Hey Again, Steemitizens!
Not too much to report, but I hate letting too much time pass between witness updates, so here we go!
I am at position #88 and have been fairly stable in that slot for a bit now. I don't actively solicit, ask for, beg for or buy votes like some of the less scrupulous witnesses, so I continue to be proud to report my position is organic and wholesome in nature.
I always encourage people to examine their witness options and make choices to fit their own personal principles and intentions for the good of the future of the block chain and to examine how a witness got their position as well as who they are and what they offer to and bring to the community overall.
You won't believe this, but I got wind of a certain witness paying for and flat out just buying his witness votes and demanding payment for witness votes in return this week and was shown screenshot evidence from the steemit.chat #witness channel of what I would personally deem completely unscrupulous behavior.
It turned my stomach to see that, but I know that many of the witnesses have earned their positions rightfully through good contributions, stable operational reliability and good deeds and works in the steem ecosystem so I haven't lost heart yet that voters will see through these falsely propped up witnesses and make good decisions overall and in the long term.
As for my witness server, things are running as smoothly as usual over in the vultr.com data center. Operational, no downtime to report and zero missed blocks continues to be my modus operandi as your stable witness on the block.
Surprisingly, monthly bandwidth is sloping off. I am unsure why, but wonder if steemit usage is down overall as well, perhaps as a result of winter school seasons kicking in around the US?
Server utilization and disk I/O remain fairly consistent and predictable, never exceeding 25% CPU utilization and currently running at only 12% at the time of this publication. Spikes in disk I/O can be attributed to server software update cycles and times when I was actually logged into the server looking at logs and such activities. All good under the hood!
Network activity shows no signs of abnormality or anomalies either. Smooth sailing on the steem blockchain!
My witness ladder position has been stable for a bit now at #89 if counting all known witnesses and #81 if "dead witnesses" are removed from the listing.
Dead witnesses are those that are no longer doing their job and they should be removed from your voting list ASAP as you are wasting your votes on these disabled witnesses, thus not helping you and hindering reporting for the rest of us in the top 100
Regular top 100 listing position - info from my old friend 
Without dead witnesses - info from my good friend 
As you can see, removing your votes from dead witnesses would move many of the lower top 100 up by at least 8 positions which would benefit the entire block chain community with more accurate witness pages position reporting and improve the availability of used witness votes currently being wasted on dead nodes.
Check your votes against the lists provided on either site by
If you are confused about who to vote for and just want to trust me to handle it for you, you can choose me as your proxy on http://steemit.com/~witnesses and enter "sircork" as your choice in the box at the bottom of the page for your proxy selection. These folks have done just that:
In project news, I have resigned my senior roles as a part of the leadership of the PAL Network and Minnow Support Project(MSP) to move on to bigger, better things for myself and the steem ecosystem and the world we live in at large.
The new project is a global, worldwide mission outreach program to provide fundamental human necessities such as clean water, food, clothing and perhaps additional needs as required through a grassroots network built by caring humans selected from the steem community to act as "boots on the ground" in economically distressed regions of the world.
I have already directly served a half dozen persons one on one in 6 different countries with direct personal financial aide and service support as well as encouragement and now seek to scale this effort up with the help of the steem community and the transparency and empowerment provided by the crypto driven blockchain technologies at our fingertips.
I ran my first larger project in conjunction with 
The new organization will be called YouAreHOPE and HOPE stands for Help, Opportunity, Purpose & Empowerment. Stay tuned and watch this space for upcoming organizational announcements about this, the most exciting and important and special endeavor I have ever undertaken.
I hope that I can count on all of you to contribute when the new initiative is in full swing, so watch this space for opportunities to get involved directly, donate to the causes and people we seek to assist or help promote the fundraisers via resteems and upvotes as time goes on. Together, we can do great things! Or as I like to say...
Teemwork makes the steem dreem work!
Steem on, my steemy steemitizen friends!
And just like that, this post is over!
Yours in service,
@SirCork
Steem Witness #89
Believe in me and my values and principles also?
Well, I'm a witness (presently #89, thank you voters!) who believes in steem, steemit and YOU!
Vote for me, @SirCork, as witness to show your support.
Witnesses I support:
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!