The Granite Newsletter

published April 1, 1998

Introduction

We need help! Granite is looking for people to submit short articles for this Newsletter from the following regions:

The Whiteshell Park
Lac du Bonnet
Beausejour
Pine Falls
Pinawa

You will be free to use the opportunity to get the word out about your community events and whatever else might be happening in your region that would be of interest to the Granite membership. No monthly commitment is required. The length of the articles should be between two and four paragraphs. To submit an article for the next newsletter just e-mail it to the webmistress@granite.mb.ca.

It's A Boy!

Congratulations to the East-Ming family of Lac du Bonnet, who are the proud parents of 10 lb 1 1/2 oz James Michael. Congratulations also goes out to the Elcocks of Pinawa who are (finally) the proud parents of 8 lb Jesse Richard Samuel Elcock. Congratulations to both families and here's hoping you all get at least a little bit of sleep over the next few months :)

Whitemouth Gets Frame Relay

On March 24th a Frame Relay digital line was installed in the Whitemouth dial-up location to improve the internet access for all those accessing through that location. The access at that location will now be adequate at all times of the day or night.

Whenever something changes it is inevitable that some subscribers will experience some difficulties with their setup. If you routinely dial in through Whitemouth and you are experiencing difficulties, send us an e-mail and we can help! If you can't login at all, call the technical help-line and we'll walk you through whatever changes need to be made. One of the main culprits causing difficulties is an old DNS (domain name server) address in your network setup. If you have 204.112.38.2 in your DNS list (found in the TCP/IP properties in your network configuration) you'll want to change that to 207.161.205.3 immediately. There are also a few people with a gateway number in their network configuration. This is not necessary and should be removed. If all this sounds like Greek to you, just call us and we'll help you out.

Business Week in Pinawa

It's Business Week in Pinawa April 13 to 17th. Visit their website for a detailed up to date list of the activites planned for the week. The new W.B. Lewis Business Centre will be celebrating their Grand Opening to kick off the week, with a ribbon cutting, free goodies and the launch of the new Pinawa Business Directory. The Granite offices will be located their, hopefully in time for the free cake :)

The New Beginnings Trade Fair will be held during Business Week this year on April 16 and 17 at the W.B. Lewis Business Centre. The entire building will be used for this event. If you're interested in getting a booth at the Trade Fair you'd best move quickly and e-mail Yolande Brudy for information. You can download the registration package here.

The Eastman Freenet is Alive and Kicking in Pinawa

The Eastman Freenet is a non-profit text-only internet provider in our region that has been around providing access for about 3 years now. At it's inception, the freenet provided the first and only internet access this region had. The future of the freenet was recently called into question when the existing board members exhausted their terms and the question of whether there would be any interest to continue the freenet now that internet access is available from several other sources. When a meeting was called, the turn out was excellent and there were enough volunteers to form a new Board of Directors. What direction the freenet will take still remains to be seen, but there is a value of a freenet in our region and there are obviously enough people around who agree. For more information about the freenet visit them at http://eastman.freenet.mb.ca.

Layoffs Starting at Whiteshell Labs

The shuffle is on! For two and a half years now the employees at AECL, most of who reside in the Eastman region, have been living through the uncertainty of future employment at the Whiteshell Labs in Pinawa. Finally, on March 27 many AECL employees were finally given their freedom and allowed to leave. Many more will be released during the month of April. For many of these employees the release must be cathartic. Many were waiting to receive a retirement package while some are ready to move onto bigger and better things. Still others have decided in the eleventh hour to take the package and run. This has left room for others to move into jobs left vacated at the last minute.

Rumors about a successful conclusion to the negotiations between AECL and CNPL on the privatization of the Whiteshell Labs may be wishful thinking, but let's hope not. All is not lost yet at this site. In fact, an optimistic person may just be thinking that the future is finally arriving and, while there may be some risks involved, it could look pretty bright when all the dust settles.

If you did get laid off this week, there is no better time to get your Granite Internet account. For the month of April, any person with a layoff notice will pay no setup fee. If you're one of those affected, you may have some free time on your hands. Why not spend it surfing the net and setting up your new internet business?

Viruses and Hoaxes - How To Protect Yourself?

Virus' are bad, nasty things that can wreak havoc on your computer system and devastate your most important data. Anyone who runs a system without adequate virus protection is taking an enormous risk.

This past month the staff at Granite have been inundated with e-mail messages about certain viruses that promise to wipe out your hard drive if you open certain e-mail messages. The e-mail's in question tell you not to open e-mail messages with "Win a Holiday" or "Returned or Unable to Deliver" in the subject line. Granite has searched for some official documentation about these viruses and found none. Both of these viruses are listed as a hoax. Check out http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html or http://www.nai.com/services/support/hoax/hoax.asp for more information on virus hoaxes.

While it is impossible to say for sure if messages like these are true or hoaxes, the vast majority of these messages are hoaxes designed to waste peoples time and bandwidth. These hoaxes are very efficient at doing just this, and may cause businesses more economically in the long run than the real viruses that come your way.

So how can you protect your system amid the real and bogus threat of virus invasion and still enjoy surfing, downloading and e-mailing freely? Here's a few steps everyone should follow to protect their computers:

Run Anti virus Software - and keep it updated regularly. New viruses are found all the time. Your anti-virus software will only protect you from new viruses if you know about it. Good protection does not come free. McAfee Antivirus can be downloaded from the internet, but must be licensed. The fee is variable but is somewhere around the $50.00 range. This package is also available at any software store. McAfee can be set to automatically scan, alert you when you require an updated virus list and the automatically connect to the internet and update itself. Norton's Antivirus is another good program with most of these features and is also widely available.
Scan before you run - A virus cannot infect your system unless you execute a program. What this means is that you can feel free to download whatever you want off of the internet, but scan the file before you execute the program. E-mail, unfortunately, holds a few more tricks up it's sleeve for you to watch out for. Macros can be embedded into file attachments that contain viruses. You get infected when you open up the file attachments. File attachments can be scanned before you open them. On newer operating systems, many virus programs can be set to scan attachments automatically.
Be Selective- When you hear a rumor you know to consider the source. The same holds true for software. Consider where you got that floppy from (was it a school or your son's friends computer?) or the site you are considering downloading from. If you're well protected, proceed cautiously. If you're not protected, load software from only the most reputable sources.
Back Up Your System - Last but certainly not least, back up your system. There are many cost effective backup systems available now, including tape drives, zip drives and optical disk drives that can be used to fully back up your system. When the unthinkable happens to you, you want to be prepared.

For more information about current virus warnings check out Dr Solomon's Virus Central. For more information about protected your system try On Track or Microsoft's Antivirus site.

Classified Ads

For Sale - One 286 Toshiba 1200 XE lap top computer with 40 meg hard drive and 1 meg of RAM, complete with carrying case and manuals. Computer is loaded with DOS 6.2, Word Perfect 5.1 and Quicken for DOS. Price $275.00 OBO. Phone 1-204-349-8504 or e-mail jbarnard@granite.mb.ca

Wanted to Buy - Wanted to Buy Teak buffet, dresser and/or chest. Phone 1-204-349-8504 or jbarnard@granite.mb.ca.

For Sale - Starcraft Starmaster 6, 3-way fridge, propane stove, hard top, sleeps 6, awning included. Asking Price $1000.00 OBO. Call 1-204-475-0799

Wanted To Buy - School Bus suitable for conversion to camper. Must be safety certified. GM preferred. Call 1-204-474-0799.

Now available - classified advertising. We've been asked routinely for rates on advertising your site in the Granite Business Directory, or methods to place a simple ad on the internet. This is our newsletter so it makes sense to put those ads here. Advertising rates for the first 2 months will be very reasonable - free! Starting April 1 the rate will be $5.00 per ad. The ad will remain on-line. The Granite Newsletter is published monthly, but previous months newsletters remain available for viewing. Hypertext links and e-mail links will not only be available, but encouraged. Load up a picture in your user area and we will link to the picture for ad purposes. To place an ad in the Granite Newsletter, send information to webmistress@granite.mb.ca. The ad must be submitted electronically. Ads via snail mail will be charged an extra $10.00 processing fee.

If you've got your business site ready for viewing and want a little more exposure, place a link along with your logo and Site Description in the Granite Business Directory for $10.00 per month or $100.00 per year. Granite offers a Site Marketing Program that includes submittal to 100 search engines and suggestions for meta tag inclusions on your page for only $75.00. The meta tags help push your site to the top of the search engines. If you're doing this yourself, remember to repeat the submittals at least once a year to keep your site fresh in the search engines.

Members Forum

If you update your homepage with something you'd like to share, please e-mail the webmistress and we'll post the address here.

Network Manager’s Report

Network Managers Report

Problems

INTERNET - Multiple problems were reported by MBnet. The most serious problems occurred with the router that supplies Manitoba with its Internet access. Some fiber optic cables were also damaged thus causing poor access the US.

LAC DU BONNET - No problems to report.

WHITEMOUTH - Service was interrupted on March 24, 1998 when the new Frame Relay service was installed linking Whitemouth directly to Lac du Bonnet (Granite no longer uses the radio modem link from Whitemouth to Pinawa). Customers using the Whitemouth POP should notice a large increase in speed. This was Phase I of the Whitemouth upgrade. Phase II Modem/Line Increase will occur when the demand requires it. Currently the Whitemouth POP sees 25-30% utilization where as the Lac du Bonnet POP sees 40-45%.

EASTMAN FREENET - On Tuesday March 24, 1998, the Freenet server had a disk failure. This caused the School District of Whiteshell and the Agassiz School Division to loss their primary DNS server. All Granite customers that had not changed or updated their DNS also saw difficulties (see FAQ). The Freenet was restored on Thursday March 26, 1998 and was operational by 10:30 AM.

Upgrades

LAC DU BONNET - Nothing planned for April.

WHITEMOUTH - Nothing planned for April.

What's Coming

Our next Internet Training Session has not been scheduled yet, but don't let that stop you from letting us know you are interested. A beginners course on web page building is in the planning stages. We keep a mailing list on hand so we can let you know when the next session will be. E-mail webmistress@granite.mb.ca today.

Check out our previous newsletters: