Witness Update: New Server, Updates, Price Feeds and Blocks

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I've provided an update to my progress with the Witness Server. In a few short months, just over three to be exact, I've had to upgrade the server to the following:

New Server

32GB DDR3 ECC RAM
2 x 2TB HDD
Xeon E3 (4 Cores/8 Threads)
20TB Bandwidth

The Future

It's been pretty rock solid since I launched it 5 weeks ago. Churning through blocks at around 3 per day. Which doesn't sound much, but my old one was struggling, which is crazy considering that less than 3 months ago, it was considered the standard entry for a good server as a Witness. No doubt, that as STEEM becomes more popular into 2018, and more focus throughout the year on Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, the interest in STEEM will explode. Given the size of blockchain now, I imagine that it won't be long before I have to double the amount of RAM.

Price Feeds

It seems that price feeds seem to be an issue. Looking at the feed age of many Witnesses in the top 100, which I currently sit at 88, was in the low 70's, more about that in a moment - there appears looking at the price feed age, that many are not updating. Apparently this is due to a bug in the price feed software and it crashes. Setting up an CRON to auto restart it every couple of hours seems to solve the problem.

Witness Position Drop?

There is one oddity that I'm trying to figure and perhaps someone can help me out here. My position on the Witness List
https://steemian.info/witnesses has falled from around 72-75 to 88. My Votes were around 2400, but now have dropped to around 1680. The same people are voting for me, so I'm not too sure why the drop? Can anyone help me out as to why that would be?

I would appreciate it if you would be so kind as to Vote for my witness to help it get back up to the 70's again. By that I don't mean wearing flares, huge sunglasses, and a bowl cut hair do! Simply go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and search for @stuwhisson and vote for me. I'd really appreciate it. As it helps pay the $70 per month server fee.