You can see your voting power by using steemd and search for "Voting power" https://steemd.com/@lukestokes
As for your Steem Power going up, that's because when you power up, you actually have "VESTS" which are like vested shares in Steem. You can rewarded a portion of the newly minted Steem as Steem Power in proportion of how many VESTS you have (that proportion changes over time as you can see here: https://steemd.com/distribution 1M VESTS is currently 247 Steem).
The chat is a great way to learn more, but also read the White Paper if you really want to dig in deep. Its confusing stuff, but very interesting. Let me know if you have any questions I can help with.
Oh, and you may also want to note that if you vote within 30 minutes, a portion of your curation reward goes to the author. For example, at minute 15, half goes to the author, half goes to you. Ideally, you want to find great content that is 30 minutes old or more.
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