Witness Update 10 August 2017

Well, I've been up and running for about a week and it's time for a rousing update on how my witness node is doing!

Three days ago, my VPS went down for several hours. Thankfully Hive account@someguy123 was quick to get it back up and running, and I'm proud to report that no blocks were missed! Sadly I haven't received any blocks to witness yet, but I'm getting there. :D

So what have I been doing for you as witness?

Well, the last couple of days have been extremely busy with pre-orientation for law school, so I didn't get to devote as much time as I would have liked, but I've been hanging around in the #help channel on Steemit.chat, fielding any questions I can answer or getting Steemians in touch with someone who does have an answer. Special thanks to Hive account@drakos and Hive account@timcliff for their tremendous help. We had a spate of accounts not being created due to a "not enough vests to delegate" error, which Hive account@timcliff helped clear up for a lot of users.

I've been doing my best to keep up with line editing and grammar correction in the Fiction Workshop on PALnet. Not an easy task when you're already having to read case briefs for school and it hasn't even started yet! However, now that I'm done with the day today, I've got plenty of time to get on that. I'm also going to post another iteration of Descriptions on the Spot.

Future Goals

Well, being a witness isn't just sunshine and rainbows. You actually have to do something right? I'm going to stay dedicated to helping out in #help. I suspect that my time considerations as law school kicks off next week are going to make that increasingly difficult, but I'll pitch in whenever and however I can.

I've got a lot of work to do catching up on line edits and structure edits in Fiction Workshop. I have every intention to throw myself back into that, as well as pick up my own writing again.

I've been hanging around #steemitabuse and spammers, as always, are an issue. If I have some free time, I'm going to start pursuing instances of blatant spam (follow4follow, upvote4upvote, link drop comments, etc.) to help out the team in there. I know a lot of it has to do with newbies, so I'll be sure to provide a warning of some kind first, but there are some genuine instances of reward pool pillaging. This is an issue that really requires a lot of effort to combat, and I think everyone should be aware of and confront it. Again, many of these folks are new users who don't know any better, and I'm not advocating flag wars, but being proactive in trying to stem the tide could help.

If you want to vote for me as a witness, cast your vote here! Scroll down until you see this text box and type in my name.

Andrei Chira is an anarcho-capitalist, former 82nd Airborne paratrooper, vaper, and all-around cool guy. He's a father to one wonderful little girl named Kate, lives down in Alabama, and spends his time writing stories, posting to Steemit (not as much as he probably should), and cultivating the mental fortitude to make it through three years of law school.