Cruzio thought we might have less activity during shelter-in-place, but we were wrong.

School kids need more internet
Children who used to access the internet from their school or library don’t have access there any more. So Cruzio has added a considerable number of donated accounts to our work. We’re collaborating with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education (COE) to get internet connections to low-income families who need to get their kids online.

If children can’t access the internet, they may fall behind in school, and we can’t let that happen.

We want to give a big shout out to Jason Borgen from the COE, to the Pajaro Valley School District, to individual schools who’ve contacted us, and to the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz, all of whom have been working hard on this. At Cruzio it’s part of our Equal Access Santa Cruz project. And you’re helping too: by being a customer, you’re making it possible for us to extend a hand to neighbors when they need it.

Internet Drive-Ins
But connecting people one home at a time is slow. And some locations are impossible to serve. So Cruzio is supplying internet to “internet drive-ins” around the county. These are parking lots — underused these days — where people can drive up and use high-speed wifi while safely isolated in their cars.

Not Just Students — Everybody Needs Internet
People working and studying at home all day need a lot more internet. Industry reports show that internet use is up 36% around the country. At the same time, business offices are shuttered.

To the extent that Cruzio’s business customers help offset residential accounts, that’s a difficulty. Cruzio is working hard at improving service while at the same time seeing a drop in income.

At the outset of the virus crisis, we set down our priorities:

1. Keep the network running reliably.
2. Continue to employ and pay all existing staff.
3. Extend service to needy people in the county, especially low-income students.
4. Improve service wherever possible, because everybody needs it more.

It’s certainly challenging to work in current conditions. Costs are up, income is down. We’ve had to change plans from buying a new vehicle to repairing our old one. We’re riding all our equipment hard, traveling from one end of the county to another. Our tech support is answering double the calls they did at this time last year. And they’re doing it from their homes, which is an extra complication.

Our field ops crews have developed “no-touch” installations, where we can hook a house up to our faster network without ever going inside. Sure, we miss meeting you, but it’s a very virus-aware option, and we’re happy to do it for your safety and ours.

That’s on top of the regular gloves, masks, and safe distances we’ve been practicing since the beginning. And our managers have been working hard to set up contact tracing. In case any of our employees falls sick with the virus, we will be able to track anyone that person came into close contact with.

We’re Not Even Holding Doors Open for Each Other
We’re thinking of ways to be better at this distancing every day. Chris Frost and James Hackett are our master planners. They have all our crews staying far apart from each other when they have to be at the office — crews are on separate floors of the building, in separate offices, using separate facilities. We’re not even holding the door open for each other. Fresh gloves, surfaces wiped constantly, the whole deal.

The cleaning hasn’t been the hardest part — it’s the isolation. Our crews have always chatted and hung out in the office before leaving for the field and when putting tools away at the end of the day. No one’s complained about the constant wipedowns, but we have had staff mention how much they miss the camaraderie with each other and with customers.

So that’s what it’s like at Cruzio these days. Though we’ll probably all be wearing masks, or waving through a closed window, please know our techs are smiling at you, and saying thanks for being a customer.

PPE in the 1600s. Herbs & salts were stuffed in the beak, and the clothes were coated with wax. Not so different from PPE today, really.

Are we living through a plague?

Medically, no.

A plague, in medical terms, refers to a specific family of illnesses. It’s bacterial, and gets to humans through fleabites. Plague is treatable with antibiotics. It was a terrible scourge for many centuries, but at this point it’s relatively rare.

The novel coronavirus, on the other hand, is not caused by a living organism like a bacterium. Viruses are not alive, and antibiotics don’t kill them. It’s interesting that evolutionary forces work on things that aren’t alive — when they propagate successfully, viruses thrive.

In a non-medical sense we are living through a plague: in plague’s other meaning, as a calamity, a dreadful evil. As in, a plague of locusts, or, to a family member who drinks their coffee too noisily, stop plaguing me.

The Practice of Sheltering Goes Way Back

And though we’re not living through a plague as scientifically defined, we are now practicing measures developed in response to plagues of long, long ago. Though people in the 14th century didn’t know what air was composed of — or if it was composed of anything at all — and had no way of seeing tiny particles like bacteria or viruses, they could tell that the Black Death spread from person to person, ship to shore, house to house. So they made efforts to isolate people, as we’re doing now.

14th century Venetians invented quarantine — our word is taken from an Italian phrase, quaranta giorni, meaning forty days. They suffered much more than we are now: Discover Magazine quotes archaeologists who say that on a quarantine island outside Venice, hundreds of bodies were apparently buried on top of each other in layers, “like lasagna.”

Like modern sufferers, Venetian and other governments had problems telling who was sick in time to sequester them. They didn’t have tests, either. And so, like now, authorities often confined the well with the sick.

As Does Our Lack of Mobility

Halting mobility to stop the spread of a disease, another practice recently (and sporadically, through the centuries) revived from the Renaissance era, is called cordon sanitaire. Perhaps the most famous example is from 1665, when a small village in England called Eyam imposed a travel restriction on itself and probably saved thousands of lives in surrounding areas, though 3/4 of its own population died of the plague.

Their cordon sanitaire was used as a firebreak — a wall preventing disease from marching across a country. Our current “shelter in place” is doing the same thing, county by county but also house by house. By walling ourselves off from contact, each of us is sparing our neighbors from possible infection.

It’s not the plague. But in many ways, we are living with some of the same effects.

We’ve found another eagle nest streaming live on the internet, and this one is really interesting.

Eagles, like most raptors, mate for life. From Missouri, Audobon.org reports a lovely story of a pair of male eagles raising a family together, first with one female and then another:

“In 2012, when the original pair—Valor I (male) and Hope (female)—began nesting at Lock and Dam 13 on the Mississippi River, Valor I wasn’t a very good partner or father. He was irresponsible about incubating the eggs and feeding the eaglets, which were really his only two jobs.”

The young eagle couple’s first-year eggs hatched, but the eaglets weren’t able to survive the neglect, and died before fledging.

They Needed a Second Dad

Audobon.org continues: “Valor I’s lack of commitment and knowhow was impeding the couple’s ability to successfully reproduce. Then, as if in response to their struggles, a second male, subsequently named Valor II, showed up on the refuge webcam in the fall of 2013. At first, he kept his distance, perching on the edge of the nest or a nearby branch. Before long, though, he appeared to usurp Valor I as Hope’s main partner…. Valor I didn’t seem to mind. He stayed near the nest and wasn’t seen contributing to egg-incubation or eaglet-raising. ‘He was still around but not actively involved,’ Pam Steinhaus, the Visitor Services Manager says. Two eaglets successfully fledged that year.”

Over the next few years, the trio stayed together. Valor I, the original bad dad, gradually took an interest in the nest and became what we might refer to as a stand-up dude. The two dads shared full nest duties with Hope and could be seen on camera feeding and caring for the eaglets. The eagle parents each had their strengths.

“‘The boys would put sticks in the nest, but they never put them in the right spot,’ Steinhaus says. ‘Hope was always replacing sticks in the spots where she wanted them to go.'” And by the way, even though their nests looks pretty ramshackle, eagles do seem to spend a lot of time neatening up.

The threesome coparented for several years.

Then, Tragedy. But Wait…

But sadly, in a series of attacks on their nest by neighboring eagles in 2017, Hope was apparently killed. (Not to get judgmental about wildlife, but those other eagles seem horrid.) The two dads, Valor I and Valor II, continued to defend and care for the nest. They raised the eaglets successfully without their mate.

And Valor I and Valor II stayed together as a couple. They were joined by new female named Starr later in 2017 and the three have been raising eaglets every year since. There are two eaglets in their nest right now, about a month old and looking pretty teenage-gawky — you can see them on live stream cameras.

Our friendly front desk is closed for the duration of the shelter in place. Seemed like a good time to remind everyone that, if you need to make any changes to your account or pay your bill, our spiffy account portal allows you to do all that from the comfort of your favorite chair.

How, you ask?

1/ Head over to myaccount.cruzio.com or go to Cruzio.com and click the little credit card icon on the upper right. Next to the envelope. To the left of ‘Contact Us’. Above the Search bar. You’ll see it.

2/ Once you’re there, click ‘Login’ in the upper-left corner.

3/ If you’ve been here before and by some miracle remember your login and password, enter them and click ‘login’. If you remembered them right, you’re in. Jump ahead to item 5.

If you don’t have a login or don’t remember, what’s next has a couple of steps. That’s annoying, but two things: One, it’s really not that bad, just a few steps. And two, it’s all to protect your account. Good protection has to put up barriers. And you only need to do it once. Now, on to the next steps…

4a/ If you don’t know your login, click the link on the right that reads, “request new login credentials via email by clicking here.” Then enter the email address associated with your account and we’ll email that address right away with a reset code. The email will have the subject line, “Login ID Reset Request” and contain a six digit code.

Enter that code, a login ID of your choice and a password into the form you’re directed to and click ’submit’. Passwords must be 7+ characters in length and must include: one number, one special character, and upper or lower case alphabetic characters. We know, right? If your password doesn’t check all those boxes, you’ll get an error in obnoxious red text. Try again.

Once you’re in, skip on down to item 5.

(If you get a different error in obnoxious red text saying ‘DuplicateLoginID’, that means you actually have been here before and that login already exists. Either create a new login or go back to the main login screen and follow the link to reset password. You can create a new login using the same email address.)

4b/To reset your password, from the login screen, click where it says, “Forgot your password? If so request a new one via email by clicking here.”. Enter your login id and you’ll receive an email very similar to the new ID request email, with another six digit code. Enter that code in the form and pick a new password. You’ll automatically be logged in.

5/ Once you’re logged in you’ll see links to view any saved payment methods, make a payment or look at your bill. 

6/ To pay your bill click ‘make payment’, choose the payment method, enter the payment amount and hit ’make payment’.

You’re done. You’ll get a receipt via email. Thanks for supporting local, independent broadband.

We’re working hard, keeping the network running

Hello again from Cruzio, where 80% of our staff, including yours truly, is working from home.

It feels like we’re right back where we started 30+ years ago, doing tech support, programming, and admin tasks from the kitchen table.

The other 20% of our staff is in the field, maintaining and improving the connections we know you need — especially right now. Our techs are carefully disinfecting and washing everything frequently, and they’ll stay a safe “social distance” from people. But we are still installing and upgrading equipment — we need our network to keep pace with the recent uptick in bandwidth usage.

Everything is coronavirus-related these days, from the repeated hand-washing and social distancing to the heavier-than-ever use of the internet.

Internet — Who Needs It?

The internet’s a lifeline when we’re sheltering in place. Kids have to have it for school. Grownups need it for work. The internet even helps people connect to important health resources, like pharmacies and doctors.

And everyone goes online to stay occupied and connected with friends and family.

Plus, Netflix, of course.

For some of us, as a matter of survival we leave the Disney Channel on for the kids or binge on YouTube Videos for Pets to amuse the cat while we try to get a little work done.

(Check out this collection of adorable Cruzio pets! Lots of us get the benefit of non-human companionship when we work from home.)

How to Get Better Internet

The quality of your connection depends a lot on us, so Cruzio is always looking for ways to make it better, especially now. But there are things you can do, too.

We’ve been identifying people who have older, copper-based connections (Velocity and DSL) and emailed those folks when we think they could benefit from an upgrade to a wireless connection. You may see an email like that in your mailbox. We’re not charging setup fees to make the change — it’s easy, free, and you’ll end up paying the same per month as you do now, for a better connection. As our network expands, we’re able to offer that to more people, so if we haven’t gotten to you yet, hopefully we will soon.

And part of that expansion — here’s where being part of a local community helps — is finding hubs in your area where we can put gear to better serve your neighborhood.

Sometimes it’s a tall apartment building, or a house up on a hill. People who put access points on their property get free internet from Cruzio.

So that’s a project if your area doesn’t have good internet: find the place in your neighborhood that sees a lot of other places, and have them contact us.

We’ve also been combing through our equipment rental records to see who has older modems or routers. If your equipment is getting long in the tooth, we’ll contact you (we may have already — we do this regularly) to ask if we can replace it. Now might be an especially good time to do that.

If you don’t rent our equipment, have a peek at your modem and/or router, that little box with the blinking lights. Covered with dust? Can’t remember when you bought or inherited it? Might be time to contact us for a better option.

And for our part we will be keeping our network up and running, and sending out our crews to fix any problems that occur on our side of the connection. We can’t avoid all problems, but we promise we’ll get to them quickly.

What Else Are Our Crews Doing? Bringing Internet to Kids in Need

When the schools closed a couple of weeks ago, the “digital divide” immediately became an emergency.

Kids now need to school from home, but some families don’t have an internet connection at their house. And most of the public internet access spots — libraries, coffee shops — are closed.

So Cruzio is working with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education (COE) to identify income-qualified students who need internet, and get it to them.

We’re kitting these students out with our best stuff: high-speed wireless internet with our spiffiest router to supply internet throughout their house. And it’s free for three months. It’s what we thought we could do to help the situation.

The hero of this effort is Jesus Lopez, our Sales & Marketing Manager, and here’s why: many of the people who call us about this program don’t speak English, so Jesus, who’s bilingual, offered to take all the calls. He explains the program to the callers and sets up appointments when they’re qualified. He listens to the parents as they describe their situations, which are sometimes really difficult. His notes in their accounts are inspiring to all of us.

We’re also working with schools and other organizations to install pop-up, drive-in wifi hotspots. We can put up wifi in a parking lot or other open area so that folks with no other option for good internet can drive up, download their assignments, upload their presentation or join their video call, all without leaving the confines of their socially-distanced automobiles.

So that’s a good note to end on: all of us trying to do a little something for each other in these trying times. Shop local. Say a real thank you to the checker at the grocery store — that must be a scary job these days. Wave to your neighbors as you pass by — at a good distance away, of course. It all helps.

Now that Cruzio’s staff is mostly working from home, we get to meet each other’s pets as we videoconference. Here’s a sampling of pet photos from our non-human-wfh-officemates channel:

Sometimes we barely realize they’re there

Cam’s spherical cat

Peggy’s spherical cat

Jesus’s pup is tuckered out

Though they might cop an attitude

Do not mess with Ocean

Because cats and cabbages

My office mate refuses to talk to me

Aw man, almost Monday

What are you doing here?

Other times they seem to think they could be doing the job better, frankly,  than we seem to. And maybe they’re right…

Taxidermist monitors the power tools

If Mark forgets to close the door, Jasper wants equal time

Milton & Molly not interested in discussing James using the kitchen table today

Oh you think you’re gonna use the computer?

Well so will I. TO TAKE A BATH.

Ziggy is stoked to videoconference

Fulton enjoys working from home

Bent to tie my shoe and I am now Milton’s ergonomic workstation

Iasha’s cat plays fetch and keeps bringing her toys

But you know, when we look up from a long day’s work at home, it’s nice to see that friendly non-human officemate’s face…

Something special about walking down the hall and seeing your dog sitting there dressed in a Hawaiian shirt

To Our Customers & Community:

We’re living through an unusual time. Although the COVID-19 virus has only just started to visibly hit Santa Cruz County, we are expecting and preparing for more. 

Local schools and universities are shutting down. Many companies are asking employees to work from home. Many local people are staying home voluntarily, creating “social distance” that will help to slow the progress of the virus.

Our community has to come together to deal with this, medically and economically. 

In any crisis, communication is vital.

This is obviously true for social distancing and telecommuting — whether it’s an employee working at her kitchen table or a grandfather stuck at home Netflixing, people need internet. And there’s an enhanced call for getting information, for telemedicine, and generally feeling less isolated.

We’re very aware that Cruzio is a lifeline utility, especially now, and reliable, fast service to our current customers is our top priority. Luckily, Cruzio has a robust, redundant network. We already have no data caps or limits. But we have to do more.

Here are the measures Cruzio is taking to maintain reliable service and keep our community healthy: 

1. We’re following guidelines and limiting face-to-face contact
   Normally, we love to see folks in our storefront. But for now, to reduce possible infection vectors, we’re asking that you contact us over the internet wherever possible.

   If you need to pay a bill, please use your online account portal. If you have a question (like “how do I use my account portal?”), try contacting us through our contact page — or give us a call at 831459-6301 extension 2.

2. Special care for repairs, new equipment, surveys, and installs
   Even Cruzio can’t use the internet for everything. But we’ll be careful when we need to deal with you in person. Our employees are following guidelines by reducing close contact, wiping down equipment, and washing hands before and after working at customer locations. Please extend the same courtesy to them!

3. Our coworking is open, but we’re taking extra measures to stay safe
   Coworkers are still using our space, and we’re working hard to keep everything clean and virus-free.

4. Cruzio needs to stay healthy
   It’s important for Cruzio’s staff to remain healthy and prevent infection, both inside and outside our office — for our work’s sake as well as our own. We need healthy staff to take care of our customers and our network.

   Employees who don’t have to be on site will be working from home. Frequent hand-washing is required. We’re wiping down counters, doorknobs, and surfaces frequently throughout the day. Cruzio employees are instructed not to come to work if they are ill.

5. It’s going to be tough financially, for our company and our customers
   Recognizing that people may be in less of a position to make prompt payments, while their situation may mean they need the internet, Cruzio will not be suspending service when a payment is late.

6. We’ll keep the network running
   Almost goes without saying but through all of this our top priority will be keeping our network up and running. We’ve come through in emergencies before. This is where we prove our mettle.

All of us need to keep up with the best advice from authorities. And as we see local businesses suffering, let’s be supportive of them — Casey Coonerty Protti wrote an excellent letter on how to do that. 

We also strongly encourage donating to the Second Harvest Food Bank and to local clinics — Dominican and Watsonville Community Hospital, and other medical centers — to assist those who may need help in coming weeks.

Let’s look out for one another. Let’s take the measures we need to reduce harm and promote well-being in Santa Cruz County, and make our community a safe and sound place.

Stay well,

 —Chris Neklason, Peggy Dolgenos, and all the folks at Cruzio Internet and Santa Cruz Fiber

Jingle contest winner Tim Hartnett with esteemed Cruzioworks manager Andrew DiMarzio

The day after last year’s crazy-as-usual Santa Cruz Halloween, Cruzio got a whole new party going for our friends, customers, and community. 

Cruzio staffers Tony and Cam placing giant inflatable aliens on our awning

We made this — our 30th(!!) anniversary bash — ultra-special with giant inflatable aliens on the roof, a fantastic 80s throwback playlist, and… a jingle contest.

Why a Jingle?

Why a jingle? Maybe we were feeling the need for a song.

Until November 1st, 2019, Cruzio was a company without a jingle. We had a beloved kitty logo, a well-functioning website, a big sign on our building. All those things make you feel like a real company. But we were missing that elusive element and it haunted us. We’d listen to Kars4Kids, and think, okay, that’s them. But who are we? What’s our melody?

Sure, we are exaggerating, and maybe a company can exist without a jingle. But we really did think a contest would be fun, and it would give our community the chance to write the song. We have a lot of talented musicians in Santa Cruz and it was a way to give amateurs a chance (in fact, the ultimate winner was an artist who’d never been paid for his music). So we offered a big prize and sent out notices to all the music stores in town. And we got 21 entries over the course of four weeks.

Not All Jingles Sound Alike. At All.

What kinds of songs did people submit? We loved the variety:

• Reggae
• Head-banging metal
• Electronic
• Cowboy
• Instrumental
• Yodeling (we had some arguments about the definition of yodeling, but it sounded yodel-y)
• Rap
• …and some that were undefinable

Surprising lyrics, too. A lot more “baby” and “bro” and “yeah yeah yeah” than we expected. One of our favorite jingles started out, “Today is a happy day.” That’s so Santa Cruz!

How’d We Decide?

We spent a few weeks with headphones on, listening over and over to how our musically talented community defined their home-town ISP. By the time of the party, we’d memorized most of the songs — the ones that we could make out the lyrics to, anyway. (Somehow, our perceptive marketing staffer Brian was able to decipher *all* the lyrics, Even the fuzziest ones. So we asked him for help a lot.) We sat at a meeting and sang along with all the songs to see how they felt. We had a lot of fun. You might say, fun was the point.

And we were right about the talented people in our community. We had some amazing songs, and some folks came and performed at our big party. We’ll never forget the tremendous air-guitar lip-sync one of the contestants did to the head-banger metal song. Another group did a little skit about a computer. All that enthusiasm made it hard to choose.

We were looking for a song that was catchy but not annoying, that was performed well, and that spoke to our Cruzio ethos: not just fast internet, but fair treatment of our customers, staff, and community. That’s a lot to fit into 15 seconds.

Our judges, conferring in chambers

But we had help. We didn’t just call on our creative community of Santa Cruz for jingle writers. We also got the best of the best to judge. Here were our esteemed judges:

• Andrew Smith from experimental music promoter and record label Indexical
• Jon Luini  from music, web, and video producer Chime Interactive
• Alana Matthews, music fan from Cruzio
• Ani Zickuhr, artist and brand specialist from Cruzio
• Thea Luini, teen judge, representing the youth of America

Because they were judges, they wore curly white wigs. Each provided expert commentary, and helped us pick the prizes.

And here are the results:

Overall winner: Tim Hartnett, “Get Connected with Cruzio”

Judges’ favorite: The Jingleberries, “Surfing with Cruzio”

Crowd favorite (from applause at the party): DreamTonic, “Today is a Happy Day”
(by the way, DreamTonic just released a single called I Take to You)

People’s Choice (received most online votes): Jon Benson and band, “At the Speed of a Click”

Want to hear all the jingle entries and see if we made the right choice? Here’s every entry we got. (It doesn’t take long to listen to all of them, they only last seconds, not minutes.)

Want to know what local artists wrote about Cruzio in their jingles? Here are all the lyrics.

And here’s a video of our 30th year party!

60s Dad winces — ugh, The Rolling Stones! Where’s Frank Sinatra?

Why didn’t Barry Manilow stick to jingles?

Not Ashamed

This jingle won a contest too

So What Happened to Jingles?

I’d like to teach the world to sing — in other words, buy more soda

Kars4Kids — Not Just Annoying

There are still jingles, but the quality has declined. Some companies resurrect old jingles to be funny (like Nationwide), and the old favorites come up from time to time nostalgically, but new ones are rare. And those that do make it onto TV are pretty awful.

A candidate for “worst jingle ever” these days is Kars4Kids, which is played incessantly nationwide. Nearly every jingle Cruzio received in our contest was more listenable than this one. Most people probably do not like this jingle. But according to Charity Navigator, Kars4Kids took in over $77 million in contributions in 2018!

According to Charity Watch, Kars4Kids is at best misleading and, to some critics, a downright scam. A lot of jingle-generated donations go to a very small number of “kids.” Which somehow fits in with their awful jingle.

Cruzio’s Jingle: A Force for Good

Cruzio’s jingle, of course, will only be used for good. We like that it urges people to “get connected.” It’s a little like standing on a mountaintop, hand in hand, teaching the world to sing.