OK - so maybe you’ve never had the chance to save a little old lady getting mugged or disarm a bank robber, but heroism could still be within your grasp. Data loss makes people cry like little children who’ve lost their parents. We’ve seen it. It’s awful. On the other hand, SAVING someone’s data makes even the scrawniest, zittiest, World of Warcraft playing, uber-dork look like he’s 10 feet tall. Instant Rock Star! Yes - we’ve seen this too.

Onyx Consulting has been working on a product launch for awhile now and it’s finally up and running. OnyxSync is an automated internet backup solution with business class capabilities and rates that no one else seems to be matching or beating. The target market for this product is small to medium businesses who’ve been searching for a cost effective total solution to the preservation of their data.

Over the years as technology has advanced, we’ve employed a wide range of backup and archiving solutions for hundreds of Atlanta businesses. Previously our efforts were always restricted by what the customer could afford and whatever varying products and solutions were available. We’ve been through every possible combination of storage device, portable media, tapes, drives, RAID’s etc. Mountains and mountains of products with varying degrees of reliability. Often we employed multi-tiered or “bullet proof” solutions for our mission critical clientele so if one aspect failed, another two would still preserve all data. Even the very best of these solutions left plenty to be desired. The issues of maintaining the equipment and monitoring functionality had to be dealt with. Every four or five years certain aspects had to be replaced entirely - on and on it goes and the costs definitely add up. There didn’t seem to be any way around it - until now.

OnyxSync provides the ability to forget all about the data preservation dilemma. It can be installed in any business to provide easy access and full control to all data maintained off-site in a secure facility. All of the neccesary encryption and security standards are employed and it operates on multiple platforms. It’s an amazingly simple interface for any client to navigate and utilize. Best of all, it’s local to Atlanta and related to Onyx Consulting. Our technicians can perform the initial data collection at the clients location. After that, daily incremental updates are set to occur over the internet with any degree of frequency. The choices for configuration are limitless. Any additional needs can be addressed promptly through support provided by Onyx Consulting.

If you’re an IT administrator who’s ready to put this data storage and preservation issue to bed - for good, you owe it to yourself to look into this product. There is strong potential here to save your company an enormous amount of time, money and trouble. What would that be worth to your employer? What would their gratitude be worth to you? Click on OnySync to get started!

Are you looking for the BEST deals anywhere on used Macintosh & PC machines? The OCF machines are all priced at approximately 25% BELOW fair market value, and proceeds go to an excellent cause. Value and charity. The “win win” place to get discount used equipment. Check out the site!

www.theocf.net

This is my Spyderco.
There are many others like it, but this one is MINE.
My Spyderco is my best friend. It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
My Spyderco without me is useless. Without my Spyderco, I am useless.

During the renovation of the Decatur building, I discovered a whole new level of Murphy’s Law aggravation with regard to timing and logistics. Despite my best efforts to consolidate tasks and plan my days, every time I arrived at the Norhtcrest Rd location and settled in to work, the phone rang and I had to return to the Decatur building. Finally I gave up and decided to camp somewhere in Decatur where I could get wi-fi and await my next summons. I decided to try Dancing Goats and was immediately struck by the spacious atmosphere. There was a time when I enjoyed clutter and funkiness, but as I get older I’ve grown weary of “bohemian” accoutrements, decor and especially odors. Dancing Goats is clean and contemporary. There are really comfortable deep leather couches to sink down in or, if you’re in an attentive business mode, you can opt for clean counter tops and firm chairs

Decor is all fine and dandy, but is the coffee good? Well, you can smell a distinctive roast in the air when you walk through the door, and I’m happy to say - it’s possibly the best coffee to be found in the Atlanta/Decatur area. It’s a good thing it’s at the bottom of Ponce and not next door to our shop or I’d be consuming far far too much caffeine on a daily basis. As it is, I drop in at least a couple times a week to get my fix and pick up whatever the guys want as well. The Chilly Goat beats any other frozen concoction I’ve had and when you see the work that goes into it, you’ll know why. Another plus I noticed was the staff. everyone there has been very friendly from the first purchase. The manager Lorrie Bodnar made us feel very welcome as a new business and has been kind enough to refer us as well. On a good day, I counted 16 laptops humming away in there and 1/2 of them were Macs. That’s a high ratio. We hope all of those folks realize we’re over here and stop in. Go to Dancing Goats. You’ll surely become a regular.

Lynne Sawicki and I share the same accountant and it was he who informed me that Lynne (who used to work with my family at Indigo) had her own place in Decatur by the name of Sawicki’s - Meat, Seafood and More. I decided to get over there and try it. It’s located on Ponce right across from CVS in downtown Decatur. When I walked in, the first thing I noticed was the most amazing hunk of Wagyu Kobe Beef Ribeye I’ve ever seen. Then I was reacquainted with Lynne who doesn’t seem to have aged since I last saw her?! Very odd. How did I miss out on that phenomenon? So this was about 3 weeks ago and I’ve probably eaten Sawicki’s (or picked it up for my staff) at least 6 or 7 times since. It’s outstanding and the guys are all over it. Andrew is partial to the Beef tri-tip with french fries and herbed aioli on toasted baguette, Craig has declared the French ham and swiss panini with aioli and tomato to be his favorite. They all routinely order the Meatball sub with fresh mozzarella and homemade marinara on a warm baguette. I usually get a really flavorful salad with all high-end fresh ingredients, but I tried the Roasted lamb with red onion jam, lettuce and tomato on baguette and it was very good.

I wanted to write about Sawicki’s because I want to spread the word and let as many people as possible know about this rare oasis of quality. It’s VERY hard to find a really good sandwich and/or specialty shop in and around these parts. I’m often amazed at how unappreciated or unnoticed quality offerings can go in our money-grubbing metropolis. I know that half the battle is getting someone to actually TRY something so they can realize and understand the difference from what they’ve been accepting previously. For example - anyone who uses Onyx just once would absolutely NEVER go back to a chain store for service again. Anyone who can appreciate real food with attention to detail and the craft will certainly return to Sawicki’s again and again. I’m hooked, and I haven’t even tried half of the offerings I see awaiting me in those chilled cases. I’ll be ordering a couple hand cut 2″ thick ribeye’s soon amongst other things to take home and have my way with. If you haven’t been to Sawicki’s - get over there and try it. It’s tops.

A huge perk of our new Decatur location is that we’re no longer limited to the sad selection of slop trough offerings that surround our Northcrest location. Decatur abounds with great places to eat. For starters, there’s 2 great coffee houses within just a few blocks of our shops. Java Monkey (for those who like the more textural, funky style coffee shop) is on Church just across from Marta. Very nice folks. Good coffee. The one I’ve spent the most time at is Dancing Goats at the bottom of Ponce across from Watershed. I used Dancing Goats as my office for the duration of the Decatur renovation (say that 5 times fast). It’s a large well lit space with lots of good seating and great coffee. On a side note - I counted 16 laptop users in there the other day and 8 of those were Macs. That’s an unusually high ratio but perhaps not amongst the “coffee house crowd”. I guess I now have one leg in that crowd, but if anyone hears me raving about espresso machine technology or swooning over barista’s - please slap me sharply across the face……then duck (it may take me a moment to realize it was for my own good). But I digress….

There are so many quality lunch spots in Decatur, one could easily transform into a quivering mass of blubber if one wasn’t careful. At Watershed you can get high-end southern fare made with fresh ingredients and great attention to simplicity and purity. Sort of a refined version of Matthew’s in Tucker. If you want a truly excellent sandwich, you need look no further than Sawicki’s on Ponce across from CVS. Pastries a Go-Go is another favorite spot…and the list goes on and on. I’m having to alternate between salads, dry cheerios & fruit so I can allot an occasional “bad” lunch because let’s be honest - who the hell REALLY enjoys going out to lunch and picking at a salad while the person across from you is cramming a Rueben and fries down their gullet? Not I.

A blog about chairs……my my…….yawn…..Oh well. I do blather on.

Five years ago, when we opened our first (company owned) location on Northcrest, we decided it might be nice to stop sitting in the miserable collection of garbage we’d acquired off the side of several roads and other crappy chairs repositories. My first thought was the ever constant Herman Miller Aeron. A great chair to be sure. A chair that always conjured the image of success and good taste. But alas, thanks to the dot-com boom and bust of the Clinton era, I now associate the chair more with pretentiousness and failure! All those Herman Miller chairs on E-Bay selling from all major city’s circa 2001 - briefly owned by hordes of dot-commer “would be” visionaries. Coffee swilling, turtleneck wearing, PDA obsessed tech junkies sitting at the helms of a thousand sinking ships in their mighty AERON!!

Feh!

I always wanted one. When the day came that I could finally afford and justify one, I didn’t want it anymore. Same thing with Harley Davidson’s! So I called an associate who is a member of the interior designer’s guild and asked him what his thoughts were on chairs. We were ready to spend some real money for once and I wanted to weigh all our options. “Aeron’s are nice,” he said “but they’re kinda’ passe’ now. There’s a great line out now from Humanscale that you should check out.” And so we did. The first round we ordered for the Northcrest store were the “Freedom Chair” models - a refreshing design detour from the overwrought technical look of the Aeron. I just want to sit down, not meld my ass to H.R. Giger’s bad dreams - fer cryin’ out loud! For the Decatur store, we just ordered a whole mess o’ the “Liberty Chair”. OK - the patriotic themes are pretty amusing. Even our toilet at Northcrest is called “The Patriot” ! What the HELL is going ON here?! Anyway - the Humanscale chairs are pricey - like all high end chairs, and various people have scoffed at the amount of dough we shell out for these things. But “here’s the thing”:

1) The chairs come with a lifetime warranty. ANYTHING that breaks is fixed at our location from their local office branch in Atlanta. Great service.
2) If you want to keep your people happy while they pound on hardware repairs and wheedle out solutions for all manners of IT issues all the live-long day, you damn sure need to provide a high quality, comfortable cradle for their hams to luxuriate in while they do so!
3) They look cool and they’re not made by Herman “freakin’” Miller. That IS his middle name btw.
4) We’ve got a “connection”…….you think I’d pay full price for these things?! Hells No my friend!

YES. I blogged about chairs. Time to up the dosage I guess.

More and more I’m being asked by mystified customers “Can you guys take care of our machines via remote access? Do you guys know how to do that?” That’s because many of our competitors are increasingly utilizing the “remote access pitch” to homogenize IT service, stuff everyone in the same box and increase profits to the detriment of the customers actual “needs” and their own sagging integrity. They’d like nothing more than to make IT service a monthly utility bill for everyone to pay, while they effortlessly stroke some keys from their office with fairly insignificant results. Now - I am certainly all for increasing profits if there’s a legitimate need, but it’s abundantly clear to me that the remote access “razzle dazzle” being foisted upon the business community is largely as unnecessary as all those movie channels you’re paying for and rarely ever watch. This scam can be likened to the used car salesman selling you the “weatherized undercoating” and is being used more and more to “wow” a largely uninformed public who are understandably susceptible to the “cool” factor of remote access.

Remote access is indeed useful, but it has it’s limitations and should be administered accordingly. We use it frequently for the majority of our clients, but turning it into a selling point and packaging it as a regularly billed premier feature of your overall service offering strikes me as dishonest and sleazy. There’s simply no substitute for a physically present human to address the majority of outsourced IT needs. Our company uses remote access to receive trouble alerts, run checks and apply a small amount of necessary updates, patches etc. We also use it to identify and assess problems prior to determining how best to solve them. It’s use is rarely significant enough to justify regular additional billing beyond our physical service visits.

I would guess the guys who sell this proverbial snake oil are likely buying their own BS about the validity of this practice. That’s certainly easier than admitting to yourself that you’re a small step away from two-bit con-man status. They will tell you that remote access is the wave of the future! But the truth is - right now remote access is little more than a ripple. IT companies are leap-frogging over each other to sell it to you. If you’re paying a monthly chunk for this service, there’s a high probability you’re wasting your companies resources. If you doubt me, ask your service provider to let you sit in on a few remote access service sessions so you can see what exactly you’re being billed for. They will almost certainly provide some convenient reason as to why they can’t make that happen. If you do manage to gain their cooperation with this, don’t settle for one viewing - that’s too easy to stage. Watch 2 or 3 in succession at their location, see the “work” being done, do the math………… and then give us a call.

Well it’s over……I didn’t set foot in the mall ONCE, and the majority of my relationships survived with no nicks, cuts or abrasions. This year I opted to knock out most Christmas gifts with the iPhoto book-making software. Although I’ve known about this product for a long time, I never sat down and actually utilized it before. When I showed it to Bernadette, she got all charged up and took the reins to make books and calendars for several family members. Upon receiving the finished product it became very clear to me just how watered down the experience of viewing photos in iPhoto can be - especially when you have 5000-plus photos. The quantity just crushes the experience. Then when you see an arrangement of selected photos in a book you’ve designed specifically for an individual, it really hit’s you! The photos take on new meaning in the collection you created. It grabs hold of your heart strings and YANKS on them! I knew if they had this effect on us as the givers, our family members would be blown away - and they were. Success! I also had the advantage of Bernadette’s keen design sense. She did most of the work. These books become family treasures. I highly recommend making one - or TEN.

The other resource for this years gift giving was the company “Paddywax”. Paddywax was a wonderful long term client of Onyx, but I’d never fully utilized their offerings like I did this Christmas. These folks make a superior product and have an outlet location near Dekalb Farmers Market where you can load up on high-end artisan candles at low prices. They also have a well developed web presence and fulfill orders all over the country. The outlet is kind of a well kept secret. All kinds of Hollywood hot-shots seem to have discovered them as well. Check them out.

A very large shed sat in the back of our new location in Decatur. It occupied a spot that will be needed for employee parking. The damn thing was 8′ x 14′ and 9-10′ tall weighing in at 3000 lbs. How in the hell does one move something like this without trashing it in the process? It’s too labor intensive to dis-assemble, move and then re-assemble. A shed like this costs 3k to build so throwing it out is just real hard to stomach. I Googled and Googled until I couldn’t Google no more and there was NO ONE who seemed to handle a task like this. Finally a woman from a shed building company gave me the name of RV Movers which stands for Ray and Victoria Movers. This husband/wife team came out and did what I thought was extremely unlikely and bordering on impossible. They expertly winched this monster shed up onto a trailer using all kinds of physics savvy, threaded the needle getting it between my house and fence with an inch to spare, and then made like ancient Egyptians with a roller system to maneuver it through a tree maze into the far corner of my back yard. I was astounded. Before Ray showed up I was not expecting to accomplish the task. I figured I’d likely have a guy who’d scratch his head a few times and tell me it can’t be done. Then I’d pay him to haul it to the dump. Well - I was dead wrong. This guy was tenacious and made up his mind to get it done however possible and that’s exactly what he did. He made a hell of an impression on me. A true problem solver with a never-say-die attitude about his work. If you need something big and unwieldy moved and you think it can’t be done - call Ray Kilgore of RV Movers first. He just might be able to do it. An amazing fellow. 770-296-1874