Cruzio/The Internet Store Newsletter - Number 53, February 25, 2002
1. Tech Fair February 27th: fun, informative, inexpensive
2. Buddy Bucks: Thanks for your referrals!
3. Customer and staff holiday food drive wins awards
4. Cruzio appears at local coffeeshops
5. Drop in for a cuppa tea
6. Now offering baseball hats
7. Cruzio Brown Bag Workshop: "DSL & You"
8. When in doubt, reboot!
9. Santa Cruz Digital Arts Festival -- Call For Entries
10. Wet again
11. News feed for DSL customers
12. DSL: Cruzio is here to help, call us!
13. DSL backup logins
14. About This Newsletter
15. How to Reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support)
1. Tech Fair February 27th: fun, informative, inexpensive
Every February, the Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce
enlivens an often grayish month with a Technology Exhibition
and Symposium down at the Cocoanut Grove and the West Coast
Santa Cruz Hotel (hint: it used to be called the Dream Inn.)
For only $7, which face it is the bargain of a lifetime and
really they should raise the prices, you can sit in on
any number of Symposium sessions on topics like:
"Shout it Out: Getting Media Attention"
In which media experts give tips on getting your
organization, invention, or story into the news.
"Look Ma No Wires: The Future of Wireless"
Innovations in the Wireless field -- Ed Colligan,
Founder and COO of Handspring, will be a panelist.
"Quickbooks/Starfish"
How to use features like remote access and job costing.
You can also visit dozens of booths showcasing local technology
businesses. Interesting and a good opportunity to network. Remember
that these classes -- in many cases taught by the same people --
often cost hundreds of dollars. This Wednesday, they cost $7.
At Cruzio's booth you'll be welcome to sit down and enjoy a
cup of organic tea with us. We'll be showing off our Internet
Office family of domain and Web hosting services. Please do
drop by, we love to see our customers.
Information and registration can be found at:
http://www.santacruztechexpo.org
2. Buddy Bucks: Thanks for your referrals!
One of our most popular promotions is called "Buddy Bucks". If you
send in a friend, relation, or even a casual acquaintance with a
recommendation to use our services, tell them to let us know you
sent them. We'll credit your account $10 for each such referral.
By the way, there is no limit to the number of referrals for
which you can get credit and no time limit either. Our appreciation
knows no bounds.
A copy of the Buddy Bucks coupon can be found at:
http://www.cruzio.com/support/specials/buddybucks.html
Or your friend can just get one when signing up.
3. Customer and staff holiday food drive wins awards
Cruzio won two awards from Second Harvest Food Bank for last year's
drive. We won a Platinum "per capita" award in a category that
lets smaller businesses compete with big companies (like Safeway
for example -- how could Cruzio ever give as much food as a giant
grocery chain?) Many thanks to all customers who bought new
services between Thanksgiving and the end of the 2001. We made
a contribution for every sale.
The second award is called The Blue Plate Special, an award for
imaginative community outreach. In this case our imaginator was
our very own GM, Barbara, who invented a program whereby
customers can contribute food in lieu of paying late fees.
Our contributions are still continuing, because hunger never
takes a holiday. Cruzio will still waive late fees if you bring
in three cans of food for our Second Harvest barrel, and we've
got Second Harvest piggy banks on the counters waiting for your
pocket change.
4. Cruzio appears at local coffeeshops
Cruzio staff sightings out in the community: We are coming to a
coffeeshop near you (Ugly Mug in Soquel, the new Coffeetopia
in Boulder Creek and the Net Cafe in Watsonville.) We're
supplying these brewers of beans with Internet access and have
offered to stop in to answer customer questions about the Internet.
Next "Coffee Talk" is at The Ugly Mug in Soquel on Tuesday,
March 5th from 4-6pm. See you there.
5. Drop in for a cuppa tea
We're not only accompanying coffee but we're also serving tea.
If you drop by our office to buy a new service, pay a bill, or
ask a question, you're welcome to help yourself to a comforting
cup of hot tea on the house.
6. Now offering baseball hats
And if the weather stays warm...
Cruzio Baseball Hats with our renowned kitty logo are available for
spring weather at just $10 per hat.
7. Cruzio Brown Bag Workshop: "DSL & You"
Thursday, March 7th from 12-1:30pm at Cruzio
If you've dreamed of faster Internet connections, but haven't yet taken the
plunge into DSL, come get all your questions answered by our DSL experts!
For more information, and to register, please see:
http://www.cruzio.com/support/business/brownbags.html
8. When in doubt, reboot!
Here's one tip that can save you a lot of time: REBOOT. Computer
engineers take years to learn this one but they look like gods when
they do it: 50% of the time it somehow fixes everything. Just turn
your equipment (computer, DSL router, modem, whatever) off. Turn
it off properly, logging out of any programs that are running if
you can. Turn everything off. Turn it all the way off (not just
"restart", but "shut down.") Wait half a minute. Then turn it all
back on. Half the time, any problem you were having will MAGICALLY
DISAPPEAR. Good, now you can charge friends $25 per hour to fix their
computer problems.
9. Santa Cruz Digital Arts Festival -- Call For Entries
The first annual Santa Cruz Digital Arts Festival is now open to
entries from Santa Cruz artists. Send entries of digital media
including video, music, installations, Web, sound, print, games,
theater, and an "undefinable" category to the Web site below.
There's no charge.
For more information, please visit
http://www.santacruzdigitalarts.org
Santa Cruz's first Digital Arts Festival will be held throughout
April 2002. Cruzio and a group of like-minded, creative, committed
individuals are organizing this festival to present artwork created
with new digital technologies. Festival events will be held at
real and virtual venues throughout Santa Cruz County and will be
free or low cost.
10. Wet again
When the weather's wet, phone lines sputter, hiss, and
crackle. You can sometimes hear it when talking on the
phone. Data is more sensitive than voice traffic, and so
your Internet connection may get a bit spotty when the
weather is rainy and even for a few weeks thereafter. Both
regular old modem connections and DSL can be affected.
For advice on how to handle this problem, check:
http://www.cruzio.com/support/info/06.html
11. News feed for DSL customers
Some DSL customers mentioned that since they have extra-fast
connections, they need faster USENET news. Now they have it;
see the Web page below for details.
USENET is a handy resource for those looking for opinions and
discussion on the 'Net. It existed before the World Wide Web
(all that http:// stuff, Netscape, Yahoo ... you know.) It
still exists now, although it's been somewhat eclipsed by the
frillier stuff.
All Cruzio email customers have access to USENET newsgroups at
no extra fee. For your login and password, please visit:
http://www.cruzio.com/support/news/news.html#login
12. DSL: Cruzio is here to help, call us!
Cruzio is one of the top sellers of high-speed DSL connections
in Northern California. How do we compete with huge telephone
companies and national corporations? Here's one way:
If you experience a problem with your DSL connection or with
a DSL-related charge on your bill, even if it's clearly a
circuit or other phone company problem, there's no need to call
the phone company directly and get lost in the mire of departments
and phone trees. Guess what? Cruzio customers don't have to do
that. Just call Cruzio. We will get the ball rolling immediately
with the folks who actually get answers and results. We've got
expertise and connections: take advantage!
For more information on Cruzio DSL, see
http://www.cruzio.com/dsl/
13. DSL backup logins
Unfortunately, DSL service is not perfect. Downtime is rare,
but occasionally Cruzio will have to wait for the telephone
company providing the circuit to fix some outage. That's why
we provide our DSL customers with free dialup accounts. If
there is an outage, you'll be able to dial in with a modem.
DSL is a high-speed service and Cruzio customers get very
dependent on it for their business and personal lives.
Cruzio takes this seriously. If downtime would severely
impact you, help us help you: Be Prepared.
To use your backup dialup connection, you'll need your copy
of your Cruzio Info Sheet with your backup login information.
If you don't have one, call us and we'll fax or mail it to you.
Also get a copy of the dialup (PPP) Setup instructions for your
operating system, available for printout at:
http://members.cruzio.com/~docs/menu.html
You might even practice switching back and forth between dialup
and DSL. If you have a network, get info on how to reset your
router. If you rely on a consultant, ask them to help you write
an action plan to reset the network yourself without needing
to call them. Cruzio Tech Support is here to assist in every
way we can.
14. About This Newsletter
Cruzio doesn't like to waste bandwidth with extra email, but we
sometimes have events and announcements that users need to know
about. This seems like the most efficient way to let people know
what's happening. Hope it's helpful. Please email support@cruzio.com
with any comments or questions. By the way, we would love to have
a regular, predictable schedule for this newsletter...but we simply
do not send it unless there is real news enclosed. Thus the
haphazard datelines.
15. How to Reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support)
To reach the Cruzio Information Center, for online technical and
sales information:
http://www.cruzio.com/support
To dial in to Cruzio, set your software to dial one of the numbers
below (note: we've expanded and joined modem pools, so you may be
using another number. If so, don't worry, it still works just fine).
56k: 459-9408
33.6 kbps and under: 459-6230
To call Cruzio:
459-6301............Use this number to check Cruzio's system status,
pay your Cruzio bill, find out more about our hours and location,
or to reach someone in customer service and technical support.
To send email to Cruzio, use one of these addresses:
support@cruzio.com ......for technical support
office@cruzio.com .......for billing and ordering information
Cruzio's location:
903 Pacific Avenue, Suite 101, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Cruzio's hours:
Sales hours: 10am-6pm, Monday through Friday; 10 am - 2 pm Saturday
Technical support: 10-6 pm, Monday through Friday, 10am - 2pm Saturday
System monitoring, including customer-alerted emergencies, 24 hours
per day, 365 days per year (leap years, 366 days)
Thanks very much from Cruzio:
Chris, Peggy, Julianne, Kathy, Mark, Martin, Georgette,
Tapati, Pedro, Brittany, Alec, Barbara, Stephen, Paul,
Gershom, Phil, Allyson, Laura, Jessi, Alice, Edgar, Alex,
Michael, another Kathy, Erik, and Bhag, as well as our
groovy interns Heather and Ryan (the grownups);
Jake, Annika, and Carly (the kids)
Jake, age 9, has some riddles and a word scramble for Cruzio members:
Q. Why does the Cruzio cat like computers?
A. Because of the mouse
Q. What do computers eat?
A. Chips.
Word scramble (hint: technology-related)
CIELCONIETR
DTBSEAAA
PROCMUET
