A father's life
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Demand for IT Contractors Rising Slowly - Computerworld
News Story by Thomas Hoffman
APRIL 05, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - As corporate revenue growth steadily improves this year, spending on new or backlogged IT projects is also expected to increase.
But with IT staffs running lean following three consecutive years of cost cutting, many companies will look to domestic IT contractors to help supplement their project teams, IT executives and analysts said last week.
'We're seeing a little bit of an uptick in demand for contract labor,' said Tom Pohlmann, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. Pohlmann cited a December 2003 survey of 364 North American IT decision-makers conducted by Forrester that found that 52% of respondents plan to use a combination of internal training and IT contractors to help make up for a shortfall in IT skills this year. Only 22% of the respondents said they plan to increase their internal IT staffs this year.
Still, U.S. companies appear to remain tentative about launching into new project spending as they await further signs of an economic recovery.
For instance, Digerati Solutions LLC, a Babylon, N.Y.-based systems integrator, has noticed a rise in interest in new projects, but that hasn't yet translated into new orders, said Dan Hof"
"People are more encouraged about the economy, but they're not knocking down doors yet," said Hoffman.
Lack of Urgency
Carl Schulz, a principal at Delta Corporate Services Inc., an IT consultancy in Parsippany, N.J., concurred, noting that the lack of urgency to start new projects—along with the increasing use of lower-cost offshore labor—has led to continued downward pressure on IT contractor fees.
PGA Tour Inc. in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., is planning to increase its domestic IT contract spending in two areas this year. The professional golf association will tap contractors to support IT infrastructure improvements and to help develop and implement a digital-asset management system for managing more than 35,000 hours of archival video footage, said Steve Evans, vice president of information systems.
To help make upgrades to its servers, networks, desktops and operating systems, the PGA Tour has brought in eight contract workers for a 13-week period and is planning to retain four of them for an additional 13 weeks, said Evans.
Because of its continued revenue growth, GE Real Estate in Stamford, Conn., hasn't reduced its IT investments or IT staffing levels for the past four years, said CIO Hank Zupnick. Still, the company plans to continue to use contract workers to help supplement its own IT staff for large projects, he said. This includes the use of six full-time and two part-time Java contractors to help with the development of a new property management system, Zupnick said.
I haven't takn time for a while to sit here and blog about the day. Jack has gotten older and my parents, particularly my mother, have come around and actually started to like him. We visited on Saturday and my mother sincerely had a good time playing with him.
On the other hand, colon cancer is killing my father. He will have surgery soon to allow him to receive a drip of eloxatin. It was hard to find seconds to sit with him on the visit because Jack wanted o play with me. Yet when we sat, it felt good to thank him for being a good Dad and to see him noticeably moved.
My Dad is dying. What does that mean to me? The man who has been my safety my entire life will be gone soon. My mother soon after him. My son is my future and I want to make sure it is golden.
Saturday, May 08, 2004
A lifetime is not a long time, although we delude ourselves into believing that we are eternal. Three months until we arrive on site is far less and the time has come for us to hanker down to get this August weekend ready for the men who will trust that we have something worthwhile for them to listen to.
My father is in the process of dying; he has been treated for colon cancer for six months--radiation, chemotherapy have done nothing. Surgery to get a different medication into him will occur soon. He, my mother, my brother with whom I do not speak and I are each in our own way preparing for his death.
He is 90 and the life expectancy of someone at this age, so my father reminds me is less than one year.
Time runs out on all of us at sometime; in the meantime, we waste too much time with things that are unimportant.
The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.
‘In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odor of your roses.’
‘I have no roses. All the flowers
in my garden are dead.’
‘Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves, and the waters of the fountain.’
The wind left . . . and I wept, and I said to myself,
“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”
---Antonio Machado
What are you doing with the garden entrusted to you?
