Jim Becher - Surfing the Web

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Blog posts and ramblings to chronicle my adventures in life. This may contain technology, family, business or products that I enjoy.

About

Hi, I’m Jim. A father, husband, business owner, entrepreneur, and a person who loves technology. I semi-often update this blog.

Contact

Feel free to reach out to me with questions, contact, business ideas, projects or just a random Hello. Located in the Mitten state.

Recent Posts


Thinkpad x1 Touch

I am a ThinkPad junkie (proof 1, 2). I currently have 3 active thinkpads in our home. My primary laptop T410, My wife’s T410, and our home server (everything PC) t61p. Today I just purchased another thinkpad to add to the collection. I got a Thinkpad X1 Carbon Touch. This…

Tech Travel

I recently went on a trip to San Francisco for the Microsoft Build Conference. First and foremost the conference was excellent. You can say what you want about Microsoft, but they are making both hardware and great software. Packing for a trip like Build, where everyone got a Surface Pro…

Home Phone – Free using google talk

I just setup our home phone to have free calling and kept our existing number. The new setup I am using incorporates Google voice and an obitalk Obi110 ($40) device. I have been a VOIP user at our house for the last 7 years. I started with Vonage and have…

Printers – Home Laser Printer

I hate printers. They have caused me so much headache over the years. Printers bother me from the standpoint that they don’t work when you need them, and most likely they are near or out of ink when they do work. In the past few years, I have had the…

Giro Reverb – Commuter Helmet

Reverb

I recently upgraded my helmet to a more fully bodied helmet for commuting to work. I have a Giro Road helmet that really allows for air flow and the ability to cool your head. But for commuting to work and being packed away in my desk it was not all…

Ubuntu or Mint

I have been using ubuntu for a while. In fact, the last Linux box I had prior was Fedora 10. My current primary linux box is running Ubuntu 10.4 (a bit outdated). I recently upgraded to 12 and found some performance issues on my dual core Dell Box. The majority…

iPad VPN – OpenVPN – PFsense

I have been waiting for a while for a good openvpn client to be available for the iPad or iPhone with out JailBreaking. A few months back openvpn released an app for the iPad and iPhone. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/openvpn-connect/id590379981 Head on over and download if you are a pfsense user. I recommend…

IIS 6 and .net 4 – 404 error

I just spent the last hour troubleshooting an issue with an upgrade. It had to do with upgrading a website to a new version using .net 4 on an iis 6 (server 2003) machine. I was consistently getting a 404 error when I switched to using the 4.0 framework I…