I didn't know you're from the east coast too. :) Thanks for this explanation on witnessing and the servers. I would hope the top witnesses have the three servers as the bare minimum. You have an extra server running for the fulltimbots to support the community, so everyone on top should have the witness server, backup, and seed node. They could afford that.
Happy to hear you're working on a project for Steem Monsters. I'm a fan of the community there. It would be great to be able to track the cards!