A while ago, one of my younger brothers (a VP at Qualcomm) sent me an excerpt from a body of work intended to help the Qualcomm folks deal with this hideous mob of petulant children infiltrating the workforce - The Millennials. It contains summarized descriptions of generational characteristics from the WWII era to present day. We start with The Veterans (The Greatest Generation!) and we slide slowly downhill from there with Baby Boomers, faster still with Generation X, and then we really start picking up speed to start swirling down the toilet bowl at a breakneck pace with The Millennials! Here’s the PDF - read it and weep:

http://onyxconsulting.com/docs/WorkforceGenerations.pdf

After Charles and I read this over, we exchanged a look of amazement. Here were all the observations we’d been voicing to each other regarding many of the interviews we’d conducted over the years. It also illustrated a commonality amongst the bad hires we’d made when a “true” millennial slipped into Onyx under the wire. This prompted me to learn more about this plague upon our nation. Here’s another article that accurately describes our observations of these bed-wetters:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/08/60minutes/main3475200.shtml

The more I learned (and confirmed), the more I realized the challenges it foretold for our own growth. The pdf from my brother attempts to focus on the positive attributes of the millennials. A 16,000 person corporation has to grimly accept that there’s no way around this generation. They absolutely can not avoid them and therefore must figure out how to make the most of things. The study makes a very transparent attempt to wrap a bow around a giant shit sandwich of useless individuals obsessed with their own short term gratification. Citing as positives, they say Millennials are “plugged-in, tech savvy, interested in meaningful work over income, hold multiple interests” blah blah blah.

I say take the damn bow off and call it like it is. Millennials are “overly fascinated with shiny things that light up and go beep, lacking survival skills due to parental “mollycoddling”, jacks of all trades but masters of none, unable to focus or complete projects from beginning to end.” In short, a generation of candy-assed wimps.

So why am I sharing this and, do I ever have anything positive to say? Well, I’m venting - come on! And yes - I do have something positive to say. I try to conserve my positive energy for my loved ones, my employees and my customers - but here goes: We are in the fortunate position of being able to refuse acceptance of this generation - for now.

Roughly one in three people we hire below the age of 26 have actually been raised properly and were telling us the truth about all of their wonderful convictions, work ethic, drive, ambition, accountability etc when we interviewed them. The other two are either fired quickly, or they manage to fool us for several months of painfully wasted time and money. The staff has actually become instrumental in helping sniff out the phonies who sneak in. Of all the resumes and interview’s we endure, I’d say (within our industry) there’s roughly one genuine, hardworking individual for every two-hundred bullshit artists I sift through. That’s better than ZERO! I have the utmost respect for the ones we have managed to find and a debt of gratitude to their families for doing a fine job of raising them. They are the reason I haven’t collapsed in a pile of despair! There is hope - and who knows, maybe this trend is largely industry specific, but somehow I doubt it. As I mentioned before, Qualcomm HAS to embrace them. Fortunately, we don’t and we won’t. THERE - there’s the positive side! Savor it.

So here at Onyx, we have resigned ourselves to the painstaking task of sifting this rubble on a non-stop basis so that we may grow our company one person at a time with the least amount of compromise possible. It is an all-consuming task. We do it relentlessly, and we do it better than our competitors - and that, my friends…….is why we are so good.

Now - I’m going to go check my blood pressure, soak my head, hug a tree or two and get ready for more interviews this week. God Bless America.

P.S. Jared Diamond is the author of one of my top 10 all time favorite books “Guns, Germs and Steel”. He wrote another book called “Collapse”. This book details how civilizations fail. It asserts the average life span of a democratized society is approximately 200 years. Clearly our Republic is more democratized with every new day. I would name the Millennials as the 80 Million horsemen of the apocalypse. Not an uplifting read, but very informative. Sunshine and lollipops for everyone!

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

This product has lifesaving capabilities. I remember hearing of this type of thing and equating it with flying cars and other futuristic pipe dreams unlikely to take. Then they became available several years ago but were priced WAY too rich for my blood. I wrote it off. Window shopping unattainable items makes me crazy. Then recently my partner mentioned them and we began searching around only to discover that bio-safes are now widely produced and extremely affordable! Finally. There are several out there, but this one seemed to have all the best combination of form and function. A swipe of your finger pops open the doors. You can “enroll” up to 50 fingerprints off the master admin user. at $300 and change, this thing is a must have for certain folks - particularly parents. It solves a number of safety, security and privacy issues in all kinds of situations and environments.

Here is the manufacturer: http://sequiam.com/

Here is a reputable distributor: http://www.deansafe.com/seq-bvsb.html

A few years ago I painstakingly created an Excel spreadsheet of my entire DVD collection. I created my own genre categories and other features. It was laborious and left much to be desired as a catalogue. THEN - I lost the damn thing somehow. Yay! Recently I decided to create a new one, but rather than waste any more time in “do-it-yourself” land, I conducted a quick Google search based upon some remarks by Matt that there was indeed a solution out there for the task. I entered “DVD Catalogue Software” and up came this: http://www.delicious-monster.com/

This program “Delicious Library” allows you to use your iSight camera as a bar code scanner to inventory books, CD’s, DVD’s and any other items you choose to add. The scanner function works very well in a low light, low glare situation and immediately inputs all relevant information to include artwork, synopsis, release dates etc. There are also other input options for items lacking a bar code. You can enter by title or enter all information manually in the event that the item yields no recognition whatsoever. At $40, this is the coolest most gratifying software I’ve seen in a while. Too bad about the name though. Misappropriated sensory descriptions REALLY bother me. “My desert was orgasmic!” or “Did you see the new copier we just installed? It’s really sexy.” Yech. Anyway - Check it out “Delicious Library”. I wouldn’t say it’s delicious, but it IS mighty cool.

WHO (might you ask) is The Apple Service Alliance? Well, I’ll tell you. The Apple Service Alliance….WAS a name used by a group of cowards who tried to stop us from becoming a competitor many years ago. When we were no more than a few techs with a newly acquired commercially leased office space, we applied for Apple Authorized Reseller and Apple Authorized Service Center status. Word got out to the handful of Apple affiliated service providers and they did something very sleazy. This consortium of incompetent blow-hards felt so threatened by 3 guys in their mid 20’s (us) that they gave themselves a title “The Atlanta Apple Service Alliance” and set out to prevent us from throwing our hat in the ring. These seasoned professional business “men” pooled their collective cranial capacities to construct one very sad and very inflammatory letter to Apple. In this letter they implored Apple to withhold authorization from the likes of Onyx Consulting for we were suspected of “disreputable business practices” and would only dilute the fine quality of service currently offered by The Atlanta Apple Service Alliance. Thanks to some well placed allies, we became aware of the content as well as the identities of the companies and clowns behind the letter. That was the day the gloves came off.

In their wisdom and to their credit, Apple ignored this repugnant effort by our adversaries and we became fully authorized. Next order of business was payback time. The beating delivered over the next 6 years was sufficient in rendering each one of these entities permanently punch-drunk where Apple service was concerned. It was a long hard fight and quite frankly - we kind of miss having them around to beat on. So much was learned, lost and gained through those times. Alas, our youthful aggression and combativeness gave way to a more fruitful directing of energy. We turned all efforts and attention to improving our company and forgot about the miscreants. Now they’ve all but finished themselves off.

Did we really NEED to be so heavy handed in our competitive rampage? I myself am not too sure, but I think it was certainly warranted by the actions of the AASA. Many AASA clients are now long term Onyx clients. In retrospect, it sure seems like everything happened exactly as it should have, but I suppose that’s easy for us to say.

You’ve just found the most capable company for Atlanta Apple Repair, Atlanta Macintosh Service, Atlanta Mac Warranty Service, Macintosh Warranty Atlanta, Atlanta’s Best Computer Consultants, Best Macintosh Service, Mac Service, Macintosh House Calls, Mac Home Service, Apple House-calls, Fast Macintosh Service, Atlanta Apple Technicians, Macintosh Experts, Atlanta Mac Experts, Atlanta’s Best Apple Service, Apple House Calls, and on and on and on to see where we come up in the ranking. Britt has always been very good at this business and he’s watching it as well. We used to use a specific program to constantly bombard the search engines, but things have changed quite bit and now it seems to be all about content and volume of the actual site. I see a few Atlanta Mac affiliates ranking higher here and there. We’re going to have to fix that. Onyx has over 10 Apple Authorized Technicians on staff and growing. I think that likely makes us the most qualified company in the Southeast to work on Macs other than the Apple Stores themselves. What a lot of folks don’t know is that our field service is actually more PC based than Mac.

Although Apple’s market presence is certainly growing at a healthy rate, it would have been very difficult to grow past a few personnel 5 or 6 years ago if all we did was Mac work. There were a handful of other Apple affiliates out there trying their best to claw to the top of the pile along with us. Fortunately, their best wasn’t even comparable to our worst and they have all since spun off into obscurity - much like Darth Vader spinning off into the abyss in his tie fighter. I think I even heard them gurgling that same sound he made “Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”. Our depot work is another story though. Because we are an Apple Authorized Service Center Plus, we perform over 100 Apple warranties a month. We also do legacy repairs (old Macs), PC’s, printers - pretty much all related equipment worth repairing. The Apple store has had very good response from referred business, so it seems we have earned their trust and goodwill. That has resulted in continually increasing referrals and a strengthening of our credibility and reputation. Many of our burned out competitors failed to recognize the relationship potential. Breaks my heart I tell ya. Now if by some remote chance anyone is actually READING this disjointed ramble, I will admit that I’m merely trying to build metadata and their is really no structure or point to all this flap about Apple Macintosh Warranty Service On Site In Shop Carry In Service Mac Repair Service Mac Techs Mac Technicians G5 Powerbook Mac Book Macbook G4 G5 G4 G5 iPod Repair iPod Battery Replacement iPod iPod iPod!!!

Was there ever a more worthless expression of one’s passion than this mind-numbingly tired debate? Well certainly, but this one IS a doozy. I know there’s some blather I’d like to express about this topic, but it hasn’t quite congealed as of yet. One thing I can say for sure though - we don’t have ANY evangelists on our staff. At least none I know of. Sure, we have Dragon Con attending, Halo playing, garbage eating techs here - but to my knowledge none of them erupt in a sickening froth of love or vitriol for Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. We just ain’t gonna have that nonsense around here. Nosir.

If you take a look at the reviews for Onyx Consulting on Kudzu or Citysearch, you’ll see several very kind reviews and just a few “bad” reviews. This strikes me as somewhat extraordinary. I say that because I believe a higher ratio of folks express their discontent and anger than those who express their satisfaction and happiness in life. Why (I wonder aloud) is that the case? Well I, for one, am somewhat reluctant to shout it from the rooftops when I’m feeling really good or things are going my way for a couple of reasons, One - it ain’t cool to gloat. Two - a superstition that speaking of good things will cause them to disintegrate before my very eyes. Pretty crazy I suppose. Anyway - I think it’s a shame (assuming my suspicion is correct) that people are far more motivated to write a critical review than a positive review. Fortunately, these folks often write in such a way that sensible people can easily detect the personality disorder that often fuels their rants thus eliminating any credibility. It takes a REALLY horrendous experience and my certainty that I have pursued all reasonable diplomatic options before I’ll go to the lengths of writing a slamming review of anything. I may briefly fantasize about it, but I can’t remember the last time I did it in a commercial forum. So I’m keeping my eyes open for an opportunity to give kudos to someone for a job well done. It will be my puny contribution to this grave cosmic injustice. In fact - I just thought of one. Frank Bowers of Highland Hardware did an excellent job teaching a woodturning class I recently took. I left at the end of the day with a very nice contemporary hollow vessel made from a block of cherry wood. I’m off to Kudzu to give props.