Mike's America Interviews Curt at Flopping Aces

Many of Mike's America readers are already well familiar with the popular blog: Flopping Aces. The author, Curt, covers stories of interest with a thoroughness akin to new asphalt on a highway. I've often heard the inklings of an interesting story and thought "I wonder if Curt knows about this" only to see that he's been covering it for days.

Flopping Aces came in second in the 2006 Weblog Awards for medium size blogs. I thought perhaps it would be a good time to better acquaint our readers with Curt, and explore his blogging experience.

The following is an interview we conducted after the Weblog Award results:

1. Not everyone knows who Curt is, where he came from, his experiences in life and what your "day job" is. We probably know more about your Dodge Charger than we do about you. So help us out.

A – I have been a Californian all my life. Grew up in Northern California and raised by a very liberal Mother and what I would call a somewhat Conservative liberal in my Father. Kinda funny how that works out huh? I recall arguing with my Mother over Reagan constantly as I was in my teenage years. Since I was born in 1967 I grew up with Reagan [then Governor of California]. I still recall putting a sign up in front of our garage which showed the number of days the hostages had been held in Iran. So as you can tell I grew up very involved in world affairs and politics.

A few days after graduating High School I was on a plane to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego and began my life as a Marine in the middle of June of 1986. I spent the next four years at 29 Palms and Camp Pendleton in California and in Okinawa Japan. I married my high school sweetheart and had a child young, so when given the opportunity I flew my wife and young child out to Okinawa and we lived in a Japanese apartment for about 10 months. Quite a experience for us.

I discharged from the Marine Corps and became a cop and have patrolled South Central Los Angeles for the last 9 years.

2. When did you start blogging? Why did you start blogging? How did you start blogging? What's your tech level?

I started blogging soon after the '04 election. I recall stumbling across a few blogs, the specific blogs I can no longer recall, and became intrigued. I said what the hell and started writing about things that caught my fancy. The rest is history I suppose.

I am pretty capable with tech stuff. I built my own computer and will learn about the new technology that comes out.

3. How has your readership grown over time (you may discuss actual numbers if you wish, or not)? To what do you attribute that growth?

Wow, has it grown. I never imagined I would grow to this size of readership and most of it I attribute to a few of the bigger blogs taking notice of me. Michelle Malkin being the first and most consistent at giving me a shot. I still recall my excitement at her linking to my OU Bomber post, my first big avalanche of traffic.

My first day of blogging brought 64 unique visitors and that's about the amount of traffic I received until Oct 2nd of 2005 when that OU bomber post got linked by Michelle. Up until that point I got on average about 94 unique visitors a day but on Oct 2nd I got 3400. From then on I got noticed by more and more people who like my way of blogging. This last year I get about 1100 unique visitors a day. In no way am I one of the big boys, which is ok with me. Not sure I would enjoy it as much if I felt I HAD to blog to keep the bills paid. I do tend to piss people off with my way of blogging, and I know you understand this Mike since you get people riled up also, so maybe that's what has increased my traffic but more then likely its my research abilities. I am not the best writer in the world but I am good at research so I stick with my strength. Most of the high traffic posts tend to be the ones where I over-researched something.

4. You cover quite a range of sources and material on a daily basis. Is there a "method to your madness" or a routine you follow? Any special tools you use to track news items, blog postings or other media sources?

None whatsoever. I take a look at the events going on and when I read something that just screams at me then I know I have to comment on it. I use Feeddemon to read all the blogs I like, and check out Free Republic a lot also.

5. Any newspapers, TV news or talk radio that are central to your daily news gathering routine?

I listen to Rush, Hewitt, Prager, Elder, Medved, Hannity, Levin when I get a chance. I tape record all of them via Radio Replay so if I have the time I will listen as I blog. I usually don't read a specific paper, more like I let the blogs lead me to certain papers if something catches my interest.

6. Are there particular stories or areas of interest which motivate you to post? How do you pick and choose which stories to cover and which to put off 'til later or ignore?

The war on terror, Iraq, Bush, media bias and politics all tend to be my main point of interest. I have no real method to my madness when I decide on something to post about or to ignore. It either catches my fancy or I discard it

7. Of all the stories and topics you have covered, which are you most proud?

The Jamil Hussein story. That was something I can call all my own instead of just reporting on what others think about things. Even better it highlighted a topic that is very important to me, the ongoing bias in our media.

8. Are there topics you have covered which you thought would receive more attention and did not? Why?

Able Danger. An important story that went nowhere. As far as why I feel it probably has to do with the complexity of the story along with the MSM ignoring it.

9. How much time per day do you devote to blogging? And how do you find time to do it?

I would say an hour or two during a workday and 3-4 during my days off. My daughter is going on 19 now and my wife is a RN so her hours vary both of which combine to giving me more then enough time to blog.

10. What do you see as near-term and long-term goals for Flopping Ace s? If it paid the bills, would you quit the day job?

No real goals Mike. Just continue to give my opinions on events and hope people enjoy it. I would not quit my day job, wouldn't even consider it. As I said before if I felt that I had to blog to pay the bills then all the enjoyment would go away for me.

11. You've gone through a few changes in blog format/blog platform. What have been the advantages and disadvantages of the format/platforms you have worked with? In this question consider how easy it is to a. post, b. manage comments c. index subjects.

Oh man, talk about problems. In the beginning I was with blogger which is a static page and can handle lots of traffic. I hired Mike from slobakons site of schtuff to do a custom page for me and I transferred over to wordpress. While WP is easy to use it is a dynamic page, meaning every little thing gets re-loaded at every pageload. This causes a huge strain on a server and I was shut down from my shared server I was using at hostgator. Mike has his own server and offered to host me which has been a godsend. He is much more proficient at server stuff then I am and with his help we kept my site up during the major traffic sites by going to a backup at blogger.

We decided to try out Movable Type since they have a static platform and mike converted over the site for me. What a difference. Haven't been down since. MT is a bit more complicated to use but well worth it.

12. What's your policy toward commenters? Any rules or guidelines? If you haven't covered this in 9.b. above, is there a commenting setup that you find works the best?

I force commentors to sign in for the simple reason that it keeps most trolls out. If a commentor starts personal attacks I will ban them but it usually has to be pretty bad, for example "Steve" whom I know you familiar with Mike.

13. As we close out on 2006 and look ahead to 2007 and ultimately to 2008, any thoughts on the year that has passed? Why the election didn't go as we had hoped? What we as a party, and also what we as bloggers can do to make things better?

2006 was a down year for sure. The McCain Gang of 14 was the worst thing that could have happened, to think we were so close.

14. Is it too early to ask if you have a favorite candidate for President in 2008?

Way too early…haven't seriously started looking at any of the candidates yet. I do know that I do not want McCain on the ticket.

15. Regardless of the 2008 Presidential sweepstakes, are there other leaders, either in the U.S. or abroad which you will be watching closely in the year ahead?

Of course the crazy trio in Iran, Venezuela, and NK. The biggest story being Iran and nukes in my opinion.

16. Finally, what leaders, historical figures or events have had the greatest impact on you?

Reagan
9/11
Bush Jr.

In that order. It's funny, when Bush got elected I, along with many others, knew nothing about him and I didn't think too much of him. Of course they thought the same thing of Lincoln until the war brought out the leader in him. The same goes for Bush, thank god we had that man in office on 9/11 instead of Gore. What a nightmare that would have been.

Graphic courtesy of Wordsmith.