we’re working, but not many of us are in our building
Equal Access Santa Cruz has a simple goal: to bridge the digital divide and bring true high-speed broadband to every family in the Santa Cruz community, regardless of income level. The project is spearheaded by Cruzio Internet, one of the country’s oldest independent ISPs and a trusted partner in the Santa Cruz community for over 30 years.
When the current health crisis hit our county, our education system was an immediate area of major concern. it was obvious that the need for high-quality broadband had never been higher, and that low-income families would be the hardest hit.
Working with the County Office of Education (COE) and the Pajaro Valley School District (PVUSD) Cruzio quickly developed a plan to expand coverage and provide free and subsidized high-speed internet to dozens of low-income families and students.
The program provides families with free internet service including state-of-the-art home wifi for three months and then a heavily-discounted rate thereafter.
“Our priority is to support all students and families with the resources and tools needed for distance learning—especially our most under-served students”, said Jason Borgen, Chief Technology Officer for COE. “Focusing on equity, and doing everything we can to remove the digital divide from Santa Cruz County, the COE, and Cruzio, working together, can truly make a difference here,” he continued.
Demand for the service was overwhelming and clearly there was an opportunity to expand the program and serve many more families. Working closely with COE and PVUSD, Cruzio developed a plan to utilize district-owned properties to distribute wireless internet to many, many more families, students, and teachers. Faced with an urgent situation, Cruzio has relied on our own resources and our excellent connections within our industry. A quick call to one of Cruzio’s trusted technology partners, Aviat Networks, led to a donation of several high-end backhaul radios for use in the project. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to help Cruzio and Santa Cruz broaden the ability to communicate, learn, and continue to advance in life, even in these difficult times”, said Pete Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Aviat Networks.
While we didn’t at first consider outside donations as a possibility, once it was suggested we realized that not just Cruzio management and staff, but also other members of the Santa Cruz County community and the greater technology community recognize the importance of educational opportunity — and equity — for low-income families in our county. This knowledge has inspired us to expand the Equal Access Santa Cruz program and seek out new projects and opportunities that serve these goals.
The Digital Divide is newly revealed and it is creating unequal educational opportunity. As children are barred from libraries, community centers, and even friends’ houses, they need internet in their own homes. EASC has already provided that service to over 50 families and we are poised to serve hundreds more. And we need to act fast to connect as many people as possible as the fall semester begins.
“Our mission has always been the same,” said Chris Frost, Director of Infrastructure & Technology at Cruzio, “to offer affordable, high-quality Internet access to every home, business, and family in Santa Cruz County. Thanks to the support and vision of the community, we’re a step closer to that goal today.”
Yes, we’re open, and we’re staying safe! To be honest, we never really closed, however, we have strongly encouraged all non-essential workers to stay away from the space until the shelter in place order was lifted. We have been diligently working over through the past year to welcome back everybody else, and can’t wait to see all of your wonderful faces!
So what’s different?
We have been following state and local guidelines to ensure everyone’s safety, including limiting entrance points to direct the flow of traffic, no longer permitting food and drink consumption in the common space, and a new check-in system at the front desk that has been designed around sanitization. We also have a strict mask policy we are enforcing seriously. It may take a little time to get used to the changes, but they’re important to create a safe, and great environment at Cruzioworks.
What other steps are you taking?
You’ll see a lot of subtle changes to the coworking space we think you’ll appreciate:
Plexiglass shields for the entire front desk
We upgraded our HVAC filters to the EPA recommended MERV13 filters
Outdoor desk space for 9-5, 24/7, and Office Members to work in
the fresh air, and also for a great space to eat and drink.
Arrows and floor markings indicating which way traffic should
flow down a hallway or how far apart you should stand while waiting.
Automatic hand sanitizer stations for all meeting rooms and other
shared areas.
Helpful signage encouraging safe behavior
Added air purifiers and UV lights to the restrooms
A check-in station at the front desk where you can sanitize and
check for symptoms.
Restrooms are now single-occupancy and there are lids on the
toilets which should be put down after use.
We have reimagined our Atrium space to ensure every desk is spaced 8 to 9 feet apart. Please don’t move these desks! They are spaced to ensure the health and safety of our rad community.
We have reassessed how many people can safely sit in a meeting room together according to county guidelines. Please pay heed to the signage on the doors!
We’re also at a point where we’re ready to take a limited number of new memberships. If you’re looking for a space to work, contact us, we have some great solutions available for you.
Tell me more about this check-in station and floor arrows.
All Cruzioworks members will be required to use the Google Symptom checker at https://landing.google.com/screener/covid19 and sign a clipboard once per day when they first arrive verifying they are symptom-free and haven’t been out of the country in the last two weeks.
To reduce the spread of COVID-19, we are making all doors to the atrium space and workstations ‘exit only’ except for the front door of the lobby. This will help us to ensure everybody checks in and to make sure we can reduce the probability of somebody with symptoms entering the space. We want to stress that while this may be inconvenient, it is truly for the health and safety of everybody at Cruzioworks, the Santa Cruz Community, and beyond.
Can you get into specifics about meeting room capacity? How will this impact my twenty-person model train enthusiast meetings? You know I’m loco for locomotives!
*Sighs* I’m keenly aware of this, choo choo dude. For now, we won’t be having large gatherings, meetings, or events. We ask that you follow occupancy signage for our meeting rooms. The Ross Classroom can safely accommodate 6 people, Edison Meeting Room can hold 1, and Tesla Meeting Room maxes out at 2.
I should probably wear a mask, yeah? I heard you mention that earlier…
Of course, you should! Actually, it’s not in any way a choice. County guidelines require masks indoors, and the recent statewide order requires masks everywhere else. The only time you may remove your mask is if you are in a private office, suite, or meeting room by yourself with the door closed. Per county guidelines, once a guest enters the office you must don your mask. Whether you are working in the corner of the Atrium, or walking back to your meeting room, or even hanging out in your cool private Workstation, a mask is required at all times. Those who do not adhere to these rules will be asked to leave and repeat offenders will risk having their memberships revoked. Sorry, but this is serious folks. If you need a mask, please let us know. We have lovely masks available at the front desk.
I heard you mention food and drinks aren’t allowed in the space either. Can you let me know why??
Until further notice, please avoid eating and drinking in the atrium, including workstations. We have provided outdoor spaces to eat and drink. This is in accordance with our state and local mask policies so as to keep the space as safe as possible. Plus, it’s summer! Go out and get some sun and enjoy the incredible Santa Cruz weather!
Can I still have guests here?
We understand that to run your business, you sometimes need to have guests and clients in the space. All visitors need to check-in at the front desk, follow our entry procedures, and abide by all rules. As usual, you as members are responsible for the behavior of your guests. We’d also strongly encourage you to, whenever possible, meet outside or, better yet, online.
What else can I expect when I enter the building?
We mentioned the check-in station earlier. If you arrive before 9am in the morning, or after 6pm at night because you have a 24/7 membership, please use our check-in and sanitation station on the honor system so we don’t have to bug you later. If you are symptomatic you will be asked to leave and may return 14 days from the onset of symptoms or your encounter with a COVID-positive individual, or following a negative test. We will have digital thermometers on hand if you feel feverish and would like to verify this.
To protect the health of our employees, we request that you maintain at least six feet of distance from Cruzio staff and coworking members whenever possible. And wear your mask!
What should I do if I have a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19?
If you have symptoms or test positive with COVID-19 we ask that you notify us immediately so we can conduct contact-tracing and take further steps. We’d also require that you not return to the workspace for at least 14 days and be symptom and med-free for at least 72 hours, or until you’ve tested negative for COVID-19… What are those symptoms again?
People with these symptoms or combinations of symptoms may have COVID-19:
Cough
Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
Or at least two of these symptoms:
Fever
Chills
Repeated shaking with chills
Muscle pain
Headache
Sore throat
New loss of taste or smell
Back to more practical matters: where’s the printer?
You probably noticed that we moved the printer/copier/fax/scanner. You’ll find it in the very back of the Atrium near the Cruzio Data Center door and Cruzioworks lockers.
How does mail work?
We have fully resumed normal mail delivery. We are no longer on the “opt-in” system we used temporarily during our brief hiatus. If you receive mail at this address you can access your mailbox 24/7. It’s located near the front desk in the main lobby. Please follow arrows on the floor as that hallway is narrow.
How’s Fred doing and when will the Sentinel Cafe reopen?
Fred’s just fine and he’s looking to reopen the cafe, with new health precautions in the coming months. Stay tuned for more information!
What about ventilation? I heard indoor air wasn’t so great…
Glad you asked. We are making sure to open as many windows as we have, turning on fans each day to ensure maximum air circulation, adjusting our thermostats and HVAC units to circulate a larger percentage of outside air, and will be propping doors open when possible. We are also keeping an eye on the science and resources available and will continue to provide whatever safety measures we can. I can’t stress this enough: safety first!
We all need to do our part in making the world a better place. And Cruzio’s part centers around the internet. That’s why we’re joining many other companies to halt all paid advertising on Facebook for the month of July, in a campaign tagged #StopHateforProfit.
Facebook has been allowing people to publish hate speech, inaccuracies, and doctored videos. They’re not unique in that, but the impact is greatest on Facebook and there’s been little effective response from the company. As an early internet provider, Cruzio feels responsible when things go wrong online. We can’t control the internet, but we can try to make it a healthier, more equitable place.
Cruzio urges all our users to be thoughtful when they publish online. We don’t think everyone who works for Facebook or posts on Facebook is culpable, and the platform has many benefits. By joining a boycott, we hope to move their corporate policies in the right direction.
When Cruzio and Ecology Action renovated our downtown Santa Cruz building, we put in a lot of plants and trees. Maybe that’s why a family of ducks has used our sidewalk area as their nesting ground for the last several years.
Cruzio’s keenly observant director of Technology and Infrastructure, Chris Frost, has taken note of the ducks for some time, as have a few other employees. We’re always a bit concerned that the duck family has placed itself in the possible path of so many cars.
But so far, things seem to have gone okay. And they keep returning to their, and our, office building home.
This year, one of our excellent neighbors (and a Cruzioworks alum) was videoed helping the mama duck and her many ducklings make their journey down Pacific Avenue to the San Lorenzo River. This involved some busy street crossings, but our friend John, who is a good guy (a “bro” as he’s called in the video) safely shepherded the little family and by all accounts they made it once again. Phew!
Mama and Papa Mallard were also spotted early in the pandemic shutdown, flying through the empty parking garage on Cedar and Church, enjoying the solitude without people and cars. Was that a pre-duckling romantic interlude?
Sorry to bring this up amid the pandemic, but PG&E has been indicating that there may be power outages this summer, possibly similar to 2019.
To prepare for such outages, Cruzio invested in an enormous new generator in our downtown headquarters. It’s a backup to our existing backup generator, which is also enormous and powerful. And might be necessary — we want to be sure our network will continue to supply you with internet, even when a power outage lasts for days, as happened last year.
So this spring, while Cruzio was locking doors and sending employees to work from home, our system administrators welcomed the new generator. It’s hooked up, tested, and ready to go ahead of summer’s heat.
Now we wish power outages, which seemed so dire, were all we had to worry about.
Last year our heroic team (particularly Ali and Cam) kept nearly every customer running uninterrupted during the power shutdowns. We will do our best to keep it all going if there are shutdowns — major or minor — this year.
Be ready at home, too: we’ll keep our internet powered, but your home devices like computers and wifi won’t stay up unless you have an Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) to plug your equipment into. Last year UPSs and generators were pretty scarce, and very high-priced, during the days-long outages. It’s probably a good idea to make sure you have the backup power you need before anything happens.
It never fails: every crisis brings out the scammers.
What Cruzio, as an ISP, particularly wants to warn you about is the email scammers, who send “phishing” email. They pretend to be your bank, your ISP, your neighbor. They pretend they’re collecting money for charity — which people are more inclined to give in troubled times. They prey on your most shameful secrets and your greediest dreams of undeserved wealth.
When there’s something on your mind, like the fact that you can’t leave your home and go about your normal life, you’re a little more susceptible. Older people, especially, may be home alone and less clued into the vast possibilities of digital deception.
So be on guard, and help your family and friends.
What We’re Seeing
Lately, Cruzio has seen some pretty convincing fakes supposedly coming from… us! The scammers scoop up a Cruzio graphic and pop it atop a serious-sounding message telling you to type your password and personal information into a website.
Don’t.
Don’t type it in unless you’re sure. If you’re not sure the message is from us (or your bank, or your insurance company — even more frequent targets), don’t download files or visit websites. Don’t answer if someone says they have evidence that you looked at a porn site. If they seem to know a password, change it on the real site, not by clicking a link in the email.
(By the way, personal information including passwords has been harvested in various hacking incidents affecting institutions and businesses like the Veteran’s Administration, Target, Equifax, etc. To see if your information is available to scammers on the internet, check haveibeenpwned.com.)
And if an email sounds dire, remember that the more urgent the email sounds, the more likely it’s a scam.
Be especially suspicious of any email that says you need to “verify” your account by typing in information the company should already have or which they shouldn’t need, like your social security number.
Cruzio Gets Phony Sites Down Quickly
For our part, Cruzio is on the lookout, Most phishing schemes are caught before they even get to customers’ mailboxes. Scams that do get through are escalated quickly and our specialized team takes action immediately to report and disable the link. Crooks love to operate on holidays and weekends, so our pager team — who’s on call 24/7 — has been extra busy foiling phishermen during the pandemic.
Because we act quickly to foil the phishing, even if you click on a link, the scammer’s site has almost always been disabled. The longer you wait, the better the chance the scheme’s been axed.
If we think a lot of people have received the phishing email, we put a message on our voice mail (831 459-6301).
Phony Websites Hide on Infected Computers
What websites harbor these devious plots? Generally the host sites themselves are not criminal ones. They’re innocent victims who’ve been fooled by a similar phishing scheme in the past. The scammers crowbar in and put some web pages deep into their otherwise legit website. Once informed, webmasters shut access to those pages down — very quickly.
So often you’ll see, say, a fake Wells Fargo page deep inside a suburban nail salon website. The small business doesn’t even know it’s there, and will remove it as soon as they’re alerted.
More Information
Because the internet is, unfortunately, rife with misinformation and scams, we’ve written a number of blogs over the years to help customers recognize and respond to spam. Some are linked below.
And the Federal Trade Commission maintains a blog where online privacy and security scams are listed.
James, who is Cruzio’s Director of Operations and Business Development, apparently likes cats. He has three real ones and a number of artistic renderings.
When he sent a cute photo of his cat Molly to a company message board, we noticed more felines in the photo than just Molly. There are many cats in this photo. It took us a while to find them all!
How many cats do you see? After you’ve given it your best shot, check for the answer below.
How many cats are in the photo?
Drag your cursor over the white text below to highlight the answer:
We count eight!:
1/ Molly, the real cat 2/ Red cat figure behind her 3/ Creepy bronze cat peeping out from behind laptop 4/ Gold statue cat # 1 on shelf 5/ Gold statue cat # 2 on shelf 6/ Cruzio kitty on sticker on world’s finest electric pencil sharpener (it’s the sharpener against which other sharpeners are measured. It said so on the box.) 7/ Cruzio kitty on laptop screen on Slack 8/ Name on spine of film encyclopedia: Ephraim KATZ (ooooooh!)
Cruzio Internet recently expanded our super-fast, affordable, independent network in Scotts Valley. Homes and offices in the orange-shaded area on the map above now have access to better internet than ever before.
And if you care about Net Neutrality or data privacy you’ll be even more pleased with Cruzio’s service. Check us out, and welcome to our network! Get started!
Cruzio thought we might have less activity during shelter-in-place, but we were wrong.
School kids need more internet
Children who used to access the internet from their school or library don’t have access there any more. So Cruzio has added a considerable number of donated accounts to our work. We’re collaborating with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education (COE) to get internet connections to low-income families who need to get their kids online.
If children can’t access the internet, they may fall behind in school, and we can’t let that happen.
We want to give a big shout out to Jason Borgen from the COE, to the Pajaro Valley School District, to individual schools who’ve contacted us, and to the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz, all of whom have been working hard on this. At Cruzio it’s part of our Equal Access Santa Cruz project. And you’re helping too: by being a customer, you’re making it possible for us to extend a hand to neighbors when they need it.
Internet Drive-Ins
But connecting people one home at a time is slow. And some locations are impossible to serve. So Cruzio is supplying internet to “internet drive-ins” around the county. These are parking lots — underused these days — where people can drive up and use high-speed wifi while safely isolated in their cars.
Not Just Students — Everybody Needs Internet
People working and studying at home all day need a lot more internet. Industry reports show that internet use is up 36% around the country. At the same time, business offices are shuttered.
To the extent that Cruzio’s business customers help offset residential accounts, that’s a difficulty. Cruzio is working hard at improving service while at the same time seeing a drop in income.
At the outset of the virus crisis, we set down our priorities:
1. Keep the network running reliably.
2. Continue to employ and pay all existing staff.
3. Extend service to needy people in the county, especially low-income students.
4. Improve service wherever possible, because everybody needs it more.
It’s certainly challenging to work in current conditions. Costs are up, income is down. We’ve had to change plans from buying a new vehicle to repairing our old one. We’re riding all our equipment hard, traveling from one end of the county to another. Our tech support is answering double the calls they did at this time last year. And they’re doing it from their homes, which is an extra complication.
Our field ops crews have developed “no-touch” installations, where we can hook a house up to our faster network without ever going inside. Sure, we miss meeting you, but it’s a very virus-aware option, and we’re happy to do it for your safety and ours.
That’s on top of the regular gloves, masks, and safe distances we’ve been practicing since the beginning. And our managers have been working hard to set up contact tracing. In case any of our employees falls sick with the virus, we will be able to track anyone that person came into close contact with.
We’re Not Even Holding Doors Open for Each Other We’re thinking of ways to be better at this distancing every day. Chris Frost and James Hackett are our master planners. They have all our crews staying far apart from each other when they have to be at the office — crews are on separate floors of the building, in separate offices, using separate facilities. We’re not even holding the door open for each other. Fresh gloves, surfaces wiped constantly, the whole deal.
The cleaning hasn’t been the hardest part — it’s the isolation. Our crews have always chatted and hung out in the office before leaving for the field and when putting tools away at the end of the day. No one’s complained about the constant wipedowns, but we have had staff mention how much they miss the camaraderie with each other and with customers.
So that’s what it’s like at Cruzio these days. Though we’ll probably all be wearing masks, or waving through a closed window, please know our techs are smiling at you, and saying thanks for being a customer.
PPE in the 1600s. Herbs & salts were stuffed in the beak, and the clothes were coated with wax. Not so different from PPE today, really.
Are we living through a plague?
Medically, no.
A plague, in medical terms, refers to a specific family of illnesses. It’s bacterial, and gets to humans through fleabites. Plague is treatable with antibiotics. It was a terrible scourge for many centuries, but at this point it’s relatively rare.
The novel coronavirus, on the other hand, is not caused by a living organism like a bacterium. Viruses are not alive, and antibiotics don’t kill them. It’s interesting that evolutionary forces work on things that aren’t alive — when they propagate successfully, viruses thrive.
In a non-medical sense we are living through a plague: in plague’s other meaning, as a calamity, a dreadful evil. As in, a plague of locusts, or, to a family member who drinks their coffee too noisily, stop plaguing me.
The Practice of Sheltering Goes Way Back
And though we’re not living through a plague as scientifically defined, we are now practicing measures developed in response to plagues of long, long ago. Though people in the 14th century didn’t know what air was composed of — or if it was composed of anything at all — and had no way of seeing tiny particles like bacteria or viruses, they could tell that the Black Death spread from person to person, ship to shore, house to house. So they made efforts to isolate people, as we’re doing now.
14th century Venetians invented quarantine — our word is taken from an Italian phrase, quaranta giorni, meaning forty days. They suffered much more than we are now: Discover Magazine quotes archaeologists who say that on a quarantine island outside Venice, hundreds of bodies were apparently buried on top of each other in layers, “like lasagna.”
Like modern sufferers, Venetian and other governments had problems telling who was sick in time to sequester them. They didn’t have tests, either. And so, like now, authorities often confined the well with the sick.
As Does Our Lack of Mobility
Halting mobility to stop the spread of a disease, another practice recently (and sporadically, through the centuries) revived from the Renaissance era, is called cordon sanitaire. Perhaps the most famous example is from 1665, when a small village in England called Eyam imposed a travel restriction on itself and probably saved thousands of lives in surrounding areas, though 3/4 of its own population died of the plague.
Their cordon sanitaire was used as a firebreak — a wall preventing disease from marching across a country. Our current “shelter in place” is doing the same thing, county by county but also house by house. By walling ourselves off from contact, each of us is sparing our neighbors from possible infection.
It’s not the plague. But in many ways, we are living with some of the same effects.
Cruzio thought we might have less activity during shelter-in-place, but we were wrong.
