I Am #AliveAndThriving Today! || #IAmAliveChallenge || Daily Off-Grid Jungle Journal Entry: Day #492 - On Hive Dustbunnies and Dustsweepers - GaiaYoga Gardens, Lower Puna, Far East Big Island, Hawai'i - Friday, December 1, 2023

I live barefooted and naked, very close to Earth and Nature, in an 18-acre, off-grid, clothing-optional, food-forest intentional community (GaiaYoga Gardens), way out in the jungles of Lower Puna, far East Big Island, Hawai'i. I love my life, and I'm immensely grateful to live where and how I do, on my own terms! I would not want to live any other way! 😁🙏💚⚡💥🔥✴️✳️❇️👣🌱✨🤙

Warm greetings all! 😁🙏💚✨🤙

Hive is an immense Ecosystem, with much to learn, as any newcomer can attest. Even I, who gets himself into every nook and cranny of Hive, am always discovering new things, learning, and expanding my knowledge and understanding of this incredible Blockchain. I learned something new, or rather I got clarification around something that I thought I understood, just a few days ago. Most here know that any votes that do not reach the .02 threshold do not pay out, and hence are called dust votes. I was aware of that since I arrived on the Blockchain. Then HF26 (Hard Fork 26) came along, and an aspect of how dust votes were handled was changed. Right after it happened, I read a post (I don't remember by whom) where the author talked about the changes that HF26 brought to the Blockchain, one of which said, that "with HF26, all votes now count", which I erroneously took to mean that all votes would pay out after HF26. Because of this I completely changed how I voted, and began upvoting all posts at 10%, and all comments at 5%, which I've continued to do to this day.

Taking a look at HiveStats this morning, however, made it clear to me that I needed to make a change, as my curation APR was 2.81%, which is horrible! In a comment to my reply on one of my recent posts, I got clarification that indeed HF26 did make changes to how dust votes were handled, but it didn't make it so that they pay out, but rather that they are recorded on the Blockchain. Doh! When I learned that I felt pretty silly, especially considering that I had changed how I voted because of a misunderstanding. The thing is, though, that being the engagement freak that I am now, the idea of not upvoting people's comments and replies is not an option for me, in part because I also receive benefit from doing so because I use Ecency for voting.

After my giant #HPUD powerup to dolphin 🐬 level on Thursday my time, I adjusted my HP delegations, and one of those adjustments was to add a few new accounts to my list of delegations. One of the accounts that I added was @dustsweeper (thank you very much for the suggestion @ironshield!), which is a service that helps recover dust votes so that their value is not lost. I didn't fully understand how the service worked when I delegated, but in reading up on it this morning, I finally get it. Basically you send HIVE or HBD to @dustsweeper, and then it monitors your comments and replies when they near payout, and if they are under the .02 threshold, then it upvotes them to get them to .026, which would allow them to pay out, even if the price of HIVE dropped a bit after the vote.

If you also delegate to the service, then you will receive daily payouts in HIVE and HBD as well. Since I haven't sent any HIVE or HBD yet, I haven't received any payments so far. Since I just fully grasped how the service works, I still have to allocate some HIVE to it on a regular basis. Delegating and sending HIVE/HBD to @dustsweeper will help me balance out the effect of voting within the dust range, and will hopefully increase my curation APR, and I may even make a small profit in the process, which would be great!

The votes that @dustsweeper provides can also give priority to incoming or outgoing votes, or it can be set to only vote on incoming or outgoing votes as well. This gives a bit more fine-tuned control over how the votes are handled. I'm looking forward to seeing how this service works over time, and I'll make sure to let y'all know how it goes, of course!

There is one other dust-vote service of which I'm aware, and that is mostly because I've seen it voting on my comments and replies, @dustbunny, which is one which was migrated over from Steem. I still haven't delegated any HP to it, but I plan to do so very soon, as it's something that benefits the whole Hive community, me included. I think that dust-vote services are very useful indeed, and I want to support them as much as I'm able moving forward.

After three days of rain and clouds, we had much sunnier and drier weather yesterday (that is continuing into today), so I was very thankfully able to dry out the Flow House a bit more, and get my bedding and bed cleaned and dried. I also felt a lot better later in the day than I did early on, which I mentioned in yesterday's post. Yesterday was also a rather atypical day in terms of land work, because I ended up helping Sperry troubleshoot an electrical short localized somewhere in the Shop starting in the early afternoon. Since I started doing that before I had completed some of my essential Hive tasks, I split my attention between doing that and the electrical work. I also used my time and photographic opportunities well by taking photos for this post as I worked on the other two tasks. Talk about multi-tasking!

At some point around 3:30PM, I had to redirect my attention to collecting a wheelbarrow full of Melochia leaves for the next morning's (this morning's) cow-milking food. Once I had that done, I took a shower, strained out kefir for my kefir-honey-cinnamon-cacao blend, made myself some food, got my kitten friend some food, and then I headed back to the Flow House for my evening round of Hive tasks and catching up on my notifications. Since I started a little earlier than usual, I was able to get everything on Hive done just before 10PM. I stayed up for a while longer doing a round of token management, and scanning and perusing my feed on X. I finally went to sleep just after 12AM, thankfully sleeping well, and waking up around 6:30AM. I did a quick round of token management, I focused on completing @benthomaswwd's @heartbeatonhive contest, and then I did a bit more catching up on notifications, before getting out of bed around 8:30AM to go make my superfood fire coffee.

It's now just past 1:15PM, so it's a very good time to end this post for now, so that I can get to my afternoon essential Hive tasks, before going to take more photos for the next version of this post (I already got a few in the morning), and then putting my focus on land work in the later afternoon. I deeply appreciate you all ever so much! Until tomorrow! Onward and upward, joyfully together! 😁 🙏 💚 ✨ 🤙

All photos were taken with my Motorola G Power Android Phone.

Thank you all so much who have helped me get to where I am today, and allowing me to share more of the beauty and magic from my life and my world with you, and for your continuous appreciation and support! I am truly deeply grateful! 😁🙏💚✨🤙

If you'd like to find me on other alternative platforms where I have accounts (I spend most of my time here on Hive), click on this signature image below to go to my LinkTree page.

If you'd like to send me a BTC Lighting Tip (made possible by the fantastic work of brianoflondon on @v4vapp), just scan the QR image below. 👇

Signature image created by @doze, and the dividers made by @thepeakstudio, with all tweaked to their present form by me.