Monday - Friday 9 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Saturday 9 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Evenings and weekends by appointment.

The location of the hat will change daily and be updated on weekends around 12 noon and weekdays around 6pm. The winner will be notified by return e-mail. Please limit one winner per household. Winner is responsible for coming to our office to get their prize package.

We will post the name of the winner each day in my newsletter update.

Good luck and Merry Christmas from all of us at Miami County Internet OnRamp.

Yesterday, December 2, 1997, we installed from scratch a new operating system on our file server (a project normally bid at $1,500.00 to be completed - we paid considerable less!), made some programming changes as well as increased the RAM from 32MB to 96MB. In addition to this we have also installed a 1GB Jaz drive to replace the 800MB tape backup. This will make system backups faster and more easily accessable shoud there be any type of problem develope requiring a restore of data.

We want to apoligize for providing no notice of these changes, but in planning for this to happen, everything just fell into place at the same time from a telephone call early Tuesday morning. After some quick thinking we decided it would be to our advantage to use this rare opportunity and get things done. Thanks for your patience and continued support as we make great strides to continue to be the premier Internet Service Provider in Miami County.

On a different subject, we have been approached by a user who has professional office spaces located on the Paola Square that are available to lease at a very reasonable rate. Since we have committed to a long-term lease with our landlord and Southwestern Bell to maintain our operating equipment in our current location, we have mixed feelings about being 2 blocks away with our administrative offices. If you may have an interest in getting more information about the spaces available, please e-mail Bill and he will help you. Please be sure to provide your name and telephone number so he may contact you.

'Tis the season. Starting on the 13th of December, Miami County Internet OnRamp will be celebrating the 12 days of Christmas. We will be giving away, each day, a gift package of: two (2) MCIO koozies for keeping your canned beverages cold, two (2) boxes of IBM preformatted 3 1/2" 1.44MB floppy disks and one (1) MCIO ball cap to a Miami County Internet OnRamp user. I will post additional information as this gets closer.

Please make a note, if you have not made your monthly payment by today, your payment is now late. Starting in January 1998, we will be charging a $5 late fee for payments not received in our office by the 10th of each month. We bill on the 17th of each month to allow 2 weeks for payments to reach our office. These additional 10 days should be more than enough time to allow you to make your payment without dealing with a late charge.

For your convenience, Miami County Internet OnRamp now accepts Discover (Novus), Visa, Mastercard and American Express credit cards. We process these transactions automatically for you on the 25th of each month then e-mail a confirmation to you for your records. Take the hassle out of remembering to write and mail a check. We make things simple. Call us for details.

Our hours have returned to normal following the Thanksgiving holiday, however, hours will again change for Christmas. We will close at 1pm on Wednesday the 24th and remain closed Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, reopening for business as usual on Monday, December 29th. We will also be closed all day January 1, 1998. We will be in and out of the office during the closed times, so please feel free to leave a message in the office or call John Grimes at home (294.3513) if you have a problem that can not wait.

'Tis the season for computer upgrades and purchases. If you have been considering the purchase of a new computer and have decided to make this a Chirstmas gift, please contact our office before traveling somplace else for your purchase. We offer very competitive rates for our complete systems. And you receive 3 months of free Internet service with the purchase of a complete computer system. Larger monitor or faster modem? We can help with these upgrades as well.

We will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We will resume normal business hours on Monday December 1, 1997. If you have a problem during this time that can not wait until Monday, feel free to call me, John, at home at, 294-3513. If I am not there, please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible. E-mail is also a real good way to contact me as well.

E-mail. Well, we hope that everything is now working like it should. If you are still having people report that e-mail to you is still being bounced back, have them try to send a message to jjgrimes@micoks.net, if this message also bounces, have them forward a copy of the bounced message to jgrimes255@aol.com. I will examine the message information contained in the header and try to determine what can be done to solve the problem.

I would like to remind everyone that payment on your membership is due on or before the first of each month. We are trying to operate with about 20 percent of our customer base paying as long as 15-20 days late each month. If we can not solve the problems with late payments, we will start charging a late charge for those paying late as well as a reconnection charge for those who have their service suspended pending payment. If there is a problem that prevents your prompt payment, please contact our office for other arrangements. We can not work with you unless we know there is a problem.

We are offering a holiday special for existing as well as new customers. Monthly customers have always had the option to pay for a year of service at a rate of 10 months and get 12. From December 1, 1997 through January 15, 1998, all customers (new or existing, monthly or yearly) may take advantage of one of these two offers: pay for 5 months and receive 6 months of service, or, pay for 8 months and receive 12 months of service. By taking advantage of the 8 for 12 offer, this makes the average monthly rate only $14.22. By far, the lowest monthly rate in our area. Please contact our office for additional information or to take advantage of this offer.

As you can see I have started updating this newsletter on a more regular basis. When I do this, I will send all users an e-mail with a link to this location. Please take the opportunity to read WHAT'S NEW AT MCIO. Thanks.

If you are interested in purchasing a Web-TV unit, please contact Gene Hirt at 913.242.0074 for additional information.

Today we upgraded our file server to operate at 200 MHz and plan to increase the RAM as well in coming days. For the most part, both of these upgrades will not be noticable to our users, but will enhance the operation of the file server.

Give it through the weekend, if you are still having problems getting e-mail, give us a call.

If you are not getting newletters or subscription e-mail that you should, resubscribe and see if they start again before calling.

Thanks for all your support and patience during this change.

I have made the address change requests with InterNIC, but the records probably will not be updated until Monday night because of the weekend, so incoming e-mail may be delayed and people browsing our web site from the outside world may have difficulty finding the site.

We will go off line at 2pm Saturday to make the changes. In order to get back on-line you will need to make these changes on your computer:

Windows 3.x
Name Server: 209.153.98.2

Windows 95
Primary DNS: 209.153.98.2
Gateway: 209.153.98.1

This will also result in e-mail being delayed for several days while InterNIC makes the updates to our Domain Name.

We are sorry for the inconvenience this will cause. Thanks for your patience.

I do not have very much to report. The new lines installed August 3rd have been a great relief, however, with the cooler weather and school starting, we are seeing that another upgrade will be coming very soon due to increased usage and new customers.

We have recently surpassed 400 customers and continue to grow each month. When we add the additional 16 lines in the near future, we will be using 79 total lines, providing a modem ratio of less than 6:1 for our customers.

We now have a toll free 888 number (like an 800 number) for users traveling outside our basic service area to gain access to our service. If this would be of interest to you, please contact our office for additional information. As a reminder, we are also providing local access from the KC metro area through the use of a 557 prefix dial-in number.

Along the lines of expansion of services, we are currently negotiating office space in Louisburg for the purpose of offering our Internet service to the Louisburg area at our low monthly rate of only $19.95. If you have friends or relatives in the Louisburg area who may be interested in quality Internet access at a very reasonable rate, have them contact our office for additional information.

Within the next two weeks, we will have the Paola Free Library on-line with their own ISDN dedicated line. For those using the computers in the library for Internet access, this will increase their access speed greatly.

I want to take a minute to introduce Patrick Roberts. He will be working in our office on Saturday mornings for telephone support and customer signup.

Once again, thank you for your business and continued support of the premier Internet Service Provider in Miami County.

The past week has been a busy one. Last Saturday and Sunday was spent getting the office ready for the telephone company to be able to install the new cabling. On Monday and Tuesday we had Southwestern Bell employees and contractors going in and out of our office most of the day. They were busy laying cable and getting the final wiring taken care of. We went down at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, and as scheduled, came back on-line at 12:30 p.m., with 30 minutes to spare.

With this recent upgrade, we are now operating with 63 customer dial-in lines providing a 6 to 1 modem ratio, 50% lower than the industry standard of 12:1. The new cable installed by the telephone company will allow future expansions to go very smoothly. This new cable will allow 200 lines to come into our office and make the scheduled ISDN lines ordered by our customers to be installed with no dificulty.

I want to once again thank our valued customers for their support. Without you, our continued growth and the high quality of service provided to our customers would not be possible. Thanks for helping to make Miami County Internet OnRamp the largest, fastest and most popular Internet Service Provider in Miami County.

I have now completed the second month of e-mail billing. The first month went surprisingly well but we still have about 15% of our customers who have forgotten about not receiving a postal mail invoice and are still trying to get into the office to pay their bill for July. Three customers have contacted us and requested that we continue to bill them via the postal mail, this is not a problem to change and we will work with everyone who wants to go back to the old way of billing.

Since John Boswell has started working in our office full-time doing web page development, we have seen an increase in the need for his services. One of the new sites he has been working on includes a Bed and Breakfast from the St. Louis area. This is turning out to be a very impressive site and hope to have the completed version on-line in the coming weeks. We have also upgraded and improved our form-mail program and if any MCIO customers have the need for this service on their web page, please contact us for more information. Boz is also completing a search engine that can be placed on any web site that we are hosting to search for keywords contained on that site. Again, if this is a service you are interested in, please contact Boz. We continue to provide Web counters for sites we host for a one-time setup fee and no additional monthly charge.

Our OnRamp's FOR SALE! has not been as popular as I had hoped that it would be, so please take a look at it every now and them and maybe you can find something that may be of interest to you. Cars, boats, kittens, professional grade Camcorders, and real estate are included in the current listings. The rates and other important information can be found in the Terms and Conditions link located on that page. If you are seriously interested in selling an item, this is the place to sell it.

If you have tried to call our office outisde of business hours and not gotten an answer, it is because we have converted the computer with the voice mail from a Windows 3.11 to Windows '95 machine. The voice software we were using does not work well with Windows '95 and we are still working with the software manufacturer to get a copy of the Windows '95 software soon to be released. If you have a problem that requires immediate help, please feel free to call me at 294-6494 or at home at 294-3513 and leave a message. I will return your call as soon as possible.

This was the first month for e-mail billing. This will help us by saving saving paper, envelopes, postage and time, and help you, the customer, by allowing us to use the savings generated to upgrade and service our equipment as needed. If you have a problem getting your monthly or yearly bill by e-mail, please let us know and we will continue to mail them to you by the postal service. We have not changed all customers to this, only those who are normal monthly or yearly members.

Starting June 23, John Boswell will be working in our office doing web page development full time. Even though his time will be dedicated to web design, he will still be available for techinical support when I am not in the office to answer your questions. Please feel free to contact Boz to answer your web page development, hosting, or design questions.

Just a reminder about something new on our main page, OnRamp's FOR SALE! will take you to a page for our customers to sell items on-line. The rates and other important information can be found in the Terms and Conditions link located on that page. If you are seriously interested in selling an item, this is the place to sell it. This page is not being used to what I feel is its potential, but please keep looking at it. Even though it may not change very often, I have added a couple of things today.

If you have tried to call our office outisde of business hours since June 21 and not gotten answer, it is because we have converted the computer with the voice mail from a Windows 3.11 to Windows '95 machine. The voice software we were using does not work well with Windows '95 and we are still looking for a software package we like. If you have a problem that requires immediate help out side of normal business hours, please feel free to call me at home at 294-3513 and leave a message there. I will return your call as soon as possible.

I have been working the past 2 weeks on setting things up in order to start e-mail billing. This months billing, May 17, marks the last mailing of most monthly and yearly billings. Starting June 17, 1997, Miami County Internet OnRamp will start e-mail billing for about 75% of our customer base. In our May billing, notification is enclosed for each customer that this will effect, giving them notification of the e-mail address that will be receiving their bill and when it will start. Most monthly customers will start receiving their bill via e-mail on June 17, 1997. Yearly customers will receive their e-mail billing starting of the 17th of their normal billing month. Not all customers will be changed to this for various reasons. If you received notification that you are effected by this change and feel that this will cause a serious problem with the way you pay your bill, please notify me and we will work together to solve the problems. Please keep in mind that this does not change the due date for your payment. All payments are still due in our office by the 1st of each month, in advance.

Something else new is a link on our home page. OnRamp's FOR SALE! will take you to a page for our customers to sell items on-line. The rates and other important information can be found in the Terms and Conditions link located on that page. If you are seriously interested in selling an item, this is the place to sell it.

We have been approached with the opportunity of relocating our office and equipment. We are presently examining the great benefits relating to this move and negotiating the details. If this move is completed, we will have more than five (5) times our current space allowing for additional working, service and retail areas. We have some pretty big ideas in mind that will seriously enhance the service quality and options we offer to our customers.

Miami County Internet OnRamp is in the process of expanding our reach to potential customers. We are currently working with several individuals in an area south of here to start another ISP very similiar to the one we are currently operating. Our preliminary proposal has been accepted and we are moving forward to complete the installation of the equipment. This expansion will have no direct effect on our customers or the service we provide. However, the results of this second operation should help Miami County Internet OnRamp with its own growth in the future.

I would like everyone to take a few minutes to read the updated Membership Agreement posted on-line in the About the Onramp link located on our main page. There have been several changes to this agreement since we started providing service almost one year ago. Please read this updated agreement to familarize yourself with our current rules of operation. When additional changes are made, this on-line agreement will be updated accordingly.

Our policy has been "unlimited access, unlimited usage", and we do not want to make any change to that policy. We do ask one thing from our customers: unlimited usage allows for just that, "unlimited usage", however, we ask that if you are not using the system, then please log off. We have been very fortunate since we added the last 16 additional phone lines that we have not operated at maxamum capaticy very often and even then, not for very long periods of time. If we feel that users are taking advantage of the unlimited usage, then we will reinstate a limit on usage and charge for additional time above that limit.

If you have any questions or problems, please do not hesitate to contact me. I can not answer the question or solve the problem, if I am not aware of it.

Since I have been working more with our accounting software, I will be keeping closer tabs on membership accounts. What this means is that I will be making more contact with members who have not kept their monthly membership payments up to date each month. We are proud of the quality of service we provide to our customers, but providing such a premier service is very costly and dependant on members making their payments for the service they use in a timely manner, just as we must do to be able to provide the service to our members.

By publishing this newsletter online and also keeping updated the Miami County Republic, I have had the wonderful opportunity to start learning the basics of web page design. By no means do I plan to start making a habit of this kind of work, but fiddling with it just a little bit makes me appreciate even more the work that John Boswell does.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank John Boswell for all the hard work he has put and continues to put into the development of our home page and the pages he so creatively designs for our customers. We have had numberous compliments about our home page from both our members and others on the web who have found our site by choice or by chance by following the rail to our site. If anyone has the need for assistance in web page design please contact John Boswell and he will work with you to meet your needs.

Several quick notes of interest. First, MCIO is now a distribution point for the Greater Kansas City Computer User monthly magazine. This publication provides may interesting articles and information related to computers and the Internet as well as useful advertising. It can be picked up in our office at no charge while supplies last each month. Copies of prevoius newsletters are also available.

Our service was down on February 3rd to change our Interent backbone and to install additional equipment for more dial-in phone lines. We had scheduled to be back in service by 5pm, but a software configuration problem developed on a piece of hardware and we had to bring a programmer down from Kansas City to help solve the problems. Service was back on-line around 10:30pm. We apologize for any inconvenience this extended outage caused.

Part of this change was to access a new provider in Kansas City. We are now using Sound.net . If you visit their page you can find out about them. After completing the Tyrell change-over, they should have 5 - T1 lines in operation. It is our understanding that they are now to this point. Since we have finished working out most of the problems resulting from the change over, it appears service is working better than ever. If you are experiencing any problems at all, please let us know. If the problem is on our end, we need to know about it to fix it. If the problems is yours, we will make arrangements to come out and solve the problems that can not be taken care of over the phone. If it is a problem related to the change, the service call will be free.

Harlen Fletcher has opened Computing Simply at 560 Main Street in downtown Osawatomie. He is providing computer training, sales and service. Harlen is also signing up customers for MCIO. Please visit him for your computer needs in Osawatomie or call him at 755-3030.

We have 16 additional dial-in lines on 294-9666 for member use. This gives us a total of 47 dial-in lines, making our customer to modem ratio about 6:1 ( a good average is about 10:1). We have added an additional phone line in our office with the 557 prefix that is automaticaly forwarded to the modem lines. This will allow members living or working in the metropolitan area to call and connect to MCIO with no long distance charge. If this is something you are interested in or have a friend living in the metro area unhappy with their present provider, please contact our office for more information.