Many thanks to our Santa Cruz Community for joining us at a big 30th Anniversary party! And here’s to 30 more.
Category Archives: Cruzio Blog
Evacuated? Cruzio Is Supplying Free WiFi
For folks who’ve been displaced and need to connect to the internet, Cruzio has set up several public wifi spots outdoors which you can access in your car or while social distancing. This internet is very fast and it’s free of charge. There’s no password.
We have many locations around the county. Some of our drive-ins are for students and their families — if that applies to you, contact your school district for info — but the general public can use the following locations to access the internet:
Abbot Square
Downtown Library Parking Lot
Watsonville Plaza
“As a part of the community and provider of a crucial resource, we are compelled to help in times of crisis however we can. It wasn’t lost on us when schools announced the start of homeschooling that many students would face the burden of broadband access inequality. That’s when we started looking for parking lots to set up drive-in hotspots – spots where folks could access a reliable connection while social distancing in their cars. The need was realized again with the fires and these have become a public utility in an emergency”
We’ve been very active setting up school parking lots for the school year ahead. The fire delayed us but, hopefully, we’ll be back installing in the next few weeks. If you know of or own any parking lots next to tall buildings that could be viable for free public wifi access, please let us know at cruzio.com/contact.
When the Power is Out
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.
The Great Cruzio Internet Jingle Competition
This year marks our 30th Anniversary, and as we do every year, we’re set to throw a massive party! But this year, as part of our party, we’re hosting something to really celebrate our landmark anniversary.
This year we decided to do something special: we’re hosting a Jingle Competition! We’re looking to find a song that gets stuck in your head forever and makes you think “Man, I could go for some locally owned, net neutral, fiber-optic internet right now.”
Well, we asked and you responded. So here we present our nominees for the new Cruzio Internet Jingle! We invite you to take a listen below and vote for your favorites. And be sure to come by the Open House Extravaganza on Friday November 1st to see who won (and also just to have a great time at another excellent party.)
Here are the nominees:
And please, let us know what your favorites were below, we’d genuinely love to know.
Cruzio Jingle Entries — All the Lyrics
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
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!
Ready to Upgrade to Wireless Pro?
Here at Cruzio, we’re always looking to upgrade our network infrastructure and our members always get moved to the newest service as soon as humanly possible. We use best-of-breed technologies to connect as many people as we possibly can to the best possible broadband. Right now, as AT&T continues to pull back from supporting and maintaining the copper lines, we’re aggressively building out our independent, Net Neutral fiber-wireless network and moving as many of our Velocity ADSL users over to that service as quickly as we can.
If you’re upgrading from Velocity to Cruzio’s locally-owned and -operated, independent, open and Net Neutral network, here are a few things you might want to know.
What’s the new service all about?
For most folks, this is going to mean switching you to our ultra-fast high-speed wireless service, Wireless Pro. We call it Pro because it’s professional-grade — perfect for connected homes, home businesses or small to mid-sized businesses of all kinds. And our new low price means anyone can afford it.
How’s this going to work?
First step: a site survey. Site surveys come with no commitment or cost, and typically only take 20-30 minutes for our friendly, professional techs to get on the roof of your building to check line-of-sight to one of Cruzio’s many access points and plan any potential wire-runs from the roof to the building. We don’t need you to be present for the survey but if you’d like to be, no problem.
If you happen to be in one of our Certified Buildings (generally an apartment or office building), or if your house had Cruzio Wireless Pro in the past, things are even easier and we can generally skip the survey step.
Once we’ve confirmed eligibility, we’ll schedule the install. For new installations, we’ll mount a small receiver on your roof or eaves and then run wires into your home or office to connect to your wifi gear. If you’ve been living with older copper wiring, you will love the difference our professional work makes. The install will take a few hours and we’ll need a responsible adult there so we can access inside the property. Our techs carry ID and are great with friendly pets.
Is it good for WiFi?
Absolutely. Your internet will be faster. To take advantage of those speeds, you need a good wifi router. If you’re currently renting hardware from Cruzio, we’ll swap that out at no cost to you for a shiny new model. Cruzio recommended hardware is fantastic, and it’ll give you great wifi speeds and coverage and allow our techs to best support your service in the future. If you don’t currently rent hardware from us, now’s a great time to start. Just add one on the upgrade order form and we’ll install it when we upgrade your connection. If you’d prefer to keep your own hardware, no worries. We just can’t provide the same level of troubleshooting and don’t always anticipate performance will match the gear we recommend and deploy.
What about phone?
With mobile phones in all our pockets, we’ve found that many people aren’t using a home phone anymore. If this is you, great. The new service is internet only and blazing fast for all your cloud-based services. If you do still want to keep your phone, the new service doesn’t come with phone included but, don’t worry, we have options. Our recommendation would be to switch to a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone solution. Your new, faster, super-low latency internet service is perfect for VoIP service. There are many VoIP providers, but our research has found that Ooma is one of the best out there. You can grab an Ooma device at Best Buy or Amazon or, if you prefer, you can purchase the unit from Cruzio. It’s not a Cruzio service — Ooma will provide the phone connection and bill you going forward (it’s around $20/mo, much less than a standard landline), but you can get the hardware from Cruzio for $30. Your current phone will plug right into it, and you can keep your current phone number.
1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake Photos
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:
Cruzio Celebrates 30 Years of Geekdom
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 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
(__)
(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
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.
