Sign your name, please!

The first issue is that most of you, including myself, periodically get an error message when signing onto Minonk Talk that says "too many users connected - try again later." This message appears whenever there are too many people trying to get into the website at the same time. You may ask why should it be so hard to get into Minonk Talk which has around 150-200 hits a day when Microsoft can handle ten million requests a day. The answer is simply that Microsoft has its own computers and servers to process their requests. Minonk Talk is using a computer server at Maxiis Internet which must handle requests in addition to those for Minonk Talk.

The resolution to this problem is for Minonk Talk to have its own computer server dedicated to only its own website like Microsoft does. Hopefully, next year we will have our own server and the problem of getting on the website will go away.

Some people have reported that when they try to get into Minonk Talk, they get a request menu for a user name and password. This usually happens on older browsers when you don't enter the "http://" in front of the Minonk Talk address. Therefore, enter "http://www.minonktalk.com", not "www.minonktalk.com" and you should have no problem.

If you send an email to this website and you do not want it to be published, please indicate that you do not want it to be published. Otherwise, I will assume that you will not mind if it is published. I do not publish all emails, just those that I feel would be of interest to the general public or those which comment on this website.

I do appreciate the many jokes and poems sent to me. However, I cannot publish all of them. Short jokes or short articles are all I have room for on the front page.

Last week I received an email from a complete stranger in Michigan. He wanted to know if I ever found out the meaning of the word "Honyak". I wondered why he wanted to know. I found out that he did a search on the internet using the word "Honyak". There were only about 40 hits and one of my editorials mentioned the word "Honyak". I commented on how my mother used to call me by the name when she was mad at me. I thought it incredible that a search engine could capture every little word I wrote and store it for lookup for the whole world to peruse.

You may think that I print only "nice" letters in the email section. However, my policy is to print all emails that have a signed name, and I will. A few weeks ago I received a letter from someone who felt that I was an old geezer who wanted to take Minonk back to the 1950's and was against progress, citing his feeling that I have been too hard on Dollar General. I accept his complaint and I am sure that there are others who feel the same way.

However, the person signed his email "Anonymous". I wrote back to him stating that I would print his letter if he would sign his name. I never heard from him. Funny thing though. His name was on the email address box so I did know his name.

I wish I could have printed his letter so people would know that I will print emails that disagree with me. I told the person that I put my opinions every week in the editorial. Everyone else's opinion will be printed in the email section as long as you give your name.

To set the record straight, I was never against Dollar General coming to Minonk. It is definitely an asset to the community. However, we as a community must set up rules and guidelines for development that benefit the community in the long run. These rules should be abided by all companies, big or small. If a company feels there is a market for their wares, they will come into the community even if we don't give them everything they want.

While I have received many compliments on the website, I never intended for this website to become the "Dave Uphoff show". I invite feedback and I don't expect everyone to agree with me. This website would be more interesting if more people would get involved in the website by sending their opinions, their stories, their photos, etc. Everyone knows that this website is a one man operation and, quite honestly, I cannot expand it any more or make it any better on my own due to time constraints.

So if you are getting tired of photos of my cats, or stories about my ancestors, send me your comments, your stories and your photos. Just taking pictures of everyday activity around Minonk would be fine. Just don't send me pictures of your newborn grandchild. They all look like Winston Churchill.