The first 12 months of business have been an interesting time for the owners of Granite. The super sonic growth of the internet in general has resulted in growth for Granite that has been, at times, hard to keep up with. Granite thanks each and every one of our subscribers for the success of the past twelve months and promises to continue making every effort to keep up with the growth. There have been times when MTS couldn't install telephone lines fast enough for us and the demand for faster access has kept Granite hopping to keep up. The technical help-line has been busy attempting to help those customers not yet familiar with the internet get their feet wet and wade deeper into the electronic world now found at their fingertips. The Granite Internet Training Sessions proved to be a more formal way for subscribers to get their questions answered.
What does Granite have in store for the next twelve months? Granite has seen the need for faster access for businesses and has responded with the Transcend 67 analogue modems. T1 wireless access will become available this year for faster access yet. If the current rate of new subscriptions continues Granite expects to be in constant contact with MTS again this year. Granite has become one of their better customers in the region. Granite is currently working on several new web sites and expects to help many businesses get on the 'net, on their own or with our help. Granite intends to extend the toll-free dial-up range to include Beausejour and will be upgrading the Whitemouth dial-up location as soon as possible (this month).
Granite Internet Training Sessions will continue with the addition of courses for those planning to build and maintain their own websites. Look for information regarding upcoming training sessions on the Granite homepage. E-mail the webmistress@granite.mb.ca to get on the mailing list for upcoming training sessions.
Granite has sponsored several contests over the last twelve months. The Halloween Website contest produced some of the eeriest sites on the internet. Congratulations to Allan Simpson for his great effort. Jocelyn Barnard found all but one of the Twelve Sites of Christmas to take away first prize in the Christmas Contest. Petra Drynan wrote a lovely literary piece and got flowers delivered to her significant other for Valentines Day courtesy of Carnation Corner Plus in Lac du Bonnet. Dorothy Wilkens takes away another Granite T-shirt for becoming a Granite Subscriber during our anniversary weekend.
Thank You Granite Subscribers for an excellent twelve months. The staff and management of Granite Internet are looking forward to another action packed year of bringing the internet to your doorstep.
The festival committee began hoping for snow some two weeks ago when the rain started washing away the ice sculpture molds and puddles replaced the skating rink on the river. Unfortunately the committee was less than accurate (sorry Brandon). The festival was saved by the fact that many of the activities planned did not, in fact revolve around snow. The ball hockey tournament on Saturday was a blast! Congratulations to the Five Guys - winners of that event.
The dogsled poker derby was one of the cancelled events, much to the disapointment of everyone. Pinawa hopes to see them out next year when El Nino has finished it's run. The Entertainment tent heated up the site with the Ron Thompson Band and The Road Kings entertaining for the afternoon. The skating rink on the river was, unfortunately, toast - so the kids made do with the toboggan run, face painters, more helium balloons than could be counted and of course, the excellent music! There were no hungry mouths in the crowd either, as everyone chowed down to the excellent food served pretty much everywhere within the festival site.
Sunday, March 1 dawned with sweater weather brightness. Organizers were busy turning OFF the heat in the tent, it was so nice out. Bubbles and Bellini kept both the children and adults well entertained. The call came that the pony rides expected were not to make it. After a brief moment of disapointment, the owners of the Pinawa Motor Inn came through for the kids. All the kids piled into Jalapeno's for a rockin' good time of dancing to the Spice Girls and the Back Street Boys. The Pinawa fire truck came out to give rides and The Road Kings continued to heat up the Entertainment Tent all afternoon.
The Ice Sculpture Contest winners were announced with the grand prize going to Glen and Michelle Graham for their Coca Cola Bear. All the Ice Sculptures were wonderful, considering most of them were made in the rain!
The X-Treme mountain bike races saw first place in the open go to Kirk Gibson, while first place to the local race went to Don Ewing of Pinawa. Congrats to all those participating in that event. It made for more great entertainment.
If Pinawa can put on a festival this much fun without snow, imagine what they'll do next year! This was the first annual, so keep the last weekend in February open so you don't miss all the fun!
For All Satellite, Programming, Audio, Video & Observation Equipment Visit
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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.
Problems
LAC DU BONNET - No problems to report.
WHITEMOUTH - A major outage occurred on Wednesday February 18, 1998 at 10:00. The Pinawa Secondary School’s new ITV tower blocked the signal from the radio modem and the radio link to Whitemouth failed. Service was restored by 6:30 that evening when the antenna was moved from the existing tower to the new ITV tower. Unfortunately, the move cause the tower to be 10’ lower, thus degrading the signal quality. A temporary fix was installed on Friday February 20, 1998 at 6:30 AM. The cable was replaced on Saturday February 21, 1998 and the radio modem service was restored about 8:00 PM that evening.
Upgrades
LAC DU BONNET - More lines/modems are being added March 11th. Some interruptions may occur but these should be marginal.
WHITEMOUTH - A high speed line will be installed around March 21st. This is Phase I of the upgrade for the Whitemouth POP. The radio modem link will be discontinued. This will provide better service for the Whitemouth POP. With the addition of the high speed link, one phone line/modem will be discontinued.
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: