Back in May 2018 when I first had the crazy idea I would become a Steem Witness, my first thoughts were to check the existing Witnesses at various ranks and compare their Producer Rewards (Pay) compared to Server costs. At that time it quickly became clear there were alot of crazy people funding server costs out of their own pockets to support the Steem Blockchain - maybe just out of pure love for the platform or maybe because they could see the long term prospects which were making a short term investment worthwhile.
Considering what I found, and being conscious of the fact starting out I had no idea who, if anyone, might vote for me as a Witness I set about procuring the lowest specification server that could run the Steem Blockchain - so if I only had my own vote I could at least cover the costs and feel proud to at least be running a supporting node for the Blockchain.
To say I was overwhelmed by the community response to my Witness status is an understatement, it has been really quite humbling to see so many Steemians give without question one of their 30 votes to me - and every single one feels like a reward. With your votes, and kind support I moved steadily higher up the Witness ranks - much higher then I had ever thought I might be lucky enough to achieve.
And then I joined forces with 
Working through the night (well actually I just set alarms to wake me up to check the blockchain replay progress) the brand new install server running Steemd v0.19.12 "AppBase" successfully completed a 6 hour replay of the blockchain and proceeded to process transactions. Because we are currently receiving blocks every 6 hours I had to instigate maintenance mode (shown as yellow crossed out on https://steemian.info/witnesses) so we were passed over for a block rather then miss it and have it wasted. As soon as I was able to confirm transactions were being processed normally the Witness was reactivated in time to receive the next due block.
Our new server specs are:-
2 x Intel Xeon L5640 2.26ghz 6 core CPUs
64 GB Ram
500 GB SSD
1 TerraByte of back up storage
Unlimited Network Bandwidth
Hosting based in the UK (Possibly the only UK based Witness node?)
In addition I have a separate server with a different host entirely that hosts the Conductor Witness Tools (Specifically to put our Witness Server in Maintenance if it misses a block) and it also runs the price feed.
Ideally in future I would like to further support the Steem Blockchain by running a full node, you can see the latest Full RPC Node List and which Witnesses run them. The specifications for a Full Node (and price to achieve them) are eye watering - which is exactly why only the very top Witnesses run them. They are however the backbone of the Steem Blockchain - they make every transaction happen quickly with no lag - improving user experience. Right now that dream is still very far away, but if I can be in the position to run a Full Node one day I will. For now I actively support the Witnesses in that list running Full Nodes.
And now for the exciting bit, every week myself and 
Congratulations to last weeks Winners again too, 
Some of my previous posts you might have missed
Witness Update by @c0ff33a v0.19.12 and giving something back to voters
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The C0ff33 Vlog 25th August 2018 |
Sublime Sunday by @c0ff33a ☕️
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Last Confirmed Block Number 25,729,004 Last Aslot 25,807,211
Steemd v0.19.12
Kind thanks to
for employing his Ninja graphic design skills and producing this 🔥 banner
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To grow your presence and following on Steemit, be active in the community Discords that offer the chance to learn, network, share and be found. The #SteemitRamble discord https://discord.gg/HZYzEry hosts a range of shows where you can join in and get your name shown, every Thursday there are two Pimp My Post Thursdays which are hugely popular and give you an opportunity to get your posts seen.
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The greatest challenge we face on Steemit is getting our posts seen, I have always believed the simplest and best value way of doing this is by commenting on the blog posts of others, the more you engage people and interact with them the greater the chance they will visit your own blog and return the favour. Other then spending all my free time commenting on Steemit posts, I also distribute coffee roasting machines and also espresso coffee machines and roast my own Speciality Coffee Range. being one of the premium coffee suppliers Yorkshire including a wide range of filter coffee sachets
!steemitworldmap 53.766547 lat -1.801500 long Bradford, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. d3scr
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