A Good Rule to Live By
We want to remind everyone about the dangers of electrical surges related to lightning strikes. Most everyone unplugs the electrical cords to their computer equipment, even if they have surge protection, but few realize most damage to computers is due to electrical surges entering through the telephone line. Be aware and remember to unplug the phone line for your modem from the wall.

Our recent change to the mailing of monthly statements has proven very effective in prompting customers to make their payaments on time as well as catching up on past due charges. Our policy has always been that payments are due the first of every month, with a $5 late charge being added for those not paying by the 10th of the month. Look for this late charge on your next statement if you did not get your bill paid by the 10th.

We wish you a happy and safe new year.

Our office at 106 W. Peoria will be vacated in favor of the area now available adjoining our original location at 103 N. Silver. The moving has already started and we will be finished on or before Saturday December 18, 1999. We are looking forward to once again providing all of our services from one location.

I have ordered an additional 10 lines for the dial-up in Louisburg and they should be operational sometime during the week before Christmas. These lines are going to make maximum use of the hardware in place in Louisburg. The next new set of lines will change our service over to digital 56k access. I hope this will happen, at the latest, in February or March of 2000.

For those that have been looking into registering their own domain name, i.e. yourname.com (.net or .org), as of December 1, 1999 we are charging $14.95 (plus tax) per month for hosting that domain. This is in addition to our one-time setup charge as well as the yearly billing from Network Solutions. We have decided to "grandfather" the existing domains and not charge for their hosting at this time, however this may change in the future. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

We have had available printer cartridges and other items for sale in our office. Recently we were forced to change vendors for these items and our pricing increased. As a result of the new prices, we are now closer to the cost of what other stores such as WalMart may charge for these items. With this in mind, after the first of the year we will slowly start to eliminate the items which he have on hand as well sell out of stock and eventually discontinue selling these items all together. You should keep this in mind and if you would like to take advantage of the items we still have in stock at prices lower than other stores, be sure to stock up soon.

We would like to wish you and your entire family a safe and happy holiday season.

We are back together again. Our office at 106 W. Peoria will be closing so that we may expand into the barber shop space next to our existing office at 103 N. Silver. Within days, the barber shop will be moving out allowing us the additional space we need to operate our business from one location. Nothing else will change, our mailing address will remain P.O. Box 348 and our phone numbers will remain the same, we will all just be in the same place. Boz has already moved back to 103 N. Silver and I anticipate my move very soon.

For those customers concerned about our news groups access, the satellite feed connection should be completed soon and the hardware in place to allow faster speeds for news groups and a larger storage capacity, keeping older postings available for a longer period of time. Thanks for you patience during this upgrade of services.

As far as upgrades are concerned, we are aware of the busy signals during peek hours. We ask that if you are not using the service that you please disconnect so that others may. Please, no "camping" on lines just to have the service available when you want it. Others would like to use it as well. We are working on expansion plans and anticipate additional lines in both Paola and Louisburg in the near future.

I have once again taken on the majority of billing/payment work related to the business while David has now taken on a more active role in technical support and office management/organization. Please direct your billing and payment questions to me. Also, David has taken a personal leave of absence from his position so please direct your tech support questions to Boz or myself. We are looking forward to David's return to work very soon.

We would like to wish you a very safe and happy Thanksgiving weekend.

For Paola customers: Our hardware problem has been fixed, thanks to a programming correction. Since log in problems have gone away, usage has increased and lines are filling up at times. Because future expansion requires an additional hardware purchase, we will start looking into our options, however it may take some time before additional lines are added. As things stand right now, our customer to modem ratio is less than 6:1, far below the national ISP average of 9-10:1 (source: Southwestern Bell).

For all customers: Once we have a little time to weed out the customers that are past due on their accounts and remove their access, getting online will become easier for our paying customers in both Louisburg and Paola. Starting in November, we are going to take a very aggressive approach to collecting customer payments before the 10th of each month. After the $5 late charge is added on the 10th it will not be waived and access will be terminated if the account is not paid-in-full by the 15th. Unfortunately, I am also required to pay my bills on time.

As news travels fast in a small community, most everyone probably already knows that Paola-online.net and Springhill-online.net have been sold to Grapevine.net. With this change, Miami County Internet OnRamp Inc is now the only locally owned and operated ISP remaining in Miami County. We will continue to provide the same high level of customer support that we have become known for and we know is expected by hometown people from a hometown business.

In our continuing effort to provide quick support to our customers, we have moved Office Manager David Snyder into the Technical Support Office to assist Brandon with support issues and hardware upgrades. David will continue to function as Office Manager from the Tech Office in addition to his new duties. This move has also taken Kathy from the Tech Office and relocated her into the Administrative Office. A woman's touch is just what Boz and I need to keep us in line.

Also please remember to unplug your phone lines from the computer during thunderstorms. Many customers have had us replace modems in the past 2 weeks, one customer twice, due to electric surges through the phone lines.

We have been staying very busy. We have upgraded the original internet computer that we started with in 1996 to a new, faster machine with a more up to date software package. If this machine works as well as we expect, we will then add an additional one and start using two computers to provide services. The server we purchased in January was a little more difficult to try and configure for our specific needs, so that project has been placed on a back burner for the time being.

For those who have not noticed, we now have in operation our Corner Cam outside of our office looking at the intersections of Silver and Peoria in Paola. With the excellent location of our Administrative office on the square we wanted to take advantage of the location and provide a picture of happenings on the square. The camera was working in the office over the weekend to see some of the activities related to the Roots Festival, but the software was not setup completely for web access at that time. I have already received several e-mails from customers who were very pleased and impressed with the camera since it went online about 10:00 p.m. Tuesday night. To our surprise, the night time picture is also very good. For those who have been missed seeing David hard at work on the "Office Cam" that we had in the Tech Office before adding the Administrative Office, you may now celebrate. We are in the middle of setting up our Admin Cam in our Administrative Office so you may once again look in on us. It should be online late this afternoon.

For some housekeeping information, our Tech Office will be closed on Saturday September 4th for Labor Day and both offices closed on Monday September 6th. Even though this is just the beginning of September, we have started scheduling for the coming holidays. We will have both offices closed Thursday November 25 until Monday morning for the Thanksgiving weekend. Since Christmas and New Years are both on Saturday, we will close at 3:00 p.m. on the Fridays before to reopen the following Monday mornings.

In taking steps to move forward to our new Internet server, we have posted a form online for existing customers to use to update/verify their account information. This form will be used to verify/replace existing information in your customer file, update information in our billing system and then if we have no questions about the validity of the form, we will then add the information into the new server in order to allow access once the change has been made. More on this and other changes that are in the works will be posted here soon.

I have also recently added listings to the Business Directory. Please give these local companies your business. If you would like your business listed, no matter how small, please e-mail me with the information.

We also have a list of web sites that our users have requested that we post. Please feel free to visit these sites. You will find some very interesting pages to view. If you like, or dislike, the site, I'm sure the author would be more than happy to get your comments. Please note: Almost all of these sites were created by our customers, Miami County Internet OnRamp, Inc is not responsible for their content.

We have started to take a very aggressive approach with customers that are past due with their payments. We have the accounting system programmed to start adding a $5 late charge to accounts not paid in full by the 10th of each month. If payment is still not received by the 15th of the month, access will be suspended and service cancelled if not paid by the coming first. We feel it is very unfortunate to take this type of approach, but those not paying for the service can not be allowed to continue to use the service.

If you have any questions about our membership agreement, please review it online.

In January we purchased a new server and have been slowing moving various processes to it. This new server is a dual Pentium II 450 MHz machine with 320 plus MB of RAM, 4 - hot-swapable 9GB hard drives, redundant hot-swapable power supplies, high capacity backup and many other typical server options. Our main user list can be moved from the old computer to the new server with no problem, the user directories and the files they contain can also be moved with no problem. We plan on switching all processes over to this new high power server as soon as possible. The change over itself should take only minutes, assuming no problems develop. It's been running flawlessly for six months hosting a majority of our web pages and sites. Please check the newsletter often for the next few weeks as there could be changes in this process. We would send a mass emailing to all user accounts also if plans change. This is a good time to mention that if you use another site for your email, like hotmail or aol, for example, instead of your Miami County Internet e-mail, you should call office with that email address so we can forward all mail to the correct account.

Once again Miami County Internet OnRamp is taking great strides to provide our users with cutting edge technology. Thank you very much for your continued support.

Our equipment move in Louisburg went very well last week, however it will be several days before the new lines are installed by MoKan Dial. Once these are added, we will have 94 lines for customer use.

We have been working with Southwestern Bell the past week trying to work out problems with the new PRI line that was to be installed on Tuesday, May 25th. Once they have solved the routing issues, an additional 23 dial-up lines will be in use in Paola.

On May 15, 1999, we suspended access for approximately 150 customers for non-payment of services which they had received. It had been several months since we cleaned the system of non-paying customers which accounts for the large number. Today, however, of the customers that were suspended, we still were forced to cancel 90 of those customers because they made no attempt to pay for their service.

We are starting a policy of suspending service for those not having paid by the 15th of each month and we will also strictly enforce the $5.00 late charge on the 10th of each month. I hate to say it, but it really comes down to dollars and cents. We have taken great strides in providing the highest quality of Internet Service available by using cutting edge technology and giving our customers the best quality of customer service and technical support available in our area. This level of service does not come cheaply. It is not fair to our loyal, paying customers to possibly be unable to use our service because non-paying customers have dial-up lines tied up. Each and every customer is very important to me. I have spent the last 8 years providing the best possible customer service to individuals and businesses in this area and strive to continue that level of service through the four trained and experienced people I employ.

The short version is: We provide a service, a service that is extremely difficult and expensive to provide, we charge a very reasonable monthly rate for that service, considering the quality of the service and the related support. Please help us by making your monthly payments in a timely manner. Wasting time with extra invoicing for late charges, researching and suspending accounts or being forced to cancel services for non-paying customers simply adds the high volume of work we already have.

We have settled into the second office space very well. Everything is once again organized in both locations and we seem to be working communications between the two offices very well. Our new office has an automated telephone attendant that some people have suggested that the message is too long. I will soon have that message shortened. Currently, if you wish to skip listening to the message, as soon as it starts, you may press:
10 for David
11 for Boz, or
12 for Myself (John)

Also as a result of our move into the second office, we have opened a Post Office box for customers sending mail to us. To avoid any confusion as to what street address to use, please mail to P.O. Box 348.

We have been somewhat delayed in getting the CAMS back into operation. I hope they will be back up in a bit.

From "The Kiplinger Washington Letter", Vol. 76, No. 14, "Help for small companies in dealing with Y2K bugs is available in a Y2K Jumpstart Kit from the Commerce Dep't. It includes software to help spot equipment that maybe affected, develop contingency plans and then carry out solutions. The software may be downloaded at no cost. Or you can phone a help line, 800-925-7557."

Our location at 103 N. Silver will become our site for storing our Internet hardware, working on computers and as an office for our Tech Support staff. Brandon Hosey is working full time doing our tech support in and out of the office as well as computer repair and upgrades in the office. In the coming weeks I will be adding an additional full time tech support person to help Brandon. This will allow one person to stay in the tech office and one person to provide on-site support at the same time.

For those of you who have expressed their enjoyment with the Office CAM, it will now become the Tech CAM and we will add another CAM at 106 W. Peoria to become our Admin CAM.

There is no one we can thank more than our wonderful customers who have supported us since starting the business almost 3 years ago and we plan to continue to provide you with the high quality of Internet access and customer service that we have become known for.

For more information about the V.90 technology used by our 56k modems in Paola, you can visit these sites:

Info and V.90

The new 56k modems and T-1 PRI lines have been installed for the Paola dial-up lines. Results are mixed. Customers withing 2-4 miles of Paola have reported considerably faster speeds. Customers in more rural areas and Osawatomie have reported no change at all. Somewhat discouraging results, but the bad has to go with the good. We initially had problems with customers what were still running scripting to connect or that were having the terminal window appear after connecting, but once we figured out where the problems were, that was quickly solved with customers over the phone. We made our programmer aware of the problem and by working with the manufacturer of the new hardware, they were able to configure it to help solve these problems. We still have very mixed results with those using Windows 3.x, but Windows 95 and 98 users should be just fine. Hardware has also been an issue, V.90 modems seem to work best. If you are using a 56k modem, make sure it is V.90 for the best results.

The line updates between the Paola office and the Louisburg dial-up have also been completed as well as some minor programming errors corrected in the Louisburg router. The completion of these two projects have apparently solved all but one of the remaining problems in Louisburg. As all the Louisburg customers are aware, with the sudden closing of Wordshare we have taken on a large number of customers very quickly. We immediately increased our dial-up lines to 64 when we became aware of Wordshare closing. We are now faced with the problem of busy signals every now and then. Some of the equipment removed from our Paola office during the 56k upgrade will be placed into Louisburg in order to add up to an additional 64 lines. With things getting back to normal in Paola, I hope to have time to install the equipment in a few days and have 16 new lines connected very soon.

Our new server has been installed in the Paola office and we have been slowly moving the domain names and web sites that we host over to the new machine. I'm not for sure what the next step will be, this is being handled by Boz and our programmer. At this point, the less I know the happier I am. It just makes one less thing I have to worry about.

This pretty much takes care of the most recent activities in the office. One more fun note I want to tell you about, just in case you have not noticed. There is a new link on our main page, the OFFICE CAM. This is just what it sounds like. We have set up a camera in our office that allows people to see what is happening in here. The video input passes through my office computer and then onto our server. At times it may not be working, but we will do our best to always have it up and running. We have had a large number of comments so far as everyone seems to enjoy viewing it.

I would like to thank everyone for their patience during the line and hardware upgrades. We have been working very hard to get everyone with a problem taken care of as soon as possible. We have and will continue to provide you with the high quality of customer service, technical support and Internet service that we have gained the reputation of providing. We sincerely thank you for your business and continued support.

This past weekend and today we have been experiencing e-mail problems. Our programmer is working to get the problems solved. Expect e-mail to be on and off until he is finished.

The 64 dial-in lines in Louisburg are all up and working.

The 56k dial-in upgrade for the Paola lines has been set back to February 23rd because of a time delay in getting the equipment.

Louisburg - New customers. With the closing of Word Share Internet last week, Thursday, Friday and Saturday were extremely busy signing up new Louisburg customers. WIth the help of two additional employees and extended business hours through today, we appear to have gotten through the mad rush of people desperately seeking a new Internet Service Provider. MoKan Dial Telephone Company has also come to bat by helping to rush through the installation of 32 new dial up lines. This original order was for just eight lines but I doubled that to 16 on Thursday then to 32 on Friday. I have been told that 16 of the lines will be up on Monday February the 1st with the balance during the week. I want to take this opportunity to welcome all the new users to our service and I am positive you will be pleased with the quality of Internet service and customer service that we provide. Thank you for your patience this weekend with the busy signals. I know you will be relieved once all the new lines are up and running.

Paola - 56k Access. I am pleased to announce the lines have been ordered from Southwestern Bell in order to increase our capacity to 56k access on our 294 and 557 dial-up lines. The scheduled installation date is set for Tuesday February the 16th. Our service will be down starting at approximately 9:00 AM and will remain out of service until the upgrade is completed. This change not only requires replacing the phone lines into the office but also a total hardware change as well. Once completed sometime Tuesday afternoon, we will have a total of 161 - 56k dial-in lines. Customers using 56k modems in and near Paola should see an increase in connection speeds and others may see some increase depending upon where you are calling from and your telephone lines.

In addition to these upgrades, I would like to welcome Dave Snyder to our staff as Office Manager. David brings to the position a very fine business sense and I feel he will be a very valuable asset. I hope that David will be able to help with the administrative loads that have kept me extremely busy the past months as well as provide Boz with a little additional help working on web pages when the need arises. In addition to David, we now have a Paola High School senior, Bryan Ryder , helping after school during the week and on weekends with tech support and new customer setup. We have another senior from Independence, KS that we are considering for an additional full-time technical support position following graduation in the spring, when Bryan will also become full-time. Once everything is in place, this will bring our office to 5 full-time employees, including myself. How can all of us work in this small office? Well that is something else we are also working on solving, but more on that once matters have been finalized.

Our new Internet server will be installed sometime the end of this week. This new machine will replace our original server that we started using in May of 1996. The old server will be retired to a secondary server for use if the new one is taken down for any reason. Once both are in place, our secondary DNS will become 209.153.98.3. Our new server is a little stronger than the old one. It is a dual Pentium II 450 MHz machine with 320 plus MB of RAM, 4 - hot-swapable 9GB hard drives, redundant hot-swapable power supplies, high capacity backup and many other typical server options. While the end user may not see much of a change in logging in or checking e-mail, the work that the server performs behind the scenes will proceed much faster and smoother.

Once again, we want to thank you for your business.  Without your continued support, the high level of service we provide would not be possible or increased and improved upon as frequently as we do.