The Life and Times of The Partially-genius...

—Quick Facts—
Name: Jonn Berg

Lives: Mounds View, MN.
High School:
Park Rapids, MN.
College:
Bethel College, St Paul, MN.
Bemidji State University, Bemidji, MN.
Employment:
Minnesota Department of Human Services
Tech Rescue, LLC.
Cimbre Interactive
Neptune Media Group

—The Story—

As you can tell from this domain, my name is Jonn Berg. I was born sometime in 1976 to a father and a mother and spent the first part of my life in Bloomington, MN and Eagan, MN. I have one younger sister named Miranda. The summer between 2nd and 3rd grade found us moving to Park Rapids, MN. My dad is a Minnesota State Trooper and when my parents got married, they decided that within 10 years they were going to live in northern Minnesota. Guess what? Park Rapids is definately there!

It was in middle school that I started playing hockey again. This time I was playing goalie, rather than defense and I liked it much better. I played all the way though the end of high school, except in 10th grade because I had a coach that was a jerk that year.

Anyway, after high school, I went to Bethel College (now Bethel University) for a year. I majored in Computer Science. The next few years I spent in Bemidji until I got an internship for USFilter. USFilter was the parent company of Culligan. So in a way, I was a Culligan Man!

After my internship was over, I was offered a full-time job at USFilter. I spent almost 3 years there before I was layed off the first time, September 12, 2001. Yep. The day after 9/11. I was able to get another job in a different USFilter location, but that lasted only 3 months until I was layed off again. Twice in the span of 3 months!

So, off I went to Electronics for Imaging. EFI is a company that makes hardware and software for the printing industry. If you have ever heard of a Fiery or PrintMe (installed with Adobe Acrobat now-a-days), then you may have heard of EFI. I got hired to support the PrintMe product. It was fun, at least, while it lasted, because, yep, you guessed it – I got layed off again! That’s 3 times in a little over 6 months now.

I figured that that was 3 strikes, so I ought to do something else. I had a couple of friends from Bemidji State that were in the Twin Cities with me and we had heard enough complaints about the Geek Squad and how they ripped people off, that we decided to try to do something about it. So, we started a consulting company called Tech Rescue. The first year, we did really well. The second year we took on a new partner, then lost one of our founders, then took on our first 4 employees, then had to lay them off one-at-a-time. The third year it was just me and Bob. We got a very lucrative contract and used most of that income to get 3 months of radio ads. It didn’t go as we planned. I think in the long run, we had maybe 3 new clients from that large outpouring of money. Definitely not worth it. The bottom had dropped out of the consulting boom and while we were staying afloat (we never had a month of red-ink the whole time), we weren’t getting anywhere. The Geek Squad (or Reek Squad as they are known around here) had been purchased by Best Buy, so they had tremendously deep pockets and they basically bought out most of our bigger clients, even though upwards of 60% of Tech Rescue’s clients had originally left the Geek Squad. The future was starting to look pretty bleak.

On a different note, I had been going to this great church in White Bear Lake for the last few years and my spiritual growth was soaring! I was the leader of a wonderful small group. I volunteered as a security guard at Club 3 Degrees, a Christian night-club in Minneapolis. I was gaining all kinds of great new friends and I had met a beautiful, wonderful young woman named Rebecca who is now my wife! She didn’t know it at the time we met, in fact it took almost 3 years for her to realize this.

Okay, so back to the main story again. Just about the time that my mom had enough of worrying about me being able to eat, living off of less than $1000 per month, with $800 of that going to living expenses; with no working vehicle and very little prospects of fixing it, I got a call from the Minnesota Department of Human Services. It seems that they found my resume and they wanted me to come in for an interview. I was working on a contract for Merril Corporation at the time and I was getting shipped down to Kansas City for training on the day that they wanted me to come in. I got it rescheduled and they liked me the best out of everyone that interviewed.

After a couple of weeks, I got the job offer. I had quite a decision to make. Should I decline it and keep working and trying to make Tech Rescue fly, or should I take the job and relegate Tech Rescue to the off-hours. After many days of prayer and meditation, I felt that God was telling me to take the job. So, I did. I have been a Senior Systems Analyst for the Minnesota Department of Human Services – Application Development and Support Division, coming up on 5 years now.

I have a lot of experience with computers and technology, including HTML, PHP, MySQL, Operating Systems (Windows 3.1 through Vista including the Server versions, Mac OS 6 through OS X, Linux, BeOS, etc), hardware (I have built every computer that I have owned, except laptops, since 1995), and lots of third party software administration.

We now have a car that works well, looks good, sounds good, and drives awesome; and a truck that can pull the horse trailer like it was nothing. We have a house in Mounds View, MN. We have two cats, Gizmo and Shale, a dog named Chloe, a horse named Cricket and a miniature pony named Cowboy and another foal named Carmel. I am still very active in Eaglebrook Church, working with the junior high kids (Ground Zero) and helping out with the young adults group as I can. Tech Rescue is still going pretty strong now.

My parents are still living in the north woods. They live in a beautiful house on a lake near Detroit Lakes, MN. My dad retired after almost 30 years on the Minnesota State Patrol, but still works part time teaching Troopers. My mom works as a Media Specialist in Farmington, MN. She also writes children’s books. My sister, brother-in-law and two nephews live in Park Rapids and are determining the logistics that it will take to become missionaries.

God has really provided! I can’t ask for anything more.

What do I like to do? Well, I still play hockey. I play sand volleyball in the summer. I have been known to be a pretty good catcher in softball. I also hit my first home run, which incidentally was a grand slam a few years ago. I like to read, sometimes way too much. I play video games, again, sometimes way too much… When given the chance, I have been known to go camping and hiking. I also am starting to get back into horses recently. I used to ride Brandon and Melissa’s horse fairly often back in Park Rapids and with Becca’s favorite thing in her life besides me being her horse Cricket (and Cowboy and Carmel), it is kinda hard not to!