Author Archives: Peggy Dolgenos

Now that we have a jingle, we’re looking into the jingle universe and we’ve found some amazing things.

Cruzio’s Jingle Champ Tim Hartnett is in good company. Another jingle writer was Brian Jones, who wrote a Rice Crispies tune performed by his little band, the Rolling Stones, with Mick Jagger singing the lyrics.

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

And there’s more. Maybe the most famous jingle writer was none other than 80s pop idol Barry Manilow. Brian Jones’s ditty didn’t crack the ear-worm barrier into a tune you find yourself incessantly humming, but Manilow was more effective: among his successes: “Stuck on Bandaid” and “Like a Good Neighbor” (Statefarm) and McDonalds’ “You Deserve a Break Today”. Yup, that was Barry Manilow, of “Copacabana” and “I Write the Songs” pop ballad success in the 70’s.

Why didn’t Barry Manilow stick to jingles?

Not Ashamed

We haven’t seen the Rolling Stones promoting their former jingle creations, but Manilow’s not ashamed. All the Manilow jingles are listed on his website and he sings them in his concerts. You’ve probably heard a lot of them, because a good jingle is forever. But Manilow didn’t write the Nationwide song that Manning and Brad Paisley hum on countless commercials. Who wrote that one?

That would be Steve Karmen, “King of the Jingle,” who’s much better known for jingles than for his non-commercial songwriting. The Nationwide jingle was the fourth one he wrote and no, he doesn’t get paid every time it’s aired. He was paid up front and probably regrets that deal. Manilow, too: he got paid $500 for the McDonalds jingle that’s on the air constantly to this day.

Did anyone else become famous writing a jingle for a contest, like the one Cruzio just had? Why, yes!

Do you ever “wish you had an Oscar Meyer Weiner?” If so, you can thank Richard Trentlage. In 1962, he entered a contest and produced one of the most epic jingles of all time. He got famous, the Weiners sold like hotcakes (tbh how fast do hotcakes sell these days?), the jingle lives on and on. As it was with so many jingles.

This jingle won a contest too

So What Happened to Jingles?

Somehow, the jingle tradition seems to have died away, with some notable, usually unbearable, exceptions. Maybe people just aren’t as hokey as they used to be — we’re more cynical these days, and we have more choices to listen to.

If feels like the drift started with “I’d like to Teach the World to Sing” from 1971. Was this the first non-jingle jingle? The lyrics were written by an advertising executive, but it fit the groovy mood of the day. It even became a hit song after the writers added a few more verses. (Will Cruzio’s jingle take off in this way?)

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

Then jingles dwindled, at least for big corporations. In the 80s, they started paying pop stars like Michael Jackson, rather than bland B actors, to drink soda and drive cars. Musicians started seeing the benefit of airplay, and got over the bad taste of commercialization. Companies that own musicians’ catalogs saw even less downside. At first, companies tried to commission existing popular songs. Then, flipping the tables, now many songs get popular after they’re in commercials, rather than before.

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.

Equal Access Santa Cruz Wins Big

January 7, 2020

Peggy Dolgenos

Cruzio Blog No Comments

Let us know if you live in one of these neighborhoods! We’ll include you in our plans.

Cruzio Wins a Grant

On December 5th Cruzio was awarded a $2.45 Million broadband grant from the California Advanced Services Fund to build high-speed fiber optic internet connectivity to seven under-served mobile home parks in the Capitola area.

Why Santa Cruz County Needs Equal Access

When Cruzio started building our Santa Cruz Fiber network, Santa Cruz County was rated 446th of 501 California metropolitan areas for internet speeds. Too small to attract investment from big ISPs, and too populated for rural subsidy programs, our county wallowed in neglected infrastructure.

Until the early 2000s, Cruzio relied on leased AT&T lines. Those lines were built in an earlier, highly-regulated and subsidized era. With less regulation from the FCC, the big ISPs took advantage of their existing infrastructure and a lack of competition to save costs. Saving costs usually results in lower quality of service.

To our dismay, they started letting local wires age and fray. We realized we had to free ourselves from that aging network and we started building independent infrastructure. Now Cruzio has a considerable — and growing — network serving thousands of local residents. Wherever we build, we bring better options to the community.

We want to get that infrastructure where it’s needed most. So we’ve started an effort we call Equal Access Santa Cruz (EASC). And in early December, EASC won a substantial grant from the State of California.

We Know How Important Internet Is

For years, Cruzio Director James Hackett has said, “Internet is a utility that’s become as vital as gas, electricity, or even water.”

Something so vital to modern life needs to be available equally to all, no matter what their location or economic circumstances.

The just-announced grant takes a big step towards that goal. After a year of seemingly endless documentation (and many prior years accumulating expertise and experience), on December 5th, 2019 James and fellow Director Chris Frost drove up to Sacramento to receive the grant award for Cruzio’s Equal Access Santa Cruz project. Hooray!

Fiber optic internet installed at El Rio Mobile Home Park

Cruzio brought fiber internet to El Rio mobile home park in 2018

Equal Access Santa Cruz

We’re honored to get the grant, and it’s for a great project. There are several communications “deserts” around Santa Cruz County which have sub-standard internet, as defined by the FCC. Many of these areas are in mobile home parks, where incomes are lower, on average, than the communities around them. They’ve been ignored by big ISPs — big corporations have a habit of ignoring consumers. Especially lower-income ones.

Cruzio identified seven such communities in mid-County that we can reach with the best internet anyone can build: fiber optic connections direct to each home. Residents of these parks have, till now, experienced some of the worst connectivity in Santa Cruz County. With this project, they can look forward to the best in the USA.

We weren’t the only ones who recognized the need for better internet in mid-county neighborhoods. Member of Congress Jimmy Panetta, State Assembly Member Mark Stone, County Supervisors Zach Friend and John Leopold, and many other elected and appointed officials helped move the project forward.

This is All About Infrastructure, and That Can Get Complex. Any Chance You’re Still Reading?

Building infrastructure is tough work. Construction is expensive, time-consuming, and rife with licenses and regulations. We don’t doubt it’s boring to read about — a lot of our job is literally boring holes and feeding cable through them.

But Cruzio builds fiber to last a lifetime. And we know our work will change lives and livelihoods well into the future. It’s tough work, but it’s work worth doing.

Equal Access Santa Cruz Wins Big, Part II

January 6, 2020

Peggy Dolgenos

Cruzio Blog No Comments

Let us know if you live in one of these neighborhoods! We’ll include you in our plans.

When we last left our determined independent ISP, Cruzio announced that it won a grant to serve low-income mobile home parks in mid-County Santa Cruz. But before the grant was won, there was the grant process.

We Really Fit the Bill

Cruzio’s Equal Access Santa Cruz (EASC) project is tailor-made for the purposes of the State of California’s California Advanced Services Fund (CASF): “to encourage deployment of high-quality advanced communication services to all Californians.”

All Californians. Not just the ones living in the priciest houses in the middle of town.

Cruzio’s project equalizes internet access across geographic areas and income levels, and puts much-needed new infrastructure into neighborhoods where substandard service currently exists. We’re a local company getting our community the internet it needs. We know how to do this; we’ve done it before.

Slam dunk.

And anyone in a position to know agreed. That was a start.

The Rocky Road We Travelled

Rocky Beach 800 — *We’re from Santa Cruz. We’re used to rocks.*

Those of you who’ve applied for grants know it can be difficult and time-consuming — especially if you have to fight some of the largest corporations in the United States in the process. AT&T, Comcast, Spectrum anyone?

In an effort to boost internet quality in the US without pissing off well-funded interests, federal and state agencies came up with a system that’s fairly byzantine and mostly controlled by the companies which own most of the existing infrastructure — yup, those big companies mentioned above.

Using the bizarre argument that competition stifles investment, lobbyists for those large companies have set up guard rails to protect their market positions at the cost of consumers. Because of their efforts, if an existing ISP claims to provide six megabits per second downstream to even one home in an area — regardless of the price to the consumer — that area is considered “served” and no grants for improved service will be awarded.

There is no method in place to check the validity of service claims. So money tends to sit in the pot as competitive ISPs like Cruzio search for places that don’t reach even that dismal standard.

Big ISPs Jealously Guard Their Monopolies

When we found such areas in the middle of our own county, based on years of maps produced by the FCC, and applied for funding, suddenly a big ISP took an interest — not in building better infrastructure, but in quashing our grant request. Suddenly, Spectrum declared the area “served” and asked the CPUC to turn us down.

That challenge succeeded, and took about half the mobile homes out of our project. Those residences won’t get a boost from the grant. Cruzio will try to extend to them privately, but the cost of infrastructure is high. As a result of the challenge by Spectrum, the benefit of the grant is more limited than we first intended.

We pressed on, though. From February to November 2019, we went through regulatory and environmental hurdles. We proved our long-term sustainability (Cruzio celebrated 30 years as an internet company in 2019, for goodness’ sake) and financial health. Finally, on November 4th, we got a provisional okay on our remaining proposal.

But — play some minor chords in this scene — it was only a recommendation, not an award.

Hey, what’s the difference? Just the final stamp on the paperwork.

We waited for the commission to give us the final thumbs up. This was an unbearably tense time. The behemoth ISPs now had one more chance to challenge our request. Weeks went by. The deadline approached. Things looked hopeful — looks like we made it? A lot of finger crossing and trying not to jinx it.

The Day Before the Deadline

Then suddenly, the day before the final decision, Spectrum/Charter put in a last-minute dispute. They wanted to remove even more from the project, so that we’d have just a skinny strip of modular homes to serve with an awesome, but expensive, new network. That would change the economic viability of the project. It would kill it.

We were crazy worried. We reached out to our elected officials. Jimmy Panetta’s office responded quickly, and took steps to defend the project. But there were many hazards. The former chair of the commission had retired. The new chair was an unknown to us and to many advocates. Would she be more susceptible to lobbying pressure? Nail-biting time.

Then, out of the blue, a knight in shining regulatory armor appeared. Steve Blum, of the aforementioned CCBC, has helped many municipalities plan and build network infrastructure. He submitted a firm rebuttal to the commissioners defending not only our grant but the program itself and its aim of increasing low-cost, high performance internet throughout the State of California. If you’d like to see community advocacy at work, read his letter here.

The CPUC recognized the merit of the argument. They approved the grant. The CPUC had done its job. Yay.

Next Steps

Now we need to do ours. Winning the grant is only one step in a long chain. Funding is given as a reimbursement for finished work, not an up-front payment. So we have to finance and construct the network before we see a penny.

And although we have the support of the parks’ residents, we’ve discovered that many mobile-home parks have been “rolled up” by private equity firms in the last decade or so. People in the parks generally rent the land their homes are on — they own the structures, not the dirt. Most parks used to be owned by local companies or HOAs, but not so much any more. We need access to the dirt, because we install our fiber underground.

The actual owners are now pretty detached from the parks and difficult to reach. Cruzio needs to work with the owners and park managers to help their residents get free upgrades to their internet, and it is often a challenge finding anyone willing to answer an email or a phone call.

But we are up for the challenge. It was such a great feeling to “light up” our first mobile home park, the El Rio in downtown Santa Cruz. We’ll never forget the joy when residents saw they had gigabit speeds for their business, their kids’ homework, and their entertainment. Equal, best-of-breed access is what it’s really about.

Santa Cruz Fiber Crew At El Rio 800 — *Our crew at the El Rio mobile home build site*

Here’s Where We Get to Thank Everybody

The Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC) championed our cause. The CCBC is a state-funded group of experts who spend their time studying where in our tri-county region (Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito) the internet sucks, and then figuring out how to improve it. Yes, there’s actually someone paying attention to this!

CCBC loved our idea and helped immeasurably. Many thanks especially to Steve Blum and Freny Cooper from Monterey Bay Economic Partnership for their support and for helping us navigate the tsunami of required paperwork, which they somehow understand.

Congress member Jimmy Panetta and his office saw our plan and encouraged us to go forward. Mr. Panetta has been a long-time, well-informed advocate for internet availability and fairness. We’ve seen him take the right side of the argument on Net Neutrality and personal privacy on the internet. He has some top-notch help in his office: Panetta aides Emmanuel Garcia, Matt Manning, and Carina Chavez made sure their boss’s letters of support reached people in the CPUC.

We’re also lucky to have even a State Assembly member who understands the importance of internet to families and businesses around our county. You may not be aware that Mark Stone is a powerful advocate for fast, fair, low-cost internet. He’s tried hard, and against heavy odds, to raise standards in our state. When it comes to EASC, he advocated for his constituents and lent his voice.

The support went down the line. County Supervisors Zach Friend and John Leopold, along with Capitola City Manager Jamie Goldstein and Santa Cruz County Economic Development Manager Andy Constable deserve credit for their participation in the process.

And many thanks to the folks at the CPUC, who gave us the nod. We intend to do them proud. This project will be a feather in their cap.

Letter from Cruzio’s CEO

January 1, 2020

Peggy Dolgenos

Cruzio Blog No Comments

dog in fire meme

How are things in Santa Cruz? Thanks for asking.

The ongoing COVID health crisis was augmented two weeks ago by extremely hot weather that kicked off sudden county-wide blackouts from the power company.

While we were coping with the unusual heat, and worrying about whether more blackouts would come, Santa Cruz County had a pre-dawn lightning storm of terrific force on August 16th. Hundreds of lightning strikes dotted our county, from over the bay to our inland forested mountains. It was beautiful and scary.

We were, it turned out, right to be scared because the lightning set off a number of fires deep in wooded areas. The fires quickly spread in the hot, dry weather and 77,000 people were evacuated as tens of thousands of square acres burned out of control over the next couple of days.

The lightning storms hadn’t just hit Santa Cruz County. The rest of California suffered, too. Fires were started up and down the state — over 600 wildfires in all. It was impossible to address so many fires at once. The state’s resources were stretched thin. As the fires spread, residents were forced to leave their homes.

Evacuees included several Cruzio staffers, and hundreds of our customers. And it appears that some members of the Cruzio community lost their homes.

Those of us who remained in the unevacuated parts of Santa Cruz breathed air full of ash particles, and our homes smelled like smoke. Friends and family from the mountains are still sleeping on our couches, and we have our go-bags ready in case the wind takes a bad turn and we all have to — as the official notices put it — “get out.”

Through all this, we’ve still had to maintain social-distancing, mask-wearing, and generally care due to the pandemic.

So that’s how this month is going.

At Cruzio, we’re constantly reminded, during difficult times, how vital internet service is. Times of crisis raise the need. We had to anticipate damage from the fire and figure out how to prevent damage to our infrastructure. We knew people needed to pore over fire maps and get notices via email.

This means that all Cruzio staff were on alert this week, some losing days of sleep as we monitored and reacted to searing heat, power outages, and fire. Our staff lives here — as do our customers — and we’re fiercely dedicated to successful and safe outcomes for our community. We may suffer glitches and partial outages when the situation becomes overwhelming, but we are not complacent. We fight tooth and nail to keep our services running.

We don’t have to look far for inspiration. The firefighters battling this new and impossible complex of blazes are our heroes and we’re doing whatever we can to help them, as well as people who’ve gone to local shelters, and all those working in the systems which have to kick into place at times like these. Cruzio’s backbone connections are supporting the Santa Cruz Civic and Watsonville Fairgrounds evacuation sites. We’ve provided cameras for fire watch sites. We’ve reached out to government offices all over the county: what can Cruzio do to help?

Meanwhile we’re supporting our staff as best we can. We won’t put them in perilous situations. We try to help those who’ve been evacuated from their homes. Cruzio is focused on keeping internet running, which is a big job, while understanding that we, too, are humans who need a place to sleep.

As the days tick by, Cruzio is ready to help. A team like ours is part of a strong, resilient community, and we are working with organizations around the county to maintain communication services and help people find answers and find each other. We put our staff’s names at the bottom of every newsletter — we’re proud of their work, especially now, especially this month.

Stay safe, Santa Cruz. Stay strong, it’s up to us to get our neighbors through this tough time.

Cruzio 30th Anniversary Party — Video

January 1, 2020

Peggy Dolgenos

Cruzio Blog No Comments

Many thanks to our Santa Cruz Community for joining us at a big 30th Anniversary party! And here’s to 30 more.

When the Power is Out

October 28, 2019

Peggy Dolgenos

Cruzio Blog No Comments

We know that even when your power is out, you want the internet up and running

Cruzio knows our customers need internet service no matter what the circumstances. And that’s been a big part of our ongoing infrastructure investment.

Our aim is 100% uptime, even when PG&E power is out.

In fact, we aim higher than that: we offer extra service to customers who don’t have power in their homes or offices. If your power is cut, we always want to offer the alternative of coming into our coworking space and using the internet here.

As the PG&E situation gets more challenging, we have to adapt in order to stay close to our goal. This blog describes the steps we’ve taken in the past and what we’re doing now.

We’ve Always Prepared for Outages

We’ve prepared well over the years. As we established our independent fiber optic-backed network, Cruzio bought our own office space in downtown Santa Cruz to house a generator and data center and we’re connected with multiple redundant fiber and wireless backhaul paths.If one of our hubs goes down in a power event, we can reroute traffic in several configurations. Because of this, we’re able to confidently guarantee service levels to enterprise customers — businesses who simply can’t operate without internet. We’ve even been able to come through with sudden demands for emergency internet for local facilities like the County Building.

Meeting the day we got the PG&E outage warnings

We’re proud of our outage response team: Jesus Lopez, Dan Thomas, Chris Frost, Adia Schamber Jones, Justin von Besser, Mark Hanford, Alison Lowenthal, and James Hackett (not pictured). With the rest of our dauntless staff, they keep our network and downtown headquarters up and running, serving thousands of customers.

We have dozens of generators and uninterrupted power supplies (UPSs) to provide power backup to our many facilities around Santa Cruz County and surrounding areas. Cruzio always carries spare UPSs so that in an extended power outage we can cycle them (charge one while deploying another). In an outage, we follow a schedule of rotation and replacement for our UPSs and for fueling and refueling generators. Even when PG&E power is on, we run our main generator once a week to ensure it’s working properly.

We’ve Got a Great Team

Our team, mentioned above, is a crucial part of our uptime efforts. They’re the ones up at 3 am, driving to the top of Loma Prieta in bad weather, making sure the power is on and the internet’s flowing.

And when you add in the extra issues our customers experience in emergencies, every member of our staff contributes. We may not return your call or update your ticket as quickly when we’re in the middle of an outage, but we are listening to and addressing the issues you describe. Please check our network status page or call in for the latest news.

Once, when the elevator power was out, our Director of Technology and Infrastructure, Chris Frost, carried a UPS up 5 flights of stairs. By the time he got to the top and plugged in the equipment, the power had returned. He laughs about it. But he made sure we were ready for an extended failure.

But Now We’ve Got a More Serious Situation

Cruzio has been well prepared for the way things have worked up until the last few months. Generally, in our experience, we’ve had power outages for 3 or 4 hours, or perhaps half a day. The outages have been unplanned, occurring in a limited area, and PG&E has fixed them quickly — often even before their own projections. We are more than ready for that type of power outage; it can be challenging, but we have the equipment necessary to handle it. But this isn’t the only kind of outage we’re seeing now.

In the new paradigm, as a result of climate change we’re living with more extreme weather conditions. Drought, tree-killing diseases and pests, extreme heat, record-breaking winds — all of these have caused a sharp increase in fire danger. On the power-supply side, PG&E filed for bankruptcy based on fire liability. Now they’re shutting down their infrastructure in advance of damage, powering down hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses all at once, and for days — perhaps, they’ve hinted, weeks — at a time. These are much longer outages than our customers and Cruzio are accustomed to.

The climate situation isn’t getting better, and we don’t expect PG&E’s response to improve any time soon. Our community and our business have to adapt.

We’re Looking at Enormous Investments to Deal with Power Outages

Cruzio, as a provider of vital services, has to adapt even faster and more thoroughly than most other businesses.

So the tens of thousands of dollars per year we spend on backup power will have to double and triple. We will likely spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on power backups in the next year or so.

Our staff has been drawn thin by the new power paradigm. Over the last weekend we had techs napping in our break room as they waited for their next generator-refueling shift. We’ve added staff to build out our network, and now we’ll need to hire and train more people to take care of our equipment at our many sites. This, too, is costly: responding to power emergencies slows down our network builds. We would rather be building fiber. But until our state figures out a different way, this is the world we have to deal with.

Our Number One Priority is Always Keeping our Current Customers Up and Running

Along with making our network more resilient around the county, we’re improving our in-building power redundancy as well. When customer power is out, we welcome folks to come down to our office and use our internet. We even lower our coworking fees during outages so non-members can get the internet they need.

And we’re working on upgrades to our coworking electrical backups, so that we can accomodate more people. In a long, wide-area power outage, people need a place to go.

But We Need a Better Way

Just to touch on the larger picture: small diesel-fueled machinery like generators are bad for the environment, but people are understandably buying them up. With these long outages the small generators will almost certainly proliferate, and that will exacerbate the climate problem. We need to find other solutions. Cruzio, for example, is looking at using more solar power. We hope that our community as a whole recognizes this issue so we can all address it together and find a better way.

Seeing the 4 am status updates from Dan or spotting Colin, exhausted, between shifts makes us very grateful for the team we have and how much care they put into their work. Many thanks to them for keeping us going. And let’s hope the wind dies down soon so the power can come back on.

Cruzio Jingle Entries — All the Lyrics

October 23, 2019

Peggy Dolgenos

Cruzio Blog No Comments

Lyrics

The Winner: Tim Hartnett

If you want fiber optic speeds, and Net Neutrality

Friendly people you can talk to at a local company

Hook up with the coolest internet I know

Get connected with Cruzio

Sven 1

It takes a lot of fiber

To hold the world together

Cruzio’s got it,

The best in town!

Sven 2

Time to upgrade

My old internet

And I know just

What I want

It’s fast and secure and for home and for business with fiber enhancements and who has all that!?!

Cruzio! Cruzio! Cruzio. Cruzio!

The local choice is clear

Michael

Happy Streaming

Email Greetings

It’s all here at Cruzio

Fast Fiber

No Copper Wire

It’s all here at Cruzio

Friendly service

You deserve it

It’s all here at Cruzio

30 years ago

Santa Cruz’s own

It’s all here at Cruzio

It’s all here at Cruziooo ——–

John

I’m trusting Cruzio

I love it truth be told

I’ll be online so quick

It’s friendly and fast

And it will save you some cash

Online, at the speed of a click

{Click sound}

Jacob

Where do i get my internet from

Cruzio

Fast fiber optics for your home or business

Cruzio

Friendly fast and local, private net neutral

Cruzio

Peter

If you want internet

Cruzio

It’s the way to go

Cruzio

It’s the way to go

Cruzio

If you’re on the internet

Cruzio

If you’re on the internet

Cruzio

It’s the way to go

Business or home

Fast, friendly, local

Nikki

Faster, private, net-neutral internet. Cruzio.com. For Fiber, and beyond.

Jon

Cruzio is the place to go

Ultra high speed internet connections guaranteed

The other companies ain’t got no soul

Future proof your business with Cruzio

{interlude}

Future proof your business with cruzio

Cruzio is the place to go

David

Cruzio is fast

high speed internet for your home

and your business oh yeah

Cruzio is fast oh yeah

Fiber fiber fiber fiber fiber fiber oh yeah

Cruzio is fast oh yeah!

Elisabeth

Cruzio

Connect and go

Fiber optics boost your flow

Get hooked up by a local bro

Surf the web with Cruzio

Dream Tonic

Cruzio – Today is a happy day

Cruzio – Fiber speed, comin’ your way

Cruzio – At home or your business away

Cruzio – is your local choice today…

Eric

{Beat boxing}

Cruzio cruzio cruzio cruzio CRUZIO (in Figaro tune)

{More beat boxing}

Hey santa cruz county

This is our jingle

Our internet so strong

It’ll make your bits tingle

Gigbit speeds that’s fast fast fast

Our customer service is built to last

Ya got a business or netflix

You already know

You need that internet to flow flow flow

And that’s why you want

Cruzio (in Figaro tune)

Lalalalala lalalalala laaaaaa

Sasha

Cruzio, Cruzio, Cruzio x2

I get my internet

From Cruzio

And then I go-o-o-oh

High speed, friendly, local, home, business

fiber optic net neutral connectivity

Jake

Sunny santa cruz

Home of

Cruzio

Fast speed

Internet

Surf the web

With your local bros

Ain’t no sharks in these waters

We’re the fiber optic doctors

Take it from me

Give as a call at

831-459-6301 (x2)

Cruzio

Cruzing California

A whooshing sound, rising to a big crescendo. No lyrics.

The Jingleberries

If you need the internet in your business or in your home

Cruzio fiber keeps you online all day long

Local and fast they give you the service you want and need

High speed internet from the boardwalk to UCSC

That’s why we’re surfing, surfing, surfing with Cruzio

Surfing, surfing, all the Santa Cruz locals know

Broadband wireless service is tireless

Everyone wants to go

And keep on surfing, surfing, surfing with Cruzio

Michael

For the fastest connections to patch you through

With fiber-optics that cannot lose,

There’s only one that surfs like you do:

Cruzio, here in Santa Cruz.

We lead the way

Here locally,

Call Cruzio today!

1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake Photos

October 10, 2019

Peggy Dolgenos

Cruzio Blog No Comments

Photos taken by the US Geological Survey. For the full folder of photos, check out the USGS website.

072. Santa Cruz’s town clock stopped a few minutes after the earthquake.

073. Pacific Avenue. Brick buildings were a serious liability.

074. Pacific Avenue

075. Pacific Avenue. Yes, our town really looked like this.

076. Some businesses never returned

077. People were injured and killed in downtown SantaCruz. Rescue operations started almost after the quake.

078. Many of our older buildings were lost. Our Downtown/Pacific Avenue commercial area had been listed as a historical district, but is was delisted by the National Register of Historic Places because of the earthquake’s effects.

079. Businesses had to abandon their shops. Many set up in tents — and operated in tents for years after the quake.

080.

082. The levee by the river shows rifts

083. Hillsides collapsed

088. Ford’s department store in downtown Santa Cruz never reopened

063. The Santa Cruz Mountains saw incredible destruction

055.

092. Watsonville, too, experienced massive damage to beautiful old buildings

094. Highway 1 heading south from Watsonville

006. In San Francisco, many buildings had even more dramatic collapses

009.

Attributions for all these photos and more:

photo_attributions from US Geological Service

Cruzio Celebrates 30 Years of Geekdom

October 10, 2019

Peggy Dolgenos

Cruzio Blog No Comments

Cruzio’s celebrating 30 years with one of our fabulous free parties — and a jingle contest!

Cruzio Internet is having a big anniversary and a big, big party — you’re invited!

We founded our company 30 years ago, when the internet was new, experimental, and little known. Santa Cruz plunged right in.

Cruzio opened a storefront on Pacific Avenue in the early 90s

It Wasn’t Just Cruzio. Santa Cruz Was a Leader in Technology

Santa Cruz in the 1980s was full of fire-dancing free-loving hippies. It was also full of tech nerds who worked for Lockheed or Hewlett Packard over the hill. Students hoping to eventually work for the latter but who partied like the former filled out the mix.

Tie dye and pocket protectors got mixed together and produced the internet, with its far-reaching cosmic social effects and solid basis in science and math.

Precise technicians can express a creative side, too

We founded Cruzio, our quintessentially Santa Cruz internet service provider, in 1989, as members of that vibrant, culturally diverse community.

Santa Cruz is an idealistic place, and Cruzio founders Chris Neklason and I had high hopes for humanity. We were inspired by people like John Perry Barlow, the Grateful Dead lyricist and early internet pioneer who proclaimed things like:

“We are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire.”

And we saw the light.

Communication is a powerful and a very human thing. The earliest internet had been set up to exchange scientific data. But almost immediately, even scientists in their labs used the medium for non-technical discussions. They shared with each other science fiction, music, and even knitting tips. Personal use of the internet spread.

Many of us in Santa Cruz were inspired by big ideas about bringing the world together with this radical new form of communication. In the late 1980s, we started Cruzio as a Bulletin Board System (BBS). We kept the equipment in our spare bedroom on Palm Street, on the West Side of Santa Cruz.

BBSs were precursors of ISPs. One of perhaps a dozen in Santa Cruz County, the Cruzio BBS allowed people out in the community to have their computers call our computer on the phone, exchange data, and send commands that our computer would follow. Pretty revolutionary in 1989. Mind-blowing!

Cruzio Gamers in Chris and Peggy's Garage

Cruzio gamers in our garage — that’s an Apple “laptop” on the left!

Nerds Joined the Internet First, and Had a Ball

People who ran BBSs were called “sysops” and Santa Cruz had an active and collegial sysop community. We had our own sysop news- and email groups for the exchange of vital information: how to create and maintain fast connections from our little county to the rest of the world. It was hard work. For Cruzio, which had hundreds of customers by the early 1990s, it was all-day, all-night work.

We’d had an earthquake early on in Cruzio’s history. We saw that our service could be a lifeline, like ham radio. So we knew it had to be up and running 24/7, 365 days a year.

Most computers only displayed text back then, with rudimentary graphics. But users were creative about what they did with text. We drew pictures (often of cows), wrote poems, designed and played multi-user games. Students and people who worked in tech companies made up most of our users in the early days — they’d had email and newsgroups, and wanted them at home, too.

An ASCII cow

In 1990, when the internet was available to private companies, we jumped on it immediately. Cruzio became one of the first commercial ISPs in the country.

“Join the INTERNET,” we announced, using all caps for this obscure technical term. The software got better, partly due to Santa Cruz-based companies. And as more people put things online, online became more interesting.

In the next several years everyone, not just geeks but everyone, got on the internet.

We Love Our Community and Our Customers

Cruzio was lucky. Santa Cruz, our community, had the vision to embrace this new world early and enthusiastically. Our experiment was successful, and Chris and I were able to quit our day jobs and devote full time to the venture.

Our customers have always loved our fast, reliable internet and reasonable prices. They’ve also loved our local staff, our cats, and our kids. And we’ve responded by constantly working to improve speed and stability of internet connections: dialup begat DSL, DSL gave way to Velocity, and now wireless and fiber connections are replacing everything that came before. We see our company as a connector between the most advanced technology in the world and the needs and capabilities of real humans.

Chris and Peggy in the house where Cruzio started

Cruzio now sells internet connections for $75/month which are often 1,000 times faster than the old 1200 baud (baud!) connections from 1989. The fiber optic cables supplying backhaul to our network carry more data than all the lines supplying all of Santa Cruz County twenty years ago — and we have more than one set of them, for redundancy.

Things move fast.

Many years have passed, and we’re still grateful to a community that embraces creativity and independence, and cares about honesty and hard work.

One of Our Cruzio Family Stories

And in the spirit of mixing the personal and the technical — which is what the internet allows us to do — I’ll end with a timely quote from one of our children, who grew up with modems beeping and buzzing all around her and her funny words written down in the Cruzio newsletter:

“Now I know how cats feel doing jumprope” declared Carly, at age 9, wearing her Halloween costume of cat ears and tail and trying to jump rope.

Thanks for all the support, and here’s to another 30 years of independent internet!

And…

If you have a moment, check out the entries in the Great Cruzio Internet Jingle Competition. Vote for your favorite jingle!

ASCII Cows

October 10, 2019

Peggy Dolgenos

Cruzio Blog No Comments

                                            (__)
                                            (oo)
                                     /-------\/
                                    / |     ||
                                   *  ||----||
                                      ~~    ~~
                                  Hello from 1989!

In the early days of the internet, our computers didn’t do graphics very well. So people got creative with letters and other keyboard characters.

One of the big fads was ASCII cows. Here’s a selection, collected from newsgroups and email in 1989:

            --==>>  THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO COWS  <<==--
                 as you've NEVER seen them before!

                  ________________________
         (__)    /                        \         * OFFICIAL EDITION *
         (oo)   (  November 1989 Version!  )
  /-------\/  --'\________________________/      * WORLDWIDE DISTRIBUTION *
 / |     ||
*  ||----||             Edited by Eric W. Tilenius
                    Please send your submissions to:
     Cow                ewtileni@pucc.Princeton.EDU // ewtileni@pucc.BITNET

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -

         (__)             (__)             (__)             (__)
         (oo)             (oo)             (oo)             (oo)
  /-------\/       /-------\/       /-------\/       /-------\/
 / |     ||       / |     ||       / |     ||       / |     ||
*  ||----||      *  ||W---||      *  ||w---||      *  ||V---||
                                              
     Cow           Cow laden        Same cow       Nancy Reagan-type
                   with milk     after milking     cow with milk

         (___)             (___)    *        (___)             (___)
         (o o)             (o o)     \       (o o)             (o o)
  /-------\ /       /-------\ /       \-------\ /       /-------\ /
 / |     ||O       / |     ||O         |     ||O       / | #>-+|O
*  ||,---||       *  ||@\--||          ||,---||       *  ||,----|
                                                  
     Bull       Same bull after    Rotc bull after    Red-blooded American Bull
                seeing above cow   seeing other bull   shooting the Rotc bull



         (__)             (__)             (__)             (__)
         (oo)             (oo)             (oo)             (oo)
  /-------\/-*     /-------\/       /-------\/   
 / |     || \     )*)(\/* /  *     / |     ||
*  ||----||  *   \ |||/)|/()(    
\/|(/)(/\/(,,/   \)|(/\/|)(/\
  Cow munching   Grass munching   Cow in water       Cow in trouble
    on grass         on cow

          (__)             (__)    *        (__) *      (__)
          (oo)             (oo)     \       (oo) |      (oo)
  /--------\/      /-oooooo-\/       \-------\/  \-------\/
 * o|     ||      * ooooooooo     o  o|     ||   /     ||
    ||----||     ooooooooooooo        ||----||>==/-----||
 ooo        ooooooooooooooooo                  
  Cow taking      Cow in deep         Cow getting the shit
    a shit            shit             kicked out of her


         (__)
         (oo)                       U
  /-------\/                    /---V
 / |     ||                    * |--|                       .
*  ||----||
       

Cow at 1 meter.         Cow at 100 meters.        Cow at 10,000 meters.



         (__)                     )__(                vv    vv
         (oo)                     (oo)                ||----||  *
  /-------\/               *-------\/                 ||     | /
 / |     ||               / |     ||                 /\-------/
*  ||----||              /  ||----||                (oo)
                        vv    vv                ()

American Cow              Polish Cow            Australian Cow



         (__)                     (__)                     (__)
         (oo)                ____ (oo)                _---_(oo)
  /-------\/               /-    --\/               /-     -\/
 / |     ||               / |     ||               /|      ||
*  ||----||              *  ||___-||              *  ||___-||
                                                 

Freshman Cow at          Freshman Cow             Freshman Cow
start of school     After the "Freshman 15"    After the "Freshman 20"


         (__)                     (__)                     (__)
         (OO)                     (@@)                     (xx)
  /-------\/               /-------\/               /-------\/
 / |     ||               / |     ||               / |     ||
*  ||----||              *  ||----||              *  ||----||
                                                 

Cow who drank Jolt       Cow who ate              Cow who used Jolt to wash
                      psychadelic mushrooms      down psychadelic mushrooms


                                         /\                  __
                                        /  \                 ||
             (__)                 (__)  \  /               (_||_)
             SooS                 (oo)   \/                 (oo)
      /------S\/S          /-------\/    /S          /-------\/
     / |     ||           / |     ||    /  S        / |     ||
    *  ||----||          *  ||----||___/    S      *  ||----||
                                                  
    This cow belonged     Ben Franklin owned       Abe Lincoln's
  to George Washington       this cow                   cow


                                                 (__)
         *        (__)                           (oo)
          \       (oo)                     /------\/
           \-------\/                     /|  |/  |
            | ==$ ||                     / |  [) ||
            ||----||                    *  ||----||
                                           
     Old "One Arm" belonged           This cow was given to
       to Ceasar's Palace           Hugh Hefner for his Birthday


                  (___)               (__)      (__)
                  ( O )               (oo)      (oo)
           /-------\ /                 \/--------\/
          / |     ||V                   |        |
         *  ||----||                    ||------||
                                          
  The cyclops that Jason and         This cow lived with
the Argonauts met had this cow          Dr. Doolittle


             (__)                   (__)
             [##]                   (@o)
      /-------\/             /-------\/              /-------  (__)
     / |     ||             / |     ||              / |     || (oo)
    *  ||----||            *  ||----||             *  ||----|---\/
                                                  
 This cow belonged      This cow lived with      This cow belonged to
  to Flash Gordon       the Little Rascals       the Headless Horseman


                    (____)             (____)                           (____)
                    (oo  )                (o  o)                        ( O O)
         /-----------\  /          /-----\    /----          /-----------\  /
        / ||       |  \/          / |   |  \/   |           / ||       |  \/
       /  ||       ||||           \ |  |      | | |        /  ||       ||||
      *   ||||-----||||            *| | |-----| | |       *   ||||-----||||
          /\/\     /\/\             /\ /\     /\ /\                
     This cow belonged         This was Salvatore      No one was sure whether
      to Pablo Picasso        Dali's favorite cow    M.C. Escher's cow had four
                                                           legs or eight


               O__O                             \_|_/
               (oo)                             (oo)
        /-------\/                       /-------\/
       / |     ||                       / |     ||
      *  ||----||                      *  ||----||
                                          
    Cow at Disneyland         Cow visiting the Statue of Liberty



                        (__)                        (__)
                      (oo)                        (--)
             /-------\/                        /-\/-\
           / |     ||                        /|    |\
          *  ||----||                        |    | 
      ============                     |    |
/                                     /----\
                                /    \ \
                     * 
     Cow Hanging Ten at Malibu           Cow sunning at Fort Lauderdale
                                             (What a bod, huh guys?)


               )\               (__)
              /  \              (oo)
        
           Cow swimming at Amityville
(Where Jaws was filmed, for those less educated)


        *                                                 (__)
         \                                                (DD)
          \                                        /-------\/
          |\                                      / |     ||_\_/
        \ | \ (__)                               *  ||----|
        \\|| \(oo)                                      
         \||\ \\/                         Cow chugging brews and staring at
           \||                            sunbathers at Fort Lauderdale
           \\ ||
            \\||
             \||
                                               / / / / / / / / / / /
               \\_                              / / / / / / / / / / / /
                \_                              / / / / / _______   / /
 Cow skiing a Black Diamond at Aspen            / / /    /   |   \  / /
                                                / / /    (__)|      / /
                                                / / /    (oo)|      / /
   ( @@@ )                                        /-------\/ |
    ( @@ )            (------------)             / |     ||_|
       @@  (__)       (  *>COUGH<* )            *  ||----|
        @@ (oo) . . . (  *>COUGH<* )                   
     /--UU--\/        (____________)
    / |    ||                              Cow sheltering from English Weather
   *  ||---||

   (New) Jersey Cow


                       O O                 O O
                        \ \               / /
                         \ \          (__) /
          (__)            \ \         (xx)/
          (DD)             \ +--------+\//
   /-------\/               \|        | /
  / |     ||                 +--------+
 *  ||----||
        
Cow fantasizing about "Riding the Mechanical Bull"
            at Gillies in Texas


         o  o
         |__|             (__)             (__)
         (oo)             (oo)            =(oo)=         oo
  /-------\/       /-------vv       /-------\/
 / |     ||       / |     ||       / |     ||
*  ||----||      *  ||----||      *  ||----||
                                 
 bill bixby        bela lugosi      boris karloff  claude rains
 male relative     cow              cow            cow
 cow
                       x
                   xxxx|xxxx
                xxxxxxx|xxxxxxx
                       |
                      //
                (__) //                        (__)   (__)
                (oo)//                         (oo)===(oo)
         /-------\//                    /-------\/     \/-------\
        / |     |//                    / |     ||       ||     | \
       *  ||----|                     *  ||----||       ||----||  *
                                                    
     Julie Andrews Cow                         Siamese cows


                            o        o             (__)    
                             \      /              (oo)   /
                              \    /           _____\/___/
             (__)              \__/           /  /\ / /
             (oo)       _______(oo)            /  * /
    /---------\/       /|  ___  \/             / ___/
   / | x=a(b)||       / | {   }||         *----/\
  *  ||------||      *  ||{___}||             /  \
                    ||-----||            /   /
                                            

    Mathematical        Television      This cow does Disco
        Cow                 Cow        (That's what comes of
   (developer of        (Cow-thode      snorting cow-caine)
     cow-culus)          Ray Tube)

            o
            | [---]
            |   |
            |   |                              |------========|
       /----|---|\                             | **** |=======|
      /___/___\___\                         o  | **** |=======|
      |            |                     ___|  |==============|
      |           |                ___  {(__)} |==============|
      \-----------/             [](   )={(oo)} |==============|
       \  \   /  /             /---===--{ \/ } |
    -----------------         / | NASA  |====  |
    |               |        *  ||------||-----
    -----------------           ||      |      |
      /    /  \   \                         |
     /     ----    \
                          This cow jumped over the Moon


                (__)
               ([][])            "I have this recurring dream
               __\/_--U              about golden arches."..  (__)
              /\    \__                                   :..("")
             /\\\  /  /                         //\  ____\_____\/ //
            /----/__/\ /\                     // \\/     \___ / //
                \\\____/--\--                 // /-/__________/ //
                 /======   \/            =======/==============//
              *_/ /    \   /              //  /              \\
                 /      \                //                   \\

                     Psycowlogist and patient


                                               (___)
          \\   (__)                    (o o)
           \\\ (oo)                     \ /
        *-----\_______\/\/                    \--O--/
      _______/   ---  \______              // -----\
     --------\   \S/  /\_____              \\/_{} /==V===[]
               \______/                        \_____\\//
                                                \__/
   It's a bird...                               //\\         The Boss
    It's a plane...                             //  \\   (Bruce Holstien)
                                                //   //
                                                    


                                          ==================
 _____________________________            H                H
 |             |-------------|            H     (__)       H
 |             |   ________  |            H     (oo)       H       __
 |   COWNTY    |  | (|__|) | |            H    / \/ \      H     /    \
 |    JAIL     |  |  |oo|  | |            H   | |  | |     H    | STOP |
 |             |  |__|\/|__| |            H   D===b=-----  H     \ __ /
 |             | o           |            HH       ||
 |             |            |            H                H       ||
 |             | ]           |            H                H       ||
 |             |             |            H                H       ||
 |_____________|_____________|            H                H       ||
                                               
 Some cows get in trouble...                 Cattle Guard


     (  (    )
   ( (     )   )
   ( (         )
  (           / )
 ( ( \\       )
     ( |  // )
       |   |    (__)
       |   |    (oo)                   (__)
       |   | ----\/              ______(oo)_____
       |   |    ||              ( _)_______(__) )
     **|   | ---||                \ __________/
    ``'---------
        Cow Hide                     Cow Pie


                   \  |  /         ___________
    ____________  \ \_# /         |  ___      |       _________
   |            |  \  #/          | |   |     |      | = = = = |
   | |   |   |  |   \\#           | |`v'|     |      |         |
   |            |    \#  //       |  --- ___  |      | |  || | |
   | |   |   |  |     #_//        |     |   | |      |         |
   |            |  \\ #_/_______  |     |   | |      | |  || | |
   | |   |   |  |   \\# /_____/ \ |      ---  |      |         |
   |            |    \# |+ ++|  | |  || |      | |  || | |
   |            |    \# |+ ++|  | |  || |      | |  || | |
|    () |#| H  |_ ||  | |||| | ||         |
   |    ( ||| ) |     #     |  | |||| | |      | ||||||| |
   ________/  /_____ |  | |||| | |      | ||||||| |
        `v'-                            | ||||||| |
         || |`.      (__)    (__)                          ( )
                     (oo)    (oo)                       /---V
              /-------\/      \/ --------\             * |  |
             / |     ||        ||_______| \
            *  ||W---||        ||      ||  *
                                 

                        "Cow Town"


              \ (__)                       (__)
              \\(oo)                       (\/)
         /-----\\\/                 /-------\/
        / |    (##)                / |     ||
       *  ||----||"               *  ||----||
                                     
    This cow plays bagpipes.      Cow from Beijing


         (__)                     (__)                     (__)
         (\/)                     ($$)                     (**)
  /-------\/               /-------\/               /-------\/
 / | 666 ||               / |=====||               / |     ||
*  ||----||              *  ||----||              *  ||----||
                                                 

Satanic cow           This cow is a Yuppie         Cow in love


         (__)                                              (__)
         (oo)                                              (oo)
  /-'''''-\/                            /-------------------\/
 / |'''''||                            / |                 ||
*  ||''''||                           *  ||----------------||
                                                     
 Cow in Argyle                                Stretch Cow
                         *
                      **   **
                 * **  * * *  **
                *   /  /   \ *  *
             \  \ /  \        / /                         (__)
          *  /  / \  \  (__)  \ \                /--------(00)
            /           (00)  / /               / |      |(  )
            \    /-------\/   \ \              *  ||---- ||()
            /   / |     ||    / /                 ||     ||
          \ \  *  ||----||    \ \                      
         /  /             / /            Cow Chewing Marbles
                 Cow in Heat


           (___)
           (o o)
     /------\ /   (__)                         (__)
    /    ____O    (oo)                         (oo)
   |   / /----\----\/                   /-------\/
   /\oo===|  /    ||                   / |     ||
  | ||   *||-----||                  *  OO----OO
  *           
    Cowt in the Act                   low rider cow


         (__)                 \__\                 (__)
         (oo)             o   (oo)                 (oo)
  /-------\/           ____\___\/          *+-------\/
 / |     ||           / |     ||           ||______||
*  ||----||          *  ||----||             ||----||
   OO    OO             OO    OO             OO    OO
Detroit cow          Mustang cow            pickup cow


                 (__)              (__)              \_||_
                 (oo)              (oo)              (*||*)
  /---------------\/           /----\/        /-------\||/
 / |             ||           /    ||        / |     ||
*  ||------------||        *-||----||       *  ||----||
   OO            OO          OO    OO          OO    }{
      li-moo-cow          fastback cow      teenager's cow


         ____
        (____)
                               .xxxx.
         (__)                  '(oo)`
         (oo)            /-----'-\/ `
  /-------\/            / |    |============>
 / |     ||            *  ||----| ()
*  ||----||                   
                    Moo-ammar Cowdafi
   holy cow            armed and dangerous


         (___)             (___)
         (o o)             (o o)
  /-------\ /       /-------\ /
 / |     ||O       / |  O ||O
*  ||,---||       *  ||,---||
                     
    A Bull       A-bomb-in-a-bull     No-bull


           (---)
           (   )
          /-----\                          (___)
          |     |                          (o o)
          |  |  |                   (-----) \ /
          |  |  |                  /  / \    O
          |  *  |                 *  | O |
                                 -----
          Coward                  Phone Bull


                  __________________________
         }__{    / Send YOUR cow pictures to \
         (00)   ( ewtileni@pucc.Princeton.EDU )
  :****** \/ ==='\___________________________/'
 : #     ##
   ##****##
   ""    ""


 |    |                              |    |           *
 |    |            (__)              |    |            \       (__)
 |    |            (oo)              |    |             \      (oo)
 |    |     /-------\/               |    |          -----------\/--
 |    |    / |     ||                |    |          ----|      |---
 |    |   *  ||----||                |    |              --------
 |    \_____________             |    \_________________
 |     _________________             |     _________________
 |    /                              |    /
 |    |                              |    |
 |    |                              |    |
 |    |                              |    |
 |    |                              |    |
 |    |                              |    |
 |    |                              |    |
 |    |                              |    |
/      \                            /      \

Cow perched on a tree.              Cow attempting to fly off tree.


 |    |
 |    |
 |    |
 |    |
 |    |
 |    \_________________
 |     _________________
 |    /
 |    |
 |    |
 |    |
 |    |
 |    |
 |    |                                (__)
 |    |                      *---------(..)
/      \                        ----\/

Cow that has failed miserably in the attempt.


  .            /\         .       .        :                (__)
        .     /  \      .          .       :                (xx)
             /    \   .        .    *      :         __------\/
            /      \              *        :        * ||____||
            | (__) |   .    .   **         :         / |    |\
     .     /| (oo) |\           **         :
          / | /\/\ | \   .     . *         :         Hamburger
      .  /  |=|==|=|  \     .      *       :
     . /    | |  | |    \  .               :
      / USA | || |NASA \     .           :       *        (__)
     |______|    |______|       .        :        \       (oo)
    .       (__||__)     .   .             :         \-------\/
       .    /_\  /_\  .     .    .         :        8-|     ||
            !!!  !!!                       :          ||----||
                                           :              
  The cow that jumped over the moon.       :         Flying Cow


                          ...---...
                       ../  / | \  \..
                     ./ /  /  |  \  \ \.
                    /  /   /  |  \   \  \
                   /  /   /   |   \   \  \
                   
                   \          |          /
                    \         |         /
                     \        |        /
                      \       |       /
                       \      |      /
                        \     |     /
                         \    |    /
                          \   |   /
                           \  |  /
                            \ | /(__)
                             \|/ (oo)
                          /---++--\/
                         / |  || ||
                        *  ||-++-||
                               

               Cow surviving attack by Red Baron


              ..---..                             (__)
             /       \                            (oo)
             |  RIP  |                     /-------\/
             |       |                    / |     ||
             |       |                   *  ||----||
             |       |                          
             |       |
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////

            Elvis's Cow...      ...Or is it alive and living in tax exile???


                     (__)
                     (oo)
        /---+      +--\/
       / |  |      | ||
      *  ||-+      +-||
                                                *

   David Copperfield's Cow               David Copperfield's other Cow



                                    (__)
                                    (oo)
                             /-------\/
                            / |     ||
                           *  ||----||
                                  
                             (__)  (__)
                             (oo)  (oo)
                      /-------\/    \/-------\
                     / |     || -- ||     | \
                    *  ||----   --       ||  *
                                         
                      (__)                (__)
                      (oo)                (oo)
               /-------\/                  \/-------\
              / |     ||                    ||     | \
             *  ||----||                    ||----||  *
                                            
                 Barnum's Troupe of performing cows



                    (__)                       _--------_
                    (oo)                      |__________|   BIG
             /-------\/                        XXXXXXXXXX    MAC
            / | 007 ||                         __________
           *  ||----||                        |_        _|
                                            --------
       Cow licenced to kill      Enemy Cow after having met previous cow


                                                     (__)
                                                     (oo)
                                                    /'-m
            (__)                                   / '' ` )
            (oo)    o     /| /|/|_                |      /|
           / \/    /    /      _ /                |  |  | |
          /  _\===   ___\_____/___               |_____|_|
      ___|__/ |/\    (___________(_)               //|| ||
     *                                          *  ww ww

            Mrs. O'Leary's Cow                 Cow'nt Dracula


 ____             ____                                |+++++|
|++++|    ___    |++++|                       ____    |+++++|
|++++|   |++ ______________________          |++++|   |+++++|
|++++|   |++/      /( )\           \         |++++|   |+++++|   __
|    |   |+|      |-oo- |           \______  |++++|   |+++++|  |++|
-----(__)--|       \__\/           _(__)_  \ ----------------------------------
 o   ( oo /_______________________| (oo)  \ |         __
 |  _/\_| |  M O O - B U S T E R S|__\/\ /| |        /oo| - Bleaurgh!
 |-|  \\____                         ------  )_    /|  /\
  -|_  \_|-_| 0     _|  *  \/  *
     \  |  __________________________________/
     |  W|  \ \_/ /----------------- \ \_/ /
     / /\ \  \___/                    \___/
    / /  \ \
                                             Who you gonna call...?


        (__)                   (__)                    (__)       (----------)
        (00)                   (-o)                    (--) . . . ( *>YAWN<* )
  /------\/              /------\/               /------\/        (----------)
 /|     ||              /|     ||               /|     ||
* ||----||             * ||----||              * ||----||

Cow w/ Glasses    Flirtatious cow (winking)   Cow after pulling an all-nighter


*        (__)              (__)               (__)               (__)
 \       (oo)              (oo)               (oo)               (oo)
  \-------\/        /-------\/         /-------\/         /-------\/
  /|      |\       / /      \         / \      /         / \      \
 //||----||\\     * //------\\       *   \\--//         *   \\----\\
                                                        
Cow walking         Cow jogging         Same cow        Cow breaking


          (__)
          (oo)                       (__) o       *     (__)
           \/                        (oo)/ "      |     (oo)
       ____| \____            /-------\/(__ o=o=o=|------\/
       ---/   --**           / |       /          |      |
    *____/    |___//        *  ||----||           ||----||
        //--------/                               
       //__                      Cow           Cow pooing
       Cow marching            standing


   Side      Front   Side   back                (___)  Where's all the bulls!
   (__)      (__)    (__)   (__)                (O O)/
   ( oo      (oo)    oo )   (  )              _/\ /\_  
   /\_|      /\/\    |_/\   /  \            \\/   O   \//
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(___)
(  OO
 \_ | - Got some cows that aren't in here?  Add yours to the official
   \O   collection!  Send them to:  ewtileni@pucc.Princeton.EDU


(___)
(  --
 \_ | - G'nite, and thank you for your support.   Zzz z z z z z  z   z
   \O

          Thanks to EVERYONE who contributed COWS!