Witness setup story!

Hello, people of Steem!

I am here today to share my story on becoming a witness. This is a story that spans over 4 days and many hours of my time being pissed off with a multitude of error messages. I am writing to share my experience and also to thank those that helped me out.

This is not my official witness post, as everyone has some really cool post about how cool they are. I need to spend a few days building up my "coolness" for the big moment. Give me a follow if you want to see it.

Day 1

The story begins with me reading an old post about mining Steem. I wanted to give it a shot so I fired up my big old ugly PC.. yuck (I'm a Mac user). I followed some old guide on how to mine off a windows pc. I soon found out that there is no mining Steem anymore and Windows has no support. This is a bit of a step back and I gave up for the day.

Day 2

I did some research about how the witness network works and how to become one. Me, in all of my smarts, think I can run a witness node of an AWS free server with 1 GB of RAM and 1 core. Let's just say I couldn't even compile Steem. At the time I thought it might have just been a bug, so I started talking to @someguy123 (he's cool & and famous.) He pointed out that I was never going to run a witness node with a tiny server and that I would need a more powerful one. He then showed me https://www.privex.io/. A great service rated 10/10 (haven't tried it yet, going to when my credits run out, at another host). I then picked up some credit for hosting with an unknown host (don't want to be hacked). Started a server and followed a less out dated guide on how setup a witness. This didn't go well and failed with error messages. I went to sleep pissed.

Day 3

So it has now been three days and it is still not working. I found a new guide and followed it. I left my server on all night replaying the blockchain. I woke up and it had crashed! I was really pissed and asked someguy123 about it. He then showed me the best guide ever https://steemit.com/steem/@someguy123/your-guide-to-setting-up-a-witness-server-steem-in-a-box-hf19 (rate 11/10)

It didn't work first, second or third time. I did eventually get it to replay. For some reason, this took all day. I had not advanced past this point and I was not going to stop it. It then crashed at 99%. I wanted to die at this point, I had been waiting so long!

Day 4

I awoke to find the server doing weird shit and not working at all. I tried to restart with a fresh server a few more times and received a reply from @drakos (he's a lad). I had just restarted when I got the message and he said he would take a look. He teamviewed into my mac, complained that it was a Mac (windows users...) and started wiping up magic. He had it up to replaying in about 30min (fast). I told him last time it took me a day to replay, he made it happen in 1 hour! So on day four, my witness node is up and running. Haven’t had a block yet…

Conclusion

Being a witness is hard work! I thought you just ran a script and the magic started. No way! Witness have do so much to do (especially the ones in the top 20).

Thanks to:

@someguy123 - Helping me with errors and pointing to in the right direction
@drakos - Fixing the errors setting up cool aliases. And being really cool.
@thecryptodrive - Giving me my first vote.
@saywha - For giving me a vote and being a friend.
@jasonbu - Checking over the post and fixing grammar.

Why should I get your vote?

Every witness runs a server storing all the transactions, but I want to provide more than just that. My goals as a witness are to grow Steemit in New Zealand (already got a few people to sign up). To contribute my design ideas to steemit. Grow communities around design and website development. If you support this then please vote for me: https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Check out my other posts:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@joshtristram/new-steemit-ui-mockup-part-2
https://steemit.com/steemit/@joshtristram/want-to-know-how-much-steem-you-are-going-to-get-in-a-week-now-you-can
https://steemit.com/steemit/@joshtristram/introducing-resteem-me-get-resteemed-by-real-people

(image credit: http://www.dodlive.mil/2015/04/14/purpleup-reasons-why-its-cool-to-be-a-military-kid/)