Ted’s coffee experience prior to working at Cafe Imports was ordering the medium house blend daily at whichever large chain was convenient, but he’s been working in IT Support since 2013. Nowadays he knows the difference between a Natural and a Washed, and he even has a preference. His first experience with computer support and repair was as a teenager when, after the house was struck by lightning during a thunderstorm, he discovered that the modem card in his hand-me-down desktop from the family business was no longer working. This provided the opportunity to upgrade from a 28.8 Kbps modem to a 56K card, as well as to open up the case and realize that all of these parts and cables fit together in ways that weren’t more complex than the LEGO sets he received every birthday and Christmas.
Ted was born in upstate New York, the family moved to San Diego when he was six, and then in a move that Ted’s dad referred to as “flunking the intelligence test” they moved to the Minneapolis suburbs when he was nine. Ted loves it here though and doesn’t want to live anywhere else. He lived here through graduating high school, then went to college in Grand Forks, North Dakota to study Commercial Aviation with the goal of being an airline pilot. That didn’t work out for a variety of reasons, but he did get his Private Pilot’s Certificate as well as extensive training towards Instrument and Multi-Engine ratings as well as a Commercial Pilot’s Certificate, although he didn’t quite get to the combined checkride for all these. He did pick up his Tailwheel endorsement while there though and has even done a small amount of aerobatic flying!
When Aviation didn’t work out he realized he had enough credits to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in General Studies at which point he moved back down to the Twin Cities, where he’s now lived for over a decade. He worked at the LEGO store in the Mall of America when moving down and rediscovered his passion for the constructive toy, which he collects extensively, and while there also accidentally fell into a career in Information Technology Support, working for such companies as Target and US Bank along the way. Cafe Imports is very much the smallest company he’s worked for, but he also says that it’s his favorite. He loves the small environment where he’s not just maintaining systems but implementing them and even helping decide what the company’s technological infrastructure will be.
Outside of work Ted has a D&D group that has been going strong since 2016, enjoys cycling around the Chain of Lakes when the weather is nice, and has a black belt in Kenpo Karate.