Shure, I didn't wear a helmut or shouldermerpads when I was young. I may have cause dain brammage. But competitions without score keeping, awarding "participation trophies"?What's next? Am I going to hear kids chanting "We're number 2", "We're number 2" ?

Couldn't find the one I was really looking for, but these will do for now!
 

bitflipper
RE: Millenials
 
I try to be a mentor to my 14-year-old grandson. He has enormous potential, gets good grades and wants to be an engineer (a real one, not the knob-twisters who call themselves engineers). He's polite and intelligent, doesn't get into trouble, a model student.
 
The problem is that he has the attention span of a gnat.
 
I blame it on 24x7 entertainment. Even television is too great a commitment for him; he rarely sits through an entire movie (unless I've paid for it, in which case I feel entitled to insist on it). YouTube's 10-minute standard seems to be about his limit, and even then he often clicks on something else before it'd done. He's got a smartphone, a tablet and a laptop and one of them is fired up at all times. Extended conversations are nearly impossible, except on camping trips and only after he's gone through no-signal withdrawal.
 
I've tried to explain to him that lack of focus is going to be his greatest hurdle in pursuing a technical career. That he's going to have to read some pretty dense books, pay attention to sometimes-boring lectures, and often defer instant gratification when designing and testing things. But my voice is but a whisper in the storm of incessant digital input.
 

I must admit that the explosion of online culture has played havoc with my attention span. I've always had a bit of mild ADD but these days I have to watch movies in 30 minute chunks and I find it difficult to do anything online without getting distracted. For instance I will sit down to get stuck into a Groove3 course and literally 5 seconds after the first video has started I will think "Oooh I just remembered I meant to read the reviews of that stapler on Amazon" and before you know it I have another 15 tabs open. 

I thought it was normal to have three browsers open, each with 15+ tabs open, no? 

I always use Chrome but sometimes I will "break out" a tab into a new window and start filling that with tabs as well. It's a mess. 

Chrome here too.

BTW - If you accidentally close one or more tabs, you can get them back, one at a time, by hitting <Shift><Ctrl>T.

craigb
BTW - If you accidentally close one or more tabs, you can get them back, one at a time, by hitting <Shift><Ctrl>T.

Funnily enough my girlfriend introduced me to that little trick last night. 

I occasionally pull in assistants for recording jobs, and I find it can go either way with young people. Certainly, ones straight out of college can often be a bit shocked at what a solid day's work actually is. Especially at the level I'm currently working at, which is very long days with not much in the way of breaks, and a lot of constant pedal-to-the-floor graft.
 
On the other hand, you will get some who are so keen to get a break, they'll work til they drop, and you actually have to make them slow down and take a break.
 
That's a side point however. I was posting because I've been thinking about how to pull in older people. And I think one way of doing this, without falling foul of any regulations, is to put something in the ad along the lines of "we are keen to interview anyone who is suitable for this job, regardless of age or background".
 
I think what happens with older people is that they get so used to being treated as washed up, they talk themselves out of applying for things. Like "they'll not want me showing up". I think giving a clear and honest indication that they're welcome would likely go a long way.
 
Not tried this myself yet, but I think I will the next time there's a budget for an assistant.

Don't forget the "greatest generation", our parents and grand parents who lived well but spent all the money they inherited from their grand parents, their parents, all the money they saved and in some cases started in on our money and our children's money. The retire in style generation. I loved my parents but really... mom was a "stay at home" wife. We had a maid a couple days a week, dad had a small exterminating business back when most businesses were small and local. That was a one time generation thing, the retire and live like you still have a good job for 30 more years... and what really burns me is that they totally didn't watch the federal government with SSI. My dad, in his 90s, was still convinced that the government had all the SSI money in a "lock box". They didn't mind the store, let education go to hell, and I'm not giving a moral opinion here, just a fact... they let abortion take away millions of people who would be working, buying, and selling and just contributing to an economy in general, there would be a lot more demand so there would be more jobs to supply the demand here, not in Asia.
A lot of what is wrong with millennials is that they have not had to work and many settle for "living in the basement". People are not owed anything that belongs to someone else.
I had a dream about three days ago. A big crowd of people and the president (a generic president, I didn't see a face). He told the huge crowd of people that our money is now worth nothing. Then, and I have no idea what this means) someone asked him what was wrong with his shoe. One shoe looked perfect, the other looked like some sort of thin slipper thing with the sole worn out. Then I looked and one of my shoes had a new looking sole but the other was completely worn out. We were then trying to get away.
Could just be a dream but it didn't seem like it. There are dreams and then there are dreams, if you know what I mean. Some you know are just dreams, others you know are different. This one was different.
There is no substitute for work.
My wife's grandfather was a farmer but there was a time he needed work. There were no jobs. He went to Flowers Bakery in the next town and asked for work. They said they had nothing. He looked at the warehouse and told them it was a mess. He offered to work a week cleaning it up and if they liked what he did they could pay him or send him on his way. They agreed and he did a good job and got hired. I don't think many millennials would consider doing something like that.
 
J