I’m Ben, a designer and tech geek. I was born in Florida, lived there for less than a year; moved to Pennsylvania till I was five; then found myself in the wonderful metropolis of Rochester, Minnesota. Around, my 12th birthday we moved to Chatfield, MN, a small rural town where I eventually graduated from high school. At that point I began schooling at Rochester Community and Technical College where I graduated with an Associates Degree in Digital Art with an emphasis in Multimedia. After that, I attended Bemidji State University. While I was a Beaver, I obtained a Bachelors Degree in Design Technology with an emphasis in Multimedia.
Some things that might be interesting to people are: I’ve only been unemployed for approximately one month since the week before my 15th birthday. I’ve held jobs in several different service industries including sales, short order cook, bar tending/wait staff, and general customer service/maintenance. My first job was for a Midwestern based chain of grocery stores called Hy-Vee. At Hy-Vee I bagged groceries and operated a register. My next job would prove to be the start of a chain in the industry, I started at Colonial Lanes, a local bowling alley as a cook. On the day I turned 18 I learned how to bar tend and continued to do so for several years. I also learned how to run the front end of the lanes as well as fix issues on the back end of them. I was made an offer by a family friend who had recently purchased their own bowling alley and I took a position at Stewartville Lanes. There, I continued to run the front end and repair the back end of the bowling alley and bar tend. At this point I was heading to school in Bemidji, so taking what I knew I found a position at Bemidji Bowl. While in school and working at Bemidji Bowl I also held several other jobs. I bar tended for Bemidji Town and Country Club for a season, I ran a ski lift for Mount Julia for a season and I worked in the hardware section of the local Wal Mart for about 6 months. Several of these were at the same time. As graduation came closer I was starting to think further about what I wanted to do. I started working as a temp for IBM installing software and configuring servers, desktops and printers. Once this was done I would network them all together on a switch. These would all get boxed back up and shipped to a branch of a national hotel chain. This proved to be a good way for me to look for work in the design industry and still do something interesting during the day.
One night in September 2008, while bowling in league I received a phone call that I had gotten the position with Williamson County that I had interviewed for the week prior. So on Saturday, October Third I packed as many of my belongings as would fit in my small sedan and made the drive from Rochester, MN to Georgetown, TX. I started work on Monday. Acclimating to Texas has been an interesting experience and the weather and I don’t get along sometimes but overall its been enjoyable. I’ve enjoyed getting to enhance and develop my design skill set and learn more web development in my current position with the County. I feel fortunate to get to do something I enjoy everyday and I look forward to learning more in the time to come.
When I'm not at work I enjoy hanging out with my dog Hurley, shooting pool (no matter how bad I am at it) and bowling. I've been involved in bowling in at least some capacity for about 20 years and it's something that is very big in my family. I always appreciate a good story so I really like movies and video games. I don't get as much time to read as I like so I listen to podcast novels and podcasts about technology news. I became so interested in podcasting that I even was in one for about a year. If you don't know what a podcast is, feel free to ask me about it.