Hey again, Steemitizens!
This is my most excited moment yet on steem and steemit! I am ready to commit to becoming a full time Steem Block Chain witness.
When one becomes a witness, there is a steep learning mountain to climb before one can join the lofty ranks of the top 100 block chain witnesses overseeing the daily operation of the Steem engines down in the boiler rooms of the decentralized ship we are sailing on here together.
One must assemble notes from posts created by helpful people in the past 18 months, wade through them and try to make a linux box cooperate with all kinds of open source software which has varying levels of current documentation available, sometimes complete and detailed but obsolete, other times fresh but perhaps missing steps or making assumptions about the readers level of skill, knowledge experience. Just getting setup to be a witness is not a task to take on lightly and prepare to spend many hours getting your servers just right to take on the job.
Once you get the technical implementation out of the way, then you have to announce your intentions and try to explain your viability for the role to the community via a post like this one and subsequent supporting posts containing your intentions, desires, actions, prophecies and forecasts for the health and welfare of the block chain and the community of people who depend on the block chain to keep working and working well to support all the activities which live out their lives in this steem powered eco-system.
This is my official letter of intent. I hereby proclaim that I'd like to be a Steem Block Chain Witness. Furthermore, I'd like to be a dedicated one, who is completely sold out already for this platform and the people who inhabit it.
I am a fairly demanding sort of person. I know perfection in all things is not at all possible at all times, but I also know striving for perfection in all our endeavors is always the best possible goal. To that end I constantly am evaluating how I can improve, how I can contribute more and take less. Always examining myself to be sure I'm being the best me I can be, and always trying to do the next right thing, even when that choice isn't easy and may not be popular. If it's right, it's right. And I'm not always right. But I try really hard to aim for it as much as is humanly possible.
While doing my deep dive into witnessing, and the tech and philosophical and tangible and intangible things that come along with becoming a steem block chain witness, I read many, many helpful and informative articles on the topic here on steemit.com
One that stood out was this blog by @bitcalm : @bitcalm/how-to-become-a-witness
In this blog @bitcalm offers the following advice in the form of questions:
Am I ready to be a witness? Witnesses play a vital role for Steem and it's important that a witness be both trustworthy and reliable.A trustworthy witness has Steem's interest at heart. Other users can trust that the witness isn't trying to game the system for personal gain and wants to support Steem's growth.
A reliable witness ensures that their server runs smoothly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365.25 days per year.
Witnesses also require a lot of knowledge in order to do their job well.
A witness must know what a witness does and why witnesses are so integral to the Steem ecosystem. If you can't answer @thecryptofiend's Witness Questionnaire, you're probably not ready for the responsibility being a witness brings.
A witness must be comfortable on the command-line, building software from source, hardening a server, and with general server maintenance. If you've never done this before, you're probably not ready.
If after reading this stark introduction you feel you have what it takes to be a witness, continue reading, and good luck!
As you can see there is a lot to the job! @bitcalm refers to a questionnaire about and for witness candidates created by @thecryptofiend located here: @thecryptofiend/witness-questionnaire-a-solution-for-voter-confusion .
TheCryptoFiend's article will help you understand what witnesses do and should know when embarking on this journey. I won't even PRETEND to be an expert on all things steem and steemit but I am a constant learner, who is always studying and reading and my favorite thing in the world is steem and steemit, so I spend most of my 20 hour, low sleep days here, surrounded by it, immersed in it and spending all my time on volunteer efforts within the Minnow Support Project discord, most recently fairly embroiled in the creation of and daily operations of our now live 365 MSP Waves Radio streaming media network, which in just 4 weeks has come from conceptual idea to fruition and now boasts over a dozen live two hour shows in front of live audiences in our discord chat, accessible via streams all over the world, and broadcasting music, news, information, creative spotlights on steemitizens, and popular main stream music, all made legal and operational by the blood, sweat, tears and personal financial input of several prominent MSP volunteers ranging from our leader and founder, @aggroed himself, down to some of our very newest members arriving on the promise of air time on the radio and a chance to be a part of things.
I have to thank @ma1neevent, @r0nd0n, and @uniwhisp for helping me maintain daily operations and I welcome our more than 20 volunteer DJs to the show! Come check all of them out via the website I built at http://mspwaves.com which contains live show schedules and listening links. You can also find us through the beautiful website @crimsonclad built for the Minnow Support Project and the Peace, Abundance & Liberty Network at http://minnowsupportproject.org
When not working on the radio station project, I am usually seen chilling on our discord mini-modding (mostly getting in the way of dedicated mods doing real work) and helping our members with questions, reading and resteeming some of their posts when I can find time and just trying to be a productive community member. Sometimes I get exhausted and don't eat well, because I'm here so much and let my ragged edges show. I am admitting this because I want to let it be loud and clear that I am just one man, trying to get it right in life and I fail more than I would like. So many witnesses come here and pump themselves up, it's fairly political and financial thing I guess, to become a witness, so they want to present themselves in the most attractive light possible. I can't really blame them for that. I suppose. But i want to present myself in the "REAL" light. The light you will hold me up to, shine on me and use to examine my actions as a witness on the block chain.
I did my last two radio talk shows, Monday Night Minnow School with @Sircork, on the topics of "kindness" and on "generosity" within and beyond steemit. In the generosity show I used a quote that said "Be real with me or leave me alone" and I will do that very thing for you, if you will do the same for me!
So let me take a stab at @thecryptofiend's questionnaire and if you like what I have to say, I hope you will consider voting for me for witness.
This questionnaire is copied from the link above. I will answer it to the best of my current ability and will strive to improve when presented with these questions again at any time in the future when approached on them by any member of the block chain user community.
THE QUESTIONNAIRE
A) Technical Questions
1)In a few sentences or less please explain the role of a witness in the Steemit/Steem ecosystem as you understand it.
First and foremost, witnesses oversee the machines that run the decentralized block chain. Witnesses are expected to maintain a block-producing Steem node running 24/7/365. They are additionally expected to offer an ongoing cost feed of the value of STEEM currency in US dollars. Witnesses may also run a seed-node server to offer the blockchain data to sync server clients across the global block chain network. Witnesses also participate in meetings, discussions, code review and modifications, and stay in constant touch with the software, the eco-system, the community and sub communities on steem block change interface apps like steemit, busy.org and chainbb, and generally just keep the system humming for all the users on the chain.
2)What are the most important qualities for a witness to have?
Time! Dedication, accountability, integrity, trustworthyness, commitment, and a love of all things steem related!
3)How do you fulfill those qualities?
Tough question! I think I can summarize it with this article I wrote this morning which effectively discusses accountability and responsibilty and basically councils to "always do the next right thing" even when it's hard, or may not be the most obvious or popular decision.
4)Is there anything beyond this that you feel makes you a better witness candidate than the average person?
I have 30+ years in the tech industry, at all levels and before owning my own medium sized international software firm, my last "corporate" gig was as executive director of technology for a multi-million dollar company building and executing social network application. This stuff is literally what I have spent my entire life doing, since I got my first computer in 1982 at just 13 years old.
5)What kind of hardware setup are you using and is it your own local hardware or rented?
I have a monstrously overpowered Virtual Private Server at vultr.com for the core witness machine. It can be scaled up for memory, processing power or bandwidth at the click of a button and I have it on backups. I also have several VPSes located at Scala Hosting as well, and will likely be building fail over for redundancy at multiple locations and data centers and hosting companies to mitigate any catastrophic failures and tighten up any weak links in my infrastruture.
Here is a spec snapshot of the main witness server I run which is HF19 updated to 19.1 and running on Ubuntu 16.04:
6)What if any contingencies do you have in case of an emergency or server failure?
See my answer to number 5 above!
7)Do you think the current compensation for a witness is fair? If not what do you think would be fair compensation?
I would do this voluntarily! Any compensation is a bonus to me!
8)What percentage (or fixed amount) of witness earnings should be kept and what percent invested back into the steem platform?
I will do what I have to do with the income to keep the servers alive first and foremost. I will mostly just be keeping my income in SP because I fully believe in steem, and the future and want to "HODL" on this platform for the long tail. But don't ding me if I have a life crisis and need to spend some of the money now and then, eh? In general you will find people who know me here, know this place is already my home, my family and my entire life. Naturally I will wisely invest back in nearly every cent I can afford to do so with, and often times I am keeping money in, depositing and spending across the ecosystem to help or boost others here even when I can't afford it too!
9)How do you intend to use your witness earnings?
See #8 above - I'll keep my servers up, invest in the MSP Waves Radio project, and in delegations to useful steemit based accounts that add value and boost others within the community - I will also keep my self fed, rested and physically ready to serve, which may mean I buy a pizza with steem bucks now and then, but can you blame me? I mean, c'mon! Pizza!
B) Current Witness Questions
*Section B does not apply to me as a brand new witness candidate and as such has been removed for brevity herein.
C) Community Questions
1)What do you think makes Steemit special and worth supporting?
Literally everything about it, the good, the bad and the amazing and the horrible. It's an entire minature world in here, with all the opportunties that come with that. Anyone can literally achieve nearly anything here, and as an anarcho-capitalist/libertarian at heart, this makes me exceptionally happy!
2)How much do you use Steemit on average per week?
You woulnd't believe me. So just come find me in Discord and on steemit nearly 24 hours a day, sometimes for 30+ hour runs between quick naps and see for yourself how "here" I am, and how available to everyone at almost all times, unless I'm on the air on the radio station and stuck unable to reply promptly as a result for a couple hours a time here and there along the way. Even then, you can join our live audience chat room during my shows and still get me live and in person!
3)What is your favourite type of post?
Philosophical lessons, expressions of life and culture around the world and anything I would call "real" even when it's fiction or non-fiction. I like it raw and full of feelz or insights!
4)Do you have a specific favourite post you would like to mention or link to? (Feel free to give a shout out to the author)
Yes - absolutely. One of my favorite posters and posts of all times is this unsuspecting man from Lagos Africa who wandered into the PAL chat rooms one day and simply BLEW US ALL AWAY! Do check out @misterakpan and ALL his blogs... They are in the "culture of the world" category, and are reality based tales that may or may not always be fiction or reality or a blend and they will ALL keep you riveted from the first word the final period on the page.
5)What kind of posts do you dislike?
Spam, stolen content. Image with no supporting explanation, stolen youtube videos, and junk posts that are either one liners full of empty calories or plagiarized material. Stop stealing shit, and stop filling my feed with crap that blocks the visibility and voices of people all over the world who deserve to have thier hard work and creativity shown. I don't care if your english isn't perfect, or your grammar or your punctuation. I care if I can feel your heart in the effort. No heart, no value, no original work, no time from me...
6)How do you feel about the Steemit governance structure?
Steemit Inc? I'll just say I haven't SEEN much of a governance structure over the code, interface and UI/UX But Steemit inc is NOT the steem blockchain and I think the decentralized block chain is governed exactly as it should be, which is to be monitored for up time and functionality as designed, but in essence, not really governed at ALL,per se. And that's just fine with me.
7)How would you improve Steemit?
Again, steemit inc? the app? or the steem BC they ride on, because my answers for each are very different. In terms of Steemit, as the question states at face value, it needs a TON of user experience and user interface modifications, repairs, updates and additions. I could write volumes on this topic, so let's save that for my existing and future posts, mmmkay? Thanks!
D) Personal Questions
1)How did you get into cryptocurrencies?
Kind of couldn't avoid them. I first heard of bitcoin from another co-nerd back in 2010. I work in tech. I couldn't avoid cryptos any more than I could avoid keyboards in my line of work.
2)What hobbies or interests do you have outside of Steemit and cryptocurrencies?
I live off grid in a mountain cabin with no plumbing, facilities, utilities, running water or full time electricty in my home, so there is that. I am remodelling an office building in my small town to run my company from here and those leave little time for my usual hobbies, which have included but are not limited to, radio broadcasting, reading, writing, programming, firearms collecting and shooting, straight line track based drag racing, skydiving, motorcycles, and 4x4 off roading among other things.
3)What is your favourite movie genre?
I really don't watch movies or tv much. I guess I like the "splodey" ones and the funny ones.
4)What is your favourite movie or movies?
I'd have to say, as silly as it may seem to some, the movie I quote the most is "Grandma's Boy" because it's been so close to my career life environment and is pretty damn hilarious as a result.
5)What is your favourite musical genre?
I'm in radio! LOL, ALL teh things! But alone, I'll choose mellow contemporary rock.
6)What are you favourite bands/albums?
As noted in #5 I like the Lumineers, Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, The weepies, Sara Barreille and so on. But I may go on an 80s or 90s kick too now and then, and many years ago, as a younger man, I saw the Grateful Dead like 25 times and Phish like 14 or 15 times as well. I'm also known for singing country karaoke and jamming a blue grass mandolin now and then (very badly, much amateur 3 chording) and I just love happy music in general!
7)What is your favourite book (fiction or non-fiction) and do you have a favourite author?
Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson without a moment's hesitation! Anybody applying for witness should be suggesting this as their favorite, right?
8)What is your favourite TV show?
I HATE televisions. But I'll cop that I watched all the seasons of Silicon Valley when it came out and I have binge watched the Trailer Park Boys series at least 4 complete times through all the seasons. When it was still on, I would sometimes hang at friend's house who was always glued to Jack Bauer and "24" which I have to admit also held my interest when I saw it, but more often than not I'm likely to go off on a tirade about how televisions are a collossal waste of time, non-interactive junk food dispensers that will rot your brain out through atrophy via exposure over time.
9)Which is your favourite Star Wars movie from the original trilogy?
I saw Star Wars the day it came out in 1977 in a theatre, being snuck out of a church week long summer camp by a pastor to take his son and I to see it when i was just 8 years old. To this day, it's really the only star wars movie I care about or know much about, even though I've seen the others mostly, they are generally forgettable by comparison in my head. I just don't really track non-interactive entertainment like that much. I can listen to music and do other things, but being glued to a movie, or tv or telephone call feels single tasky and icky to me.
10)Margarine or butter?
Sweetened butter but whatever, who cares?
11)The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?
The Beatles, by like 10,000 to 1, and I'm kind of 40 years worth of worn out on both of them to be honest.
12)Have you ever tried Marmite?
No but in HS I tasted vegamite when an Aussie exchange student brought some into a class one day. Don't recall hating it, don't recall loving it either.
13)Are there any weird facts that you would like to share with everyone?
Hrm. How about this. I worked for NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama and while there I created a database to track maintenance intervals on NASA owned federal government equipment. Would you believe if a thing is not "disposed of" it must be tracked for maintenance. Such as vehicles and microscopes and lab equipment and computers and whatever. ALL of it. So the interesting bit is that we still need to go replace the batteries aboard the Lunar Rover cart, as it is long overdue!
14)Is there anything else that you would like other people to know about you?
I was awarded a Presidential Hammer Award while working as a consultant to the US Secretary of Transportation, Rodney Slater, during the Bill Clinton presidency and met Bill and Al Gore when they came to take a photo with me and give me a plaque for excellence in creating efficiencies in the Government under Clinton - administration initiatives. If I can impress the President of the United States, I can probably maybe figure out this witness stuff, but I can tell you from here already, witnessing looks HARDER than what I was doing back then in Washington D.C.
That concludes the responses to the Q&A section. Thanks for reading and considering casting your vote for me, @SirCork, for steem block chain witness. Come get to know me in the MSP/PAL Discord and let's see if there is any thing I can do within my meager power and within the community to serve you!
Just like that, this post is over.
Full steem ahead, steemitizens!
Tune into my show: Monday Night Minnow School on The MSP Waves Radio Network
Get more info about this and other great steemit MSP talk-radio shows at:
http://mspwaves.com
I'm a witness! Vote for me, @SirCork, as witness to show your support.
Witnesses I support:
@aggroed, @teamsteem, @gtg, @timcliff, @klye, @clayop, @ausbitbank, @dragosroua, @rolandp, @jesta, @personzzz ( @personz ), @lok1, @someguy123, @thecryptodrive, @netuoso, @good-karma, @lukestokes.mhth, @drakos, @klye, @theprophet0, @swelker101, @steemed and co-witnesses @followbtcnews & @crimsonclad
Think you deserve to be on this list too?
Earn my vote. Tell me why!
Be sure to learn what witnesses are and vote here!
All Steemitzens should be choosing their preferred representatives to make reliable, positive, growth oriented steemit.com and steem network decisions for us!
The Peace, Abundance, Liberty Network (PALNET) Minnow Support Project (MSP) is home for a minnows best new friends!
Find us on Chat with the PAL/Minnow Support Project peeps at: https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
