Sig talks about milblogging on Vox Veterana.

Question: What are 3 things your readers probably do not know about you?

That’s rough. Most of my regular readership is related to me by blood, marriage, or unit patch and there are few secrets between family or fire team members. Relatively few of those know that I also write mediocre military science fiction–mostly on the theory that some of the insanity I’ve seen is more believable if done by space aliens. Relative newcomers to my site and VoxVeterana may not know that I spent four years doing IT work in the civilian world after university and before donning the green.

My family knows this last one, but few others: we’re expecting our first child this next March.

Question: How long have you been blogging and why did you get into blogging?

My first blog started in early 2001 on the now-defunct Killingmachines.org (run by my friend Scott Vandehey). I had a lot of time at work and nothing better to do with it but write about how much I hated work. In 2004 (after I’d gone active for training), I started playing around with WordPress on my new laptop, and then Drupal on my test server, running from my home DSL network–you can put the geek in uniform, but he’s still a geek. I had no particular need for it; I just wanted to play with the software. Eventually I moved it over to its current host at NearlyFreeSpeech.net, started calling it SigSpace (instead of something obscurely Russian) and it’s been running much better ever since. I don’t think it turned into a “real” milblog until late 2005, when I started the mobilization for Enduring Freedom.

Early this year, T.F. Boggs asked me whether I’d be willing to contribute to his new group site, and I was happy to have yet another venue with which to inflict my views on random Intarweb people.

Question: What is your military experience?

I enlisted in the WA Army National Guard in 2003, shipping out in January of 2004 for basic, language training, and AIT. At my first drill weekend in September of 2005, we learned we would mobilize for OEF; this occurred in November. I spent the deployment doing tactical MI work while attached to a variety of combat arms units. I spent a lot of time during the second half in the turret. Since returning home in February of 2007, I’ve been on active duty orders as the Random Task NCOIC and doing some language-related things.

Question: What are some of your other favorite Milblogs?

I follow Blackfive religiously, but relatively few other milblogs on a regular basis. More of my RSS reader is devoted to media and politics, honestly, though Military Motivator provides my desktop backgrounds and I, too, am Trying to Grok. I used to follow FuzzyBunny6, but he mostly stopped writing after he got home.

Question: What has been the biggest factor in helping you create and publish a successful blog?

I enjoy my own writing. I can waste hours amusing myself by reading stuff I’ve written. If I can amuse and inform others, too–that’s a bonus. I don’t think I would do very well trying to write what I think other people want to read; I’ve done it on occasion, and I’m rarely happy with the result. I write what I want to read; if you also want to read it, feel free. If not, there’s plenty of variety out there.

Question: Do you have anything else you would like us to mention about you, your blog, or your readers?

I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being successful before–at least, not in this context.

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