It’s been a wild ride these last couple weeks. As I sit here in my bedroom, typing to the rhythm of mellowed out percussion on Death Cab for Cutie’s “Lightness” off the album Transatlanticism, it’s easier to reflect on this journey now that there is some distance between trauma and calm, between past and present.

Leaving our physical office space en masse was surreal, to say the least. But now that I’ve been away for over a week, working out of my room answering billing calls and Cruzioworks emails beneath a canopy of bachelor-esque wall decor, it’s becoming normal. There’s a radical card my dad made me a while ago featuring Rocky and Bullwinkle almost leaping right off the page, gesturing wildly with their arms as if to present the other wall art. There’s a full-sized movie poster for hit anime film Your Name. There’s a really frickin’ cool cardboard standee of Boba Fett, infamous bounty hunter introduced in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (fact check me Brian, but Fett was pretty instrumental in helping the Empire strike back). And every geek token has its place—carefully arrayed to maximize productivity.

Observing Fancy Friday from home.

Inspiration to clean

Working from home offers the same thing owning a virtual reality rig offers: inspiration to clean! Being able to focus on work in a professional office-like environment requires a clean desk, and VR requires two by two meters of tidy floor space. My room has never looked better. But lacking motivation my room quickly becomes as apocalyptic as our current existence. Which brings me to my next point. I can be lazy.

Mostly highs

For the low energy and uninspired, working from home is an incredible thing. There was one day this week when after getting to bed late I hit snooze more times than ever before, and when I finally got up, I had just enough time to walk four feet away to my workstation. I made it to work on time and immediately started answering calls. I groped around on the ground for a breakfast bar until I found something that resembled granola. It’s a lovely existence.

On lunch breaks, I’m able to fire up my gaming computer and play something online with one of my longtime friends. My housemates might be a little confused as to why one moment they hear “Cruzio Billing Department, this is Alex,” and then the next moment they hear “DIE NAZI SCUM! YOU’RE NO MATCH FOR MY COLT .45!”

Work is still work, just subtly different

The most significant change is the unsurprising amount of foot traffic I’m getting now. I had one walk-in yesterday. It was my housemate and he wanted to talk about nerf guns. I had a walk-out. But it was just me going downstairs to tell my housemates I fixed the internet. A large part of this week and last involved meeting the needs of Cruzio’s coworking tenants. The subtle difference is now it’s done via email and all the issues are caused by the crisis our collective conscience wrestles with.

Another one: I was on a conference call with my department and my colleague tells me my sound quality is crackling. I laughed and explained this was probably interference from my decorative steel katana I had been swinging between the wireless headset and the base station. It’s been a wild ride these last couple weeks. ~ Alex

The last couple of weeks have been an utter whirlwind. Providing customer support for our shared coworking space has been a unique challenge. There’s no roadmap for dealing with a crisis like this, so — like billions of citizens around the world — we’ve been figuring it out one day at a time.

This worldwide event sometimes feels like an action movie. We are living through the second most searched-for film on PS4: yes, I am referring to Pandemic.

Taking active and highly visible measures and then communicating those measures to our coworking community has been major in the early stages. Door handles, sink faucets, appliances, and anything frequented by human hands was sanitized twice a day. We have still been operating mostly like normal. Staff’s been taking every precaution, including washing our hands as soon as we set foot in our office. We’ve been taking advice from our community to heart, and did deep cleanings of the restroom walls, particularly around hand dryers.

Our friends at Peachy Kleen made a special visit and professionally cleaned our meeting rooms, the atrium, and every black fabric chair throughout the atrium last Saturday. On Monday I thoroughly wiped down the leather chairs in the Atrium.

Our efforts had two key purposes: to do our part to slow the spread of novel coronavirus to keep our community healthy, and to soothe our tenants in these tense and uncertain times. The optics of witnessing me wiping down a surface were almost as important as the wiping itself!

This goes straight to the heart of the importance of good communication. The CDC kept local governments informed of developments in the spread of coronavirus and Santa Cruz County followed other local municipalities and ordered a “shelter in place” effective Tuesday, March 17 at midnight. In turn, we did our best to publish the steps we were taking and relaying this information to tenants at every turn. We were figuring it out one day at a time.

I had the most surreal birthday yesterday. Most of our staff, nearly thirty people, packed up their essential belongings, computers, monitors, keyboards, mice — anything they might need to work from home. It felt like the scene in The Empire Strikes Back when the resilient Rebels are evacuating the ice planet Hoth. And we all know that feeling.

Our field operations and sysadmin teams, undaunted by the task at hand, transported and set up remote workstations in bedrooms and on dining room tables of countless employees in countless homes. In less than a day, we had moved an entire company. We had never done this before at such scale.

I type this from my bedroom. I’m optimistic that with these extreme measures, through this bizarre mass social experiment, we’ll come out of this stronger and more resilient than ever. Like Empire this will undoubtedly get worse before it’s over. But ultimately, by the end of the sequel Return of the Jedi our heroes are victorious, evil is pushed back and vanquished, and everyone gets to throw a huge party with the Ewoks.

~ Alex

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. 


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.

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.

Cruzio’s Annual Open House Extravaganza and 30th Anniversary

Come celebrate with Cruzio! We’re having our annual open house the night after Halloween, and you’re invited! We’ll have all the usual, like awesome food trucks, craft beer provided by Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery, music (more on that in a little), and beautiful art. Free admission, free booze, all conveniently on First Friday November and at our downtown headquarters.

This year is especially important to us here at Cruzio, because we’ve officially been in business for a mind-blowing 30 years! We are very excited to commemorate that with all of our customers, city leaders, friends, neighbors, and more, and hope you can make it.

We mentioned music before, but this won’t just be a playlist of rockin’ 80’s music (though we are excited to have a curated playlist by our very own rockin’ James Hackett). We are having our first ever jingle contest! What’s that you say? Glad you asked. We’re offering a load of prizes (totaling out at $1,500) for writing and performing your take on a good jingle for us! Internet fame, cash, and the change to perform at our party! You can find more information at
jingle.cruzio.com.

We hope you can come and join us for this unforgettable night, and can’t wait to party!

“Internet providers are real bastards…”
So begins a recently published TechCrunch article charmingly titled 13 Ways to Screw Over Your Internet Provider

As you can imagine, since Cruzio is an internet provider, that raised an eyebrow over here and we figured we’d take a look. Wow. Amazing what some folks have to go through — it’s like they’re at war with the company who supposedly serves them!

A lot of the measures suggested by the deeply disgruntled author aren’t necessary when you have an independent, Net-Neutral ISP like Cruzio. So we thought we’d set the record straight by responding to their “advice.”

Our comments might surprise you. Or, if you’re a Cruzio customer, maybe not. Read on…

1. “Buy a modem and router instead of renting”
Sure. Unless the equipment is specifically required by the technology (for instance, with fiber connections) any Cruzio customer can feel free to buy their own and we’re totally up front about that. We don’t rent hardware to gouge our peeps. But, we’re also up front about being experts when it comes to modems. Our hardware is top-of-the-line and gives us much more ability to support the connection, and we’ll swap it out for free if it ever breaks or anytime there’s a better model available. It’s just like leasing a car over buying — but obviously much cheaper.

2. “Avoid service calls, or if you can’t, insist they’re free”
Believe us, a service call is a last resort. It’s expensive and time consuming for everyone. But, if we need to come out to fix the service, the call is always free unless the issue turns out to be with your home wiring.

3. “Get deals from the installer”
No need to try to wheedle deals from our field techs. We don’t have hidden pricing or special offers. We just have one upfront price with no hidden fees. You don’t need these tricks with us like you do with the big guys.

4. “Complain, complain, complain”
Again, not necessary. We get this a lot from new customers coming over from other ISPs. They’ve learned over time, poor things, that they need to yell and complain to get what they need. Not with Cruzio. Our whole deal is getting your service as good as we can get it. That’s our job. That’s why we’re here.

5. “Choose your service level wisely”
Cruzio has one price and for that price you get the best connection we can provide in your neighborhood. Then, as we expand and improve the network, we don’t use that as a reason to bump your price. We just upgrade everyone to the better speeds automatically and for free. We’re doing that all the time. You might get an email from us saying it’s your turn any day.

6. “Stream everything because broadcast TV is a joke”
Well this one we don’t have much to say about other than: yes, yes, 100% yes. Everything is streaming these days and we can help you set that up. #CutTheCord.

7. “Watch your bill like a hawk”
If you want to, please feel free, but there’s no need. If we ever raise our price, we’ll email you and let you know. We don’t do contracts so you can quit anytime. We don’t do hidden fees so there’s nothing for us to sneak in there.

8. “Go to your account and opt out of everything”
Nothing really to opt out of. We don’t do a bunch of add-on fees. We just try to do one thing great — internet. And we don’t want you paying for anything you don’t want.

9. “Share your passwords”
We don’t do TV so, no comment. We would never advise you to share your streaming passwords. Shocking.

10. “Encrypt everything and block trackers”
We’re all for security and we’re massive on privacy, so we don’t disagree. But we’re one of the only ISPs that do not track and sell your data. Maybe it’s a Santa Cruz thing, but we’ve never seen our customers’ data as a potential profit center. We will never give away or sell your private data. Ever.

11. “Use a different DNS”
No need. As we said, we’re not tracking you. And our DNS will be faster than any of the other options. See how there’s just less to worry about with an honest ISP?

12. “Run a home server”
There are better ways to do this. It’s a lot of trouble to set up a server and keep it going 24/7. People must hate the big ISPs! But if you want to run a server just give us a call. Let’s chat.

13. “Talk to your local government”
Yes! Please do. Local, independent ISPs like Cruzio are up against some big, deep-pocketed competitors who (see above) are not always out for your best interests. Without partnerships with local municipalities, it’ll be hard for independent ISPs to expand availability and service long term. And without us, you’re stuck with, well, them.

That was fun! I guess when you’re not out there trying to screw over your customers, you’re less likely to get screwed yourself. Huh. We knew that of course. It’s what we built Cruzio on. But it’s always good to be reminded.

$1,500+ in prizes! Live performance! Internet Fame!

Can you believe Cruzio has been around for 30 years and made it this far without a catchy jingle!? Neither can we!

That’s why, for our 30-year anniversary party, we are holding a jingle competition and we’re seeking submissions. If you’re musically inclined (or just musically aspirational) we want to hear what you can create for us!

Presentation:
Finalists will perform their jingle at our annual Open House Extravaganza (OHE) in November. It’s due to be an enormous party as it’s our big 3-0. We encourage costumes, dancing, and dramatic performances to accompany the jingle presentation. If contestants aren’t available to perform at the OHE, we will play video or audio recordings.

Prizes:
The winner of the competition will be awarded $1,500 and a free year of 9-5, M-F coworking membership (or one year of free internet on our Wireless Pro service). The winner will also receive 2 free passes to the 2020 Santa Cruz Music Festival, as well as the opportunity to have an interview with Santa Cruz Work’s Matthew Swinnerton on the Think Local First Radio Show. More announcements on prizes to be announced! Everyone who makes it to the finals and performs at OHE will win something!

Along with prizes, we will make a big deal out of your songs, whether you win or not. Cruzio will look for opportunities to promote contestants and play their submissions. Everyone who enters the competition and attends OHE, even if they didn’t make it to the finals, will get a prize at the door!

Qualifications:
•Write an original jingle for Cruzio

•Must be at least 15 seconds long

•Must use “Cruzio” or “Cruzio Internet” in the lyrics, if there are lyrics. Instrumentals are also acceptable but we may add lyrics later

•We’ll give extra consideration to entries that include the words: internet, fiber, fiber-optics, home or business, friendly, fast, local, net neutral, privacy, or other positive attributes of Cruzio

•Extra consideration also is given to contestants who perform on November 1, 2019, at Cruzio headquarters in downtown Santa Cruz. In-person performance is preferred, but video or audio files are also acceptable

•There must be a family-friendly version available

•There are no age requirements, we’ll listen to your jingle if you’re 5 years old or 95 years old

How to make your submission:
Upload your jingle to Google Drive and share it with JingleContest@cruzio.com. The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2019. We’ll review your submission internally and announce our finalists on October 15th, 2019.

If you need help uploading and sharing your file, here is a link to Google’s support page.

Format:
We will accept video or audio files: mp3, mp4, wav

Good luck and happy jingle crafting! We can’t wait to see what you create!

-The Folks at Cruzio

By submitting your jingle to the competition, you have agreed to the following terms and conditions:

•Sponsor’s Rights to Entries: You do not transfer ownership of your entry by entering the Contest. However, by entering, you grant to The Internet Store, Inc dba Cruzio (“Sponsor”), its agents, licensees, and assigns an irrevocable, perpetual (non-exclusive) right and permission to reproduce, encode, store, copy, transmit, publish, post, broadcast, display, publicly perform, adapt, modify, create derivative works of, exhibit, and otherwise use your entry as-is or as-edited (with or without using your name) in any media throughout the world for any purpose, without limitation, and without additional review, compensation, or approval from you.

•Winners will be notified by email and must sign and return an affidavit of eligibility/recording rights/publicity release within 14 days of notification date. The affidavit will state that the winner’s song is original work and he/she holds all rights to song. Failure to sign and return such affidavit within 14 days or provision of false/inaccurate information therein will result in immediate disqualification and an alternate winner will be selected. Affidavits for winners under 18 years of age at time of award must be countersigned by a parent or legal guardian. Affidavits subject to verification by The Internet Store Inc. and its agents. Entry constitutes permission to use winner’s names, likenesses, and voices for future advertising and publicity purposes without additional compensation.

•All songs, music and lyrics must be original compositions and be credited solely as the work of the creator listed in the entry form. Entries in violation of any copyright laws, trademarks, intellectual property rights or basic ethical standards of amateur or professional songwriting will be disqualified immediately and without notice. In all cases, The Internet Store, Inc. shall in no way be held liable for any such legal action that results from the submission of unlawful or stolen submissions.

•A selection of finalists will be chosen to perform in the live performance finals of the Cruzio Jingle Competition at the 30th Anniversary Open House Extravaganza, November 1st at Cruzio’s downtown headquarters. Finalists will be required to confirm their performance at the Open House party no later than 10/20/19

•The finalists will be selected from their video or audio submissions by a panel of judges.

Berdels is a relatively new, but well recognized and widely known local surf and skate apparel shop in downtown Santa Cruz. They work with artists local to California and especially local to the Santa Cruz area to supply the store with unique finds and stay true the beach culture we all know Santa Cruz so well for.

Back in winter, we connected Berdels to our lightning-fast, fiber-optic network and they noticed the change in speeds! We talked to Berdels founder, Bubb Rader, who became the star of our latest video. Here’s Bubb himself on how fiber and Cruzio Internet have been helpful for his day to day transactions and interactions with customers, and the value of local businesses working with fellow local businesses: