Please accumulate more voting weight or steempower.

I received that 'error message' when I tried to vote just now.

WHAT?

How is this possible? What does it mean "Voting Weight is too small?" I knew that voting was weighed but I thought everyone could vote! I didn't know that there was a minimum.

Ok...first a little background information.

About two days ago I was happily steeming along and I got booted off the network. I dunno why. When I tried to log back in I was denied access. "incorrect password" it said.

Huh?

I had NOT changed my password. I had it carefully (for some values of care) stored in a safe place, Three safe places actually. I compared the password that I was using against those and they all matched. So...if I had NOT changed my password then what happened?

I tried various strategies to regain access. For example I tried Stolen Account Recovery . That didn't work. It said "The ownership of this account is unchanged." So I still own it but have no control over it?

Riiiiiiight.

I attempted to find out WTF had happened and perhaps get some help by going to chat. Didn't work. It was as if I was invisible. No one would reply to my questions. I concluded that I WAS invisible. Something to do with the password maybe?

So

I had only been Steeming for two weeks. Admittedly it was a very intensive two weeks. Sometimes I'd stay on Steem for ten or twenty hours at a stretch (I have a sleep disorder...sometimes I can't sleep) I was slowly, but fairly consistently accumulating steempower. I was still a zooplankton but I was growing larger. My steem account was valued at TWO digits. I was a happy camper

Until I got booted. Then I wasn't very happy.

I resigned myself to chalk it up as a learning experience . I dunno what happened or how to prevent it from happening again so what did I learn? but....oh. well.

SO

...to make a long story short. A VERY frustrating long story short. (I'm not a geek. Things that are simple for Geeks require great effort, and a lot of trial and error for me. Mostly error) I established another Steemit Account.

Now this.