found Steemcleaners - Steemit's community for fighting spam, plagiarism, and abuse! A true asset to the Steem/it community!
@xeroc is a hardcore Steem/it developer. @xeroc's Piston application, as well as countless other tools and tips that @xeroc has provided, make up much of the foundation that many of the Steemit apps and tools have been built on.
@intelliguy is just an awesome person. He is the type of person that you would like to stay up with until 4:00 in the morning talking about the meaning of life. Totally worth checking out!
@someguy123 is another great aspiring witness, who I think has a lot to offer. His AnonSteem project is the way for users who don't have a Facebook/Reddit account to sign up for Steemit. Talk about seeing a need and filling it!
@bendjmiller222 has a ton of great ideas on how to improve Steemit. I have really enjoyed my interactions with @bendjmiller222. @bendjmiller222 is one of Steemit's great commenters, and adds a lot of value by engaging with other Steemians on their posts!
I came across @cryptos when I was reading through guides on how to setup a mining account. @cryptos joined Steemit before I did, and paved the way for me to follow with his excellent technical guides!
@roadscape is one of the official Steemit developers, and is doing a lot to improve the site. @roadscape is very involved in community discussions about the future of the site, which I think is really cool!
@barrycooper is one of Steemit's amazing celebrities, and has a fascinating story to tell. What I really like about @barrycooper is how genuine he is. He also spends an impressive amount of time interacting with his fans. @barrycooper is a very valuable member of the Steemit community, and I'm glad he is here.
@lpfaust is one of Steemit's great manual curators. I have been really impressed how @lpfaust finds so many amazing posts, and shares them in a periodic "sharing the love" post. The most impressive thing though, is that @lpfaust actually spends the time to comment and interact with each of the posts that are featured!
@momentswithmeems is a friend of mine that I recruited to sign up. She does a video-blog through Instagram that is actually very popular. She just started out on Steemit, but I think she will become one of our great content producers with a massive following.
@dollarvigilante sparks up great conversation! I don't happen to agree with him on a lot of things, but he does know how to drum up a great debate. I enjoy reading what he has to say, and watching the conversations that go on with his posts.
@drewsteadmanart is another great artist! @drewsteadmanart frequently posts great original artwork, and it is great to see what he does!
@piedpiper does some amazing videos that help newcomers get familiar with the site, and is working on a great initiative to create an official "call center" to provide phone support for Steemit users!
@laonie does a lot for the community, and is great to follow to get updates about the RobinHoodWhale project!
@getonthetrain posts a very interesting series on the possibility of life on other planets. It is really fascinating to read about!
@shadowspub is another great curator! Another person worth following to get a frequent list of great posts in your feed!
@sigmajin is another passionate Steemian who feels strongly about the success of the project. We had a very long debate about the future of the Steem voting weights. Even though we did not completely agree with each other's points of view, it was a very respectable and enjoyable debate!
@dantheman and @ned are two must haves for your follower list. I respect and look up to these guys a lot, and have a lot of confidence in them to steer the Steemit ship to where it needs to be!
@steemsports is a great Steemit initiative that combines 'betting' with the Steem block-chain, in a way that you can bet on sports without even waging your own money! I've had a lot of fun playing this since it started :)
@sauravrungta is a truly impressive writer. We met on Steemit chat, and frequently interact. I am beyond amazed and how many good articles @sauravrungta puts out - and they just keep coming!
@mikemacintire is one of Steemit's great photographers. Check him out for some amazing work!
@mynameisbrian has a great sense of humor, and posts very funny Steemit related comics!
@nextgencrypto is someone that should be made a top 19 witness! The work that has been done with the Curie project has truly been a game-changer for Steemit! I am beyond thankful for this project!!
Last, but definitely not least - meet my mom - @christinesblog! My mom is one of Steemit's latest 'celebrities' to join up. She has done some amazing things with her life, and is truly an amazing person. She has helped hundreds of thousands of people cope with cancer by using humor. She is a professional speaker, and travels all over the world. Her YouTube channel has over a million views, and she has written many best selling books. She will have a lot of great content to provide to the community!

I know, I know - I missed tons of amazing people. For everyone I forgot to mention - I'm sorry. There so many great people here, it is impossible to list them all! I did my best to highlight everyone I could remember =)

Steemit has been an incredibly exciting journey so far, and the site and community just keep getting better. I really look forward to continuing to interact with you all over the coming weeks, months, and years!

Thank you Steemit! Steemit is awesome!