The Granite Newsletter

published August 1, 1998

Granite Welcomes Ceridwen Collins-West to the Staff

Granite is pleased to welcome Ceridwen Collins-West to the staff. Ceridwen will spend a few weeks learning the entire Granite network before she begins her position as Customer Service / Technical Help representative. Feel free to drop Ceridwen a line at ceridwen@granite.mb.ca to say hello.

New Technical Help System

A new tier system for technical help will be established here at Granite. The average technical help call can be solved quickly with one short telephone call or e-mail message. These calls will be handled by our technical help staff. For those tougher calls, a call back system will be initiated. The call back will come from an experienced technical help representative with information available to help you with your specific problem. If the problem is too complex to solve over the telephone, Granite is prepared to pay you a visit to ensure you get back on-line as quickly as possible. A home visit will be charged out at $35.00 per hour plus mileage. The average call is less than one hour. This system is designed to help you solve all your Internet problems as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The Whiteshell Provincial Park Site Gets a Face Lift

Granite Internet is very proud to announce a new site for the Whiteshell Provincial Park. Located on one of the Granite web servers at http://www.whiteshell.mb.ca, the new site retains all the great information available at the old site with a few additional features. You can check out information about all the activities available in the park, as well as the area attractions. Regular visitors to the site can use the interactive events calendar to let others know whats happening in the region. Information about the accomodations and other businesses in the region as well as a site for the campers is available. If you have any information you'd like to see on this site, please e-mail the webmistress@granite.mb.ca. If you've got any great pics - send them our way, we would love to see them. To find out how to be included on this site, read more about it or call the Granite office at 753-2071 or 1-888-727-3300.

This is one site you will want to bookmark and visit often. The site information will reflect the seasons in the park. Its also a site Granite is planning to enjoy working on. Imagine a job that requires you to hike the trails, canoe the lakes and visit the area resorts, all under the guise of doing business. Its a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Wilderness Canoe Route Featured

Take your vacation on the wild side this summer with a wilderness canoe trip. The Caddy Lake Canoe Route is a 105 mile trip that follows the Whiteshell and Winnipeg River waterways through the Whiteshell Provincial Park. You can choose the ultimate summer adventure and travel the entire route, or spend the weekend (or several weekends) exploring parts of the trip. The entire trip is featured on the internet as part of the Green Bay Resort site. Green Bay Resort is just one of the launch sites for this great trip.

In The Humor Department

Between moments of dispensing wisdom, it seems that historical religious leaders had also learned software programming. One day a great contest was held to test their skills. After days and days of fierce competition, only two leaders remained for the last day's event: Jesus and Mohammed.

The judge described the software application required for the final test, and gave the signal to start writing code. The two contestants feverishly typed away on their keyboards. Routines, classes, applets, and applications flew by on their screens at incredible speeds. Windows, dialogs, and other intricate graphics began forming on their monitors.

The clock showed that the contest would soon be finished, when suddenly a bolt of lightning flashed and the power went out. After a moment it came back on--just in time for the clock to announce that the last competition was over. The judge asked the two contestants to reveal their finished software. Mohammed angrily said that he'd LOST IT ALL IN THE POWER OUTAGE. The judge then turned to the other competitor. Jesus smiled, clicked a mouse, and a dazzling application appeared on his screen. After just a few moments, the judge was clearly impressed and declared Jesus the victor, pointing out the unique characteristic that set the winner apart from all the other leaders:

JESUS SAVES.

New Account and Billing Information

Last month we surfed through the hundreds of customer survey responses and set up a new 30 hour account for our members. This has proven to be a very popular account type for a lot of Granite members. If yu're wondering how to change your account type, here's our policies on billing and account changes. Your billing is always for the upcoming month with overuse charges based on the previous month. Account changes can only be made for the next month and must be applied for via e-mail. Send you request for changes to granite@granite.mb.ca.

Beginning September 15th a 1.5% surcharge will be added to all overdue accounts. Please note that your bill will arrive via e-mail on the first of each month and is due 15 days after the billing date. If monthly e-mails aren't convenient for you, check out our prepayment schedules. Hey - they actually save you some $$$!

There have been a few requests for people to discontinue accounts during vacation. While this is possible it is certainly not encouraged. Please be aware that you will be subject to a setup fee when you reinstate your account, free hours with setup are only available once, your e-mail will not delivered or stored for you while your account is disabled and your username will not be guaranteed to be available when you return.

Classified Ads

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.

Network Manager’s Report

Two new modems were installed this month at the 345-1500 dial-up location. There have been very few busy signals experienced since this upgrade.

July was a quiet month for Internet access problems. There were a few instances of disruption due to problems further up the line in Manitoba's backbone, but only one that you would have noticed on Saturday, July 18th around 6 PM.

Check out our previous newsletters: