Interview with David from Raging Tech

BenSpark

Today I sit down with David from Raging Tech. I’ve gotten to know more about David and his blog through twitter and Entrecard. Also I like his logo because it has ass kicking flames. David, tell the readers about yourself.

David

Well, hello there, sexy readers. Since you’ve never met me, I’ll tell you these few things about me: I’m currently a 26 year-old male IT tech support analyst at a university in North Carolina. I’ve got two Microsoft Certifications, my Apple OS X Leopard Support Essentials certification, and I’m working on my Master’s Degree in Project Management. I love movies, pop culture, tinkering around with my computer and miscellaneous gadgets and geekery. My second love is cooking – I’m no master chef, but I love to make things that make my own tastebuds happy. I have a pretty sarcastic sense of humor, and I can be blunt. Generally every day is a practice in patience at my job, between helping people who genuinely just don’t have the skills, and people who are too ignorant to follow directions. Occasionally, I glean amusing stories from being a tech support person. Okay, pretty much all the time.

BenSpark

I can only imagine the things you have to deal with regarding IT. I’m the family IT director and let me tell you family is very hard to help as customer support. That must give you tons of blog fodder. Tell us about your blog.

David

This is a ridiculous question. My blog is the best blog EVAR. (I kid, I kid). Um, well, my Raging Tech blog is both my place to share tech tidbits when I figure out how to do something neat (like my post about how to create more than one set of recovery CDs for HP laptops) that took me some research to figure out. I also post updates about my personal life because I have some family and friends that don’t connect with me often who read my blog. I also like to review web sites, services, and complain when I receive poor customer service calling someone else’s tech support. There’s also the occasional celebrity or entertainment news and geek stuff I enjoy. I try to also warn people about frauds and scams and major virus and worm attacks, like when Conficker came out.

BenSpark

Your blog is a wealth of info for people who want to do some fun stuff with their tech. Was that why you started blogging, to help people with their tech needs? Why did you start blogging?

David

I started blogging back in college using just static HTML pages and a design template I got off some free website. I did it because I just wanted a place to keep up with my thoughts. I had also been reading one or two blogs regularly and I thought “Hey, I can do that.” I’ve always been a writer at heart; I love words and the English language. I’m no grammar nazi, but I try my best to do good work. Blogging was a chance to write down my silly stories and journal at the same time.

BenSpark

I think your foray into websites was very similar to mine. When I was in college my senior year my roommate was a computer science major. He brought home two pages of HTML code. We could all get a free account through the college with less than a meg of space to create a website. I can’t believe how far things have come since then. Now you can make money blogging which is very cool. Do you monetize your blog? What are some companies besides IZEA that you work with?

David

I’ve tried a few different systems, but so far IZEA pays the best and most often. My dream is to be a full-time professional online writer, and with what I made putting a lot of time in my first year, it seems like that’s a very real possibility. Its hard to maintain a full-time job and put the effort in to market and maintain a blog with a good sized readership. It’s something that requires discipline and organization – something I’m working on currently. BuzzLogic is another company that advertises on my blog from time to time – they get me campaigns from Microsoft and Adobe and CA Systems Software.

BzzAgent is not an advertiser, per say, but they do word-of-mouth powered campaigns by sending BzzAgents a BzzKit with information, coupons, or samples of a product. I once got a free Logitech Harmony One universal remote from them. Mostly, blogging buys beer and gas for me now. I hope to expand that into bills, mortgage and insurance one day when I break out into the big time.

BenSpark

You are on many of the campaigns that IZEA has and you are pretty active in SocialSpark and PayPerPost. What is your stance on Disclosure?

David

Disclosure is very important to me – I want my readers to trust me and the opinions I give. I’m not afraid to say I don’t like something I’m receiving compensation for reviewing. Thankfully, for the most part blogging for IZEA has meant the advertisers are all very high-quality and well-matched products or services. Even then, I have the final say about which opportunities I want to take, so I can make sure I’m not recommending anything that might be a bad or harmful product to my
readership. I have a disclosure policy posted on my blog so that readers are clear about which posts are sponsored and that I still promise to only give my real opinion on sponsored content.

BenSpark

What is your favorite feature of SocialSpark?

David

I like SocialSpark because it makes it all easy. It’s simple to
sign-up and install the toolkit on my WordPress blog. I get stats and
tracking on my traffic as well as a RealRank (screw Google PageRank!)
and can categorize my blog so I only get opps that really fit my blog.
Transferring money out to my PayPal account makes spending my money even easier – since PayPal is accepted online on a lot of sites, and I have the PayPal debit card so I can get cash or spend my money without waiting on a 3 day bank transfer. My favorite feature on SocialSpark is the Blog Roll / Street Team for advertisers. It’s really gratifying as a blogger when an advertiser accepts you to their street team or blog roll for an exclusive opportunity.

BenSpark

I tell yah as an advertiser, or at least having an advertiser account, making a street team can be tough. I’ve been working on one that has everyone from the I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Crew on i and it has taken me days and I still have over 150 people left to add. I wish it were easier to create one just for the crew. What do you think should be improved on SocialSpark?

David

Still a little bit irked about the ajax-ified opps sorting. It often loses my place and I’m back at the first page of opps when I’m looking for something. I’ve already spoken with the devs about it though and they’re supposed to be constantly improving that. It was nice that they acknowledged me and my input and are working on improving it.

BenSpark

I love how the feedback from bloggers gets incorporated as SocialSpark improves. What I’ve noticed improve lately is the quality of advertisers. What Advertisers do you want to see on SocialSpark?

David

More geek advertisers! I’d love to see Google, Microsoft, Apple, Think Geek, JINX!, New Egg, Radio Shack, and the like.

BenSpark

What is the Ultimate Goal for a blogger, in your opinion?

David

World Domination! Mua ha ha ha… Seriously. I want minions. Start
pledging yourselves to me.

BenSpark

You are a technical guy so I figure this would be an easy one for you. Which one plugin would you suggest all bloggers to have?

David

Auto-Upgrade. Installed and haven’t looked back. It downloads the latest WordPress for you and does all the dirty work. Instead of an hour for site maintenance and finding updated versions of plugins, I spend maybe a minute tops. It also lets me auto-upgrade my plugins, which is really handy.

BenSpark

I’m a big fan of that one as well. It is such a time saver. So, what is the first thing you do when you fire up your browser?

David

I usually read the quotes, jokes, and news headlines from RSS feeds on my Google home page.

BenSpark

Google home page, I had set one of those up but my 1st shot is always gmail. I’m a big fan. Google is so huge so it is a great thing to blog about. If you could spend one year blogging about a particular thing what would it be and why? How would you keep it fresh?

David

I would love to spend a year blogging about conferences and expos. I’d travel from place to place attending the blogger cons, geeky sci-fi / fantasy cons, Dungeons and Dragons cons, PAX (Penny Arcade Expo), the Mac World Expo, Consumer Electronics Show, DragonCon, so on and so forth. That would be awesome sauce. Photos, interviews, podcasts with
famous people. It’d be amazing.

BenSpark

That would be a fantastic thing to do for an entire year. I’ve been thinking more and more that I’d love to be able to offer a blog for a year sort of contest, that would be awesome. You’ve been blogging for a while what would you say is your best blog post ever?

David

The Tale of Broken Cell PhonesI was going through the beginning phase of my blog where I didn’t know what to write about, and I wrote this little short fiction post. My own personal flavor of humor, I hope you enjoy it.

BenSpark

I just read it and it was pretty good. Nice fictional tale, I especially liked the part about an adult male scream. You must get some interesting keyword searches when you write fiction. What are some odd keywords people use to find your blog?

David

budweiser, “What Belgian company bought Budweiser?,” “top ten signs
your a douche,” “snl you like a da juice video”

BenSpark

Some random questions. How about letting us know your favorite pizza topping?

David

Shrimp (on a shrimp pesto pizza), otherwise Hawaiian (Ham & Pineapple)

BenSpark

Pirates or Ninjas?

David

Ninjas! Ninjas could sneak up on pirates in the darkness and assassinate them. The only downside: pirates don’t come to land that often, so they’d need a stealthy ninja boat to sneak up on them at sea.

BenSpark

What one thing would be improved by adding Bacon to it?

David

Look, I’m not going to lie to you. Bacon makes everything taste better. I think what I really want to try is adding bacon to coffee. Not eating bacon while drinking coffee, but maybe some bacon bits in with the ground coffee during brewing. Or the other way around, some bacon infused with coffee grounds so that your bacon gives you that extra kick of caffeine. Also, Billy Mays died today, and that made me think about funerals. Why don’t people bring bacon to grieving families? It certainly would have been comforting.

BenSpark

Favorite Blogs?

David

• Lifehacker – Tips, Tricks & Hacks to help you live better
• Ted Murphy’s Blog
• Uncle Bob’s Diary – (is very dirty, foul-mouthed, and hilarious. Also stopped writing forever in February, but read the archives for a good laugh)
• Technosailor
• Give Away of the Day – Daily Free Software

BenSpark

Favorite Podcasts?

David

None at the moment, but I used to listen to TWiT (This Week in Tech – has a lot of the old Screensavers and TechTV gang), Diggnation, and Patrick Norton’s ZDNet video podcast. NPR has some good podcasts too. I just don’t have time to listen to them anymore – I mostly listen to Pandora at work and Sirius or NPR in the car.

BenSpark

Sounds like you are one busy man. Loving the stuff that you are writing and am so happy that you took the time to chat with me and introduce yourself to the rest of the crew! Thanks David.

Tagged as: bacon, Billy Mays, Celebrity, Lifestyle, Pop Culture, Raging Tech, Technology, World Domination