Author Archives: Peggy Dolgenos

ASCII Cows

 

 

                                            (__)
                                            (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!

Cruzio and the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989

Chris after the Loma Prieta earthquake

Cruzio’s founder Chris Neklason reading a post-earthquake newspaper. The headlined death toll was more than twice the true number

Cruzio became a company just months before the Loma Prieta quake hit Santa Cruz in 1989.
At that time, there wasn’t much internet to speak of, just connections to email, newsgroups, and some little all-text applications that searched for books and papers on some libraries online.
Cruzio, run out of a spare bedroom in our home on Palm Street, had a few dozen subscribers. They were using Cruzio to communicate with the small number of other people who were online back then. Cruzio’s co-founders Chris Neklason and I had day jobs. It was more a hobby than a business.

All Shook Up

When the ground shook, Chris and I were at work at a local software company called The Santa Cruz Operation, or SCO.  Chris was on the second floor. His office chair slid around the room, an effect he at first enjoyed until the danger of a well-stocked bookshelf above him became obvious. On the first floor of the building, after a few seconds of waiting for the shaking to stop,  I saw my coworker Raven Brewster dive under a desk and followed suit.
Most quakes — the little ones we have from time to time — last just a few scary seconds. But this was a big one. We crawled out from our under desks after the long seconds of rocking and rolling passed — in all around 15 seconds.
Hundreds of computer manuals had tumbled off shelves. Stuff was all over the floor. The power was out. All the employees slowly made their way to the parking lot.

Eerie Scene

We looked out from our spot on Mission Street and saw smoke rising from a couple of places downtown. It was silent, eerily so. Cars weren’t moving, everyone had pulled over. Sirens weren’t wailing, at least not at first. Just silence and smoke.
We worried about downed power cables, about the potential for fires from ruptured gas lines — clearly there were already some of those. We couldn’t work, that was for sure. Our managers sent us home.
For Chris and me, home was 317 Palm Street and Cruzio (such as it was) ran in the spare bedroom upstairs.

A Delicious Post-Quake Dinner

After ensuring the gas was off and checking the house for damage, we sat down. No power, certainly not for a long time. We checked the freezer. We’d had a party a few days earlier, and had half a quart of vodka and a gallon of ice cream. We decided it was wise to consume those immediately.
Our families in Sacramento and New York were watching news reports that at first estimated hundreds of deaths and showed San Francisco on fire, Joe DiMaggio waiting on line for water. They learned that Santa Cruz was the epicenter of the disaster — surely we would have even more deaths and destruction! And with power out, little news was getting through. Phone service was spotty. They were relieved to finally hear from us.

Our Little Venture — the Internet — Turned Out to be Vital

Like the rest of our community, Cruzio was affected by the earthquake. Our server was fine but we had no electricity to run it. We ran completely on telephone lines at that time, and the phones were jammed and sporadic.
At first we thought, well, no one around here has electricity anyway, who will want internet?
But we learned otherwise.
In an emergency, communication becomes even more vital than normal. Most people in 1989 didn’t have the ability to get online, but those who did used it as soon as they could, and urgently. We got Cruzio back up and running within three days.
And we started preparing to do better in the next outage.
Realizing that Cruzio provides a lifeline service, we made backups and redundancy — power, telecommunication — a priority from 1989 on. We’ve stayed up all night many times when necessary. We’ve answered calls in heavy rainstorms or when fires were threatening, and rushed to our facilities in the mountains, where it’s even more cold and dark and remote than you can imagine.
If this sounds like the old Post Office motto, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” that makes sense. Like the post office once was, today internet service is a vital way that people communicate. And with the earthquake as our early crucible, we aim to keep our service up and running as long as we can.

Remember the Cruzio Baby?

Cruzio's family in 1997

1997: Cruzio kept the family in tie-dye in the early years

Why are Those Kids on the Counter?

When Chris and Peggy started up Cruzio as a real business, there was an unexpected benefit: they got to bring their babies to work every day.

From infancy, the kids were extremely popular with staff and customers. People cooed and smiled at them, and even sometimes held them while a parent typed on a keyboard or got files from a drawer.

These babies did not tolerate playpens — when placed in a playpen, they’d simply stand up, hold the side, cry, and try to escape. Nothing makes a parent as nervous as noticing a playpen about to tip over.

Mom in the Playpen

So Cruzio gave away the company playpen and set up a fence around Peggy’s desk, essentially making a giant playpen with desk, chair, mom, and baby inside. Peggy often answered tech support email and calls in the makeshift playpen,  baby on her lap. Or both would work on the floor: baby finding something acceptable to chew on, Mom getting account paperwork in order.

Cruzio staff at the time — pioneers of the internet — John, Deana, and Judy, would sometimes take the baby out to local coffee shops to give the exhausted parents a chance to get a little work done. At the coffee shops more oohing and ahhing would occur. The Cruzio kids were known throughout the neighborhood before they could even walk.

The babies were sort of Cruzio’s mascots — along with the Cruzio Kitty, of course. As they grew up, all three kids were often at the office. Even during their surly teen years, the kids took advantage of the extremely fast internet Cruzio always has at our headquarters and often hung out, developing a fondness for obscure anime and child-friendly internet games like Neopets and Club Penguin.

Those Funny Things Kids Say

And in recognition of their place in the Cruzio business, at the bottom of every newsletter — despite their eye rolls — we always put quotes from the Cruzio kids. They are all grown now — the oldest is 27! — so they don’t say such silly things any more. But we kept lots of notes and we post quotes from the early years of Cruzio and the family. You’ll see an example at the bottom of this newsletter (all past newsletters are in our archive).

Running your own business is hard. Last week we described the awful racket of modems and crying babies in the little house where the family lived with multiple modems before Cruzio moved to a real office at 903 Pacific Avenue. Stage two was bringing the babies to the downtown office on the third floor. And stage three saw Cruzio hiring some wonderful staff members (looking at you, Mark!) who allowed Peggy and Chris to take a vacation after about 10 years without one.

(By the way, you can’t see her, but the third kid is in the picture: another baby was on the way.)

Saving the Planet

This week there are climate actions all over the world,  including locally.

Folks at Cruzio live and work locally — in a coastal area. Our office is near a river which flooded its banks just two years ago. We’ve watched fires take down infrastructure around our mountain facilities, and of course the fire disaster news from other parts of California serves as a warning to people in Santa Cruz County. It could happen here, too.

Cruzio has always been mindful of the environment. The internet is a way to travel by moving data, not cars.

Green Building

When Cruzio refurbished our building with our partners at Ecology Action, we followed strict environmental guidelines and achieved LEED Gold certification. We had to pay attention at every stage of construction: we reused everything we could from the previous incarnation of the building as a newspaper publishing plant. We salvaged old lumber and architectural details. When we couldn’t reuse, we put in items made from recycled materials. Or failing that, items made from natural materials like sea grass or flax seed oil. We put in openable windows so that air could naturally flow, and floor-to-ceiling interior windows so light could flow, too. The result? A work environment that’s both pleasant to look at and easy to breathe in.

Green Business

We set a goal when we opened our coworking space and started building our fiber network: 3,000 cars off the road. With fast internet, people can work from home. With great internet and a shared facility, local people — including Cruzio employees — can cowork in a professional environment without going over the hill or spending their workday under low ceilings and inefficient lights. That’s good for our lives — less stressful, less time spent commuting — and better for the planet.

And we’ve always avoided waste by sending electronic, not paper, bills. It took a while for once-ubiquitous old windowed envelopes and fax machines to go out of fashion, but many offices, like ours, use the internet to go nearly paperless.

Participating in Bigger Efforts

But let’s face it, there is much, much more that we need to do.

We use electricity. How is that generated? We were early supporters of Monterey Bay Community Power, in hopes that would spur innovation and increased use of renewable energy.

Our employees and customers often drive to downtown Santa Cruz. How can we further reduce hours on the road? We’re supporting local efforts to create more workforce housing close to businesses like ours.

And some issues are so large we barely have a voice. But we encourage everyone to stay aware and to advocate for the right thing when given the opportunity.

All this is a lead-up to the events that are happening this week. Check out the speech by teen environmentalist Greta Thunberg and consider participating in local and national actions.

Cruzio Met the Aggressive Squirrel

Emily the squirrel in a box

Emily, just prior to her notorious escape

Cruzio has a small office which happens to be next door to the grapefruit tree where a local squirrel became famous.

Emily’s Story, in a Nutshell

The squirrel was abandoned as a kitten, then raised by hand by a kindly human who named her Emily. But this July, Emily’s onset of maternity (which honestly can be overwhelming) combined with her lack of fear of humans and possibly some innate character flaw caused her to go psycho on passersby.

After several unnervingly hostile staredowns and biting incidents, people alerted the fire department to the squirrel.

The fire fighters and a brave animal rescuer removed Emily and her three small babies from the grapefruit tree. In a sad echo of her own early orphanhood, Emily then abandoned her kittens as she chewed through a plastic box and fled. It’s reported that she may have been seen, post-escape, in Live Oak. (But how can people tell it’s her, really?)

This is all documented in local and national news stories. Here’s a great video of the incident.

Cruzio’s Experience with Emily

Cruzio, being nearby, has additional exclusive information and footage of this squirrel prior to her arrest and escape.

We had noticed an odd squirrel in the maple tree outside our office, just about 30 feet from the site of her eventual capture.

In early spring, we saw the squirrel chewing on something strange. Not a nut. Not a scrap of food. On closer examination, it turned out to be a cigarette lighter.

Emily, the video

Emily, spotted near her grapefruit tree a few months before the famous incident

Okay, that’s weird. Another day, we went outside and noticed our 3-foot-high avocado plant had been ripped out of its planter. The foliage had been torn off and thrown several feet away and the pit from which it rooted was chittered into hundreds of pieces strewn around our porch — as if a tiny wood chipper had gone at it.

At first we thought it was a human vandal but who would chip an avocado pit into literally hundreds of small pieces? Not a human and not even a normal squirrel.

A squirrel who’d gone bananas, that’s who.

Later, when the squirrel hostilely stared down passersby and even bit several people, the word was that she was just protecting her babies. That may be so. But in our experience, she was already pretty nutty.

Takeaways:

  • Squirrels are wild animals. Changing their ways can be hazardous.
  • Also, don’t feed squirrels. One of the attacks happened when a young man tried to feed Emily a potato chip.
  • Don’t leave your young avocado plants outside…

Squirrels Were Once Beloved Pets

Colonial girl with squirrel

To be fair to squirrels, humans often have a hand in their weird behavior. Let’s go over some of their history in the USA.

Colonial Squirrels: Beloved Pets

Colonial Americans lived among many wild animals and tamed both deer and squirrels for pets. Even Ben Franklin, living in England just prior to the Revolutionary War, felt he could best show his gratitude to his host family by having his wife ship some American grey squirrels to them as pets. The squirrels were a hit. One of them was particularly beloved, and when it was killed by a dog in 1772 Franklin wrote a sad ode in its honor.

“…Daily wert thou fed with the choicest Viands
By the fair Hand
Of an indulgent Mistress.
But, discontented, thou wouldst have more freedom.
Too soon, alas! didst thou obtain it…”

Tame squirrel enthusiasm waned, however, as sharp claws and teeth, plus a tendency to steal food and bury it all over the house, revealed squirrels as less than desirable pets.

And don’t get any ideas. Today, it’s illegal to have a squirrel as a pet in the State of California.

Squirrels and Technology: a Bad Combination

Cruzio has another objection to squirrels: they like to chew on fiberoptic cables. Their teeth grow rapidly and they must chew to keep the teeth short and sharp. As bad as landslides and storms are for telecommunications infrastructure, squirrels give those trials a run for their money. Squirrels have gnawed outage-causing cuts into fiber cables in Santa Cruz several times in the last decade. It’s one reason that Cruzio has to have doubly- and triply-redundant connections.

(Other animals, like rabbits and rats, also chew. Why do communications companies focus on squirrels? Because they climb utility poles, so cables hung on poles are susceptible. That’s one reason Cruzio likes to build underground when we can!)

Remember Noisy Modems? Imagine a House Full of ‘Em

Chris and baby Jake

Chris and Jake in 1993, when modems filled the family garage.

More Memories from our 30-year History

In the late 1980s and 1990s, when Cruzio’s founders started offering dial-up connections, people connected to us over phone lines.

It seems primitive today, and jury-rigged. It was! We were using the tools available to us — and luckily the breakup of Ma Bell had freed people to use the infrastructure as we pleased. Fax machines, voice mail, and the internet resulted.

(Telecom monopolies have been reassembling in the 2000s, like some sort of Death Star, but that’s another topic…)

Sharing a phone line with the internet was kind of a drag, because when you connected to the internet you couldn’t make a phone call on the same line. And people used to use their landline telephones a lot more, since many didn’t have the internet and nobody had smart phones.

Lots of problems ensued, mostly intergenerational: older people got furious because the phone was busy for hours and hours while a kid in the house was playing a multiuser game on the computer. Even then, the internet was a huge time suck.

What if You Were the ISP?

In the Cruzio family household, founders Chris and Peggy had it worse than most because their house was the site of several modem servers which made loud modem noises all day and night. Every time a customer connected to Cruzio, the servers would screech and crackle. The equipment was in the attached garage but could be heard throughout most of their small house.

Boing, boing, boing. Crrrrrrr. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Add to this the alarms Chris set to go off whenever equipment faltered. Loud shrieks rang through the little house, waking everyone in the family as Chris valiantly rushed to repair whatever had gone wrong.

Cruzio’s founders knew from the start that the internet is a 24/7 responsibility 365 days a year. People rely on it. And when you host it in your house, you’re going to notice it. All night long.

Things got even worse after the Cruzio babies were born. Any problem with the internet service was immediately followed by a cascade of sound effects: the alarm shrieking, Mom and Dad yelling expletives, babies wailing.

That’s how you ran a startup ISP in 1992.

It’s Different Now

Luckily, Cruzio — maybe because of the valiant efforts — attracted enough customers to become a real business. When Cruzio moved to a downtown office building in 1994, great joy, and much more sleep, ensued.

And our world in 2019 — with its wifi and blue tooth, phones that play movies and fit in our pockets — looks very different now. The babies are grown up. But Cruzio still answers alarms any time there’s a problem with our internet service, any time of day or night.

Mid-County Fiber Opposed by Big Telecom

map of EASC project
Many of our local government administrators and elected officials have expressed support from Cruzio’s big goal: to make sure all of Santa Cruz County has world class internet at a reasonable price.
Cruzio is trying to push that goal forward. Here’s an open letter to our representatives with the latest news. Please read it and share!
Dear Representative,
Thank you again for supporting Equal Access Santa Cruz, Cruzio’s latest effort to get low cost, fast internet to the under-served parts of your constituency.
As you know, we’re dealing with a scattershot situation where good internet is concerned. Some parts of your district have high speed broadband, others don’t.
The difference is usually that the poorly served areas are rural or low income or both.
Both issues — sparse population and economics — are serious problems and Cruzio is addressing them in a couple of ways:
  1. We’ve created a high-speed fixed wireless network that can extend to remote areas, and we’ve worked with communities and government entities to create economically viable ways to deliver service. However, companies cannot survive on a small, widely dispersed customer base. Cruzio’s competitiveness in more urban areas allows us to survive.
  2. As Cruzio expands our fiber network, we‘ve developed an expertise in serving low income communities, including workforce housing and mobile home parks. Equal Access Santa Cruz is just such a project. We’ve identified underserved urban areas and proposed a remedy.
It comes back to our belief that everyone deserves good internet. Everyone got access to electricity and telephone service when those utilities were established, but the telecommunications industry has been mostly deregulated. Now large national companies are merely picking off the more profitable neighborhoods while harder to reach, lower-income areas suffer.
We need to change that situation. As you know, Cruzio applied for a grant to serve several mobile home parks — and hundreds of low income residents — to address it. We appreciate that you have expressed support for our efforts.
Recently, we were informed that AT&T, Comcast, and Charter are fighting our grant bid based on a technical difference between areas shown on California’s Broadband Map as unserved and what they say the grant guidelines require. This technicality may well deprive hundreds of people from their ability to live like modern people in a modern economy.
If your constituents are deprived reasonably priced, competitive access to good internet, their lives and the economic health of our region will suffer.
This illustrates the damage that highly litigious, lobbyist-heavy telecommunications companies do when they control both the writing and the enforcement of California programs.
Cruzio and our customers, like everyone else in California, pays communications taxes to support rural service. This money goes almost exclusively to AT&T. AT&T, in turn, is taking the money while abandoning the services that reach rural residents. In other words, while being paid to serve rural residents, AT&T is removing the only reasonable service they have.
Let’s disrupt this situation. Let’s not get knocked out by the first technicality. Cruzio will build infrastructure to areas that aren’t currently well served, and we’ll maintain a competitive environment that makes sure local residents get high speeds, low cost, and modern upgrades as they are necessary.
Thanks for your support!

Women with Large Bra Sizes Spend More Money, and Other Strange Correlations

illustration of a thinking woman

 

What the Internet Is Doing with Your Data, Part II

As we mentioned last month. information about all of us is being collected and resold constantly by some of the largest corporations in the world. Our preferences, likes, and interests are being logged and examined for statistical correlations.

This isn’t entirely new. In the past, some patterns were predictable, too. If you lived in Chicago, you probably shopped mostly at stores in Chicago. If you bought hamburger meat, you might go to the ketchup aisle next. But now we have much more sophisticated tracking.

(By the way, not all internet companies gather and sell your data. Cruzio does not.)

New Tools are More Powerful Than Ever

Powerful data-crunching computers and artificial intelligence (AI) make it possible to store and analyze a lot more data and to make a lot more connections over a broad swath of the population. Social media and phone apps supply these powerhouses with the data they need. (What data do they collect? See last month’s newsletter.)

Market research companies use something called Predictive Analytics. One firm explains:

“Predictive analytics is the use of data, statistical algorithms and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data. The goal is to go beyond knowing what has happened to providing a best assessment of what will happen in the future.” 

They go on:

“An analyst performs a regression analysis to spot strength of correlations between specific customer variables with the purchase of a particular product; they can then use the “regression coefficients” (i.e. the degree to which each variable affects the purchase behavior) and create a score for likelihood of future purchases.”

In other words, if we know what you did before, we can make a good guess at what you’ll do next.

Can Predictive Analysis be a Good Thing?

We’ve mentioned before that there’s a positive aspect to having your data analyzed and your behavior predicted. Companies can basically lay a smooth path before you, so that you are as comfortable in the vast online world as you are among friends.

But there are obvious drawbacks, too: giving people more and more of what they seem to like exaggerates the differences among us, putting us into silos of our own personalities. If you are elderly, you won’t see ads for baby food. Young people won’t get ads for arthritis. Politically, siloing has the effect of polarizing us as each person sees only what they already believe.

Some examples of predictive analytics are pretty impressive. For example, a Target customer was shown ads for products of interest to pregnant women before she knew she was pregnant. That’s amazing. The store was trying to be helpful, but that level of help might be unwanted, or even dangerous.

Some Funny Correlations

Other “insights” are bizarre. Scientific American captured a number of them. A few:

Predictive analysis is often wrong. Even at Cruzio, we’ve experienced examples: One of our programmers has been mis-identified as a dentist and can’t escape the flood of ads for dental seminars. Another, who’s white, has been categorized as African-American. These make us chuckle; we seem to be hidden in plain sight, somehow winning the game.

But as data collection and analysis matures, it’s likely mistakes will diminish and more and more will be known about all of us. The small bargains that we accept every day — I’m alright letting my weather app know my location, I’m alright letting Facebook look at my email contact list — add up as data-mining companies purchase information from the vast number of apps, merge the data, package it and sell it. So our “identities” will follow us everywhere.

Back in the Day, the Browser was Netscape

Cruzio was one of the first companies in the country to offer internet to private citizens. We used that early internet for a variety of things which would look ridiculously old-fashioned now, but back then were cutting edge. In 1993 Cruzio had only a few hundred subscribers — it was a pretty obscure hobby for a small group of (rather nerdy) people.

But that would soon change.

The internet wasn’t people-friendly until web browsers provided easier access. Mosaic, an early graphical browser invented at the University of Illinois, began to catch on in 1992. It was so popular that one of its student authors, Marc Andreesen, founded Netscape after he graduated. Netscape built on the Mosaic model, but was sold commercially, had private investment, and quickly outsped its predecessor. And many people local to Santa Cruz helped build it and use it.

Look how boring Mosaic’s content was in 1993. That was about to change:

Early Mosaic Page

Mosaic, pre-Netscape boom

Why did we all take to Netscape?

Removing the scientific notations and jargon from tools helped make the internet popular.

In fact it’s gotten easier and easier over the decades since. Remember having to type http://www in front of everything? WWW stood for world wide web. We typed it every time. But where else were you going with your web browser?

Cruzio loved the streamlining. It was the whole reason, really, for Cruzio’s existence. Founders Chris Neklason and Peggy Dolgenos were computer engineers at SCO, a local Unix software company. Cruzio was their side gig. Their vision was to make this powerful thing, the internet, accessible to regular people. And better tools like Netscape made the internet easier to provide.

As the better web browser got popular, more people were able to find web pages, so more web pages were created. That meant there was more for the browser to find, so the browser became more useful. It was an upward spiral.

When Netscape was released, Cruzio’s customer base started growing exponentially — doubling every few months. What had been a smallish community of local tech employees from HP or Borland, who wanted home email as well, grew to include many more people.

Of course, lots of kids pushed their parents to Cruzio’s doors. Some of the kids were under ten years old! And many went on to work in the tech industry. Probably their children, in turn, show them how to use phone apps today.

Netscape in 1996

Netscape in 1996 — getting more interesting

Santa Cruz was on it

Cruzio got the internet to people’s homes and offices. But a lot of people in Santa Cruz were working on the technology that was feeding our growth.

More local connections: SCO, where Cruzio’s founders worked, was the first company to include a graphical web browser in its operating system. Lloyd Tabb, a talented engineer/entrepreneur who’s started several businesses in Santa Cruz, was an early employees at Netscape. And Netscape tapped UCSC for talent: Michael Lopp was an early manager after graduating from UCSC. James Clark was a former UCSC teacher.

What happened to Netscape?

As Michael Lopp writes on his LinkedIn page, “Microsoft ate us.”

We built it. We can fix it.

Sometimes, when the state of the internet looks grim (spam, privacy issues, fake news) we look back at that giddy era, and remember how much Santa Cruz contributed to the rise of the internet. And we think, well, there’s still Santa Cruz. Maybe we’ll help solve the problems.