This year wasn’t great, in a lot of ways. There’s no getting around that. Everything was, and is, on fire. A lot of that is figurative. Sadly, some of it isn’t. But it wasn’t all bad. Some things were pretty good as well. In the vein of what everyone does these days, I thought I’d throw together my own year in review about stuff that affected me personally.

The Bad

There was a lot of bad stuff this year. From wanna-be dictators, actual dictators, natural disasters, and personal disasters, to a lot of people just being assholes in general, it wasn’t a great year for a lot of us.

The American Government

Life in America has gone to hell. We now live in a fascist dictatorship. Rights are vanishing faster than… well, insert your own analogy here. If you’re planning to visit the US for any reason: don’t. Stay home. Go elsewhere. Just don’t come here.

AI, the Bad

AI in general is bad. It’s really bad. It hallucinates, it lies, it goes full blown hate-crime, it tries to get people to commit suicide. It’s bad.

Layoffs in tech

A lot of tech layoffs. And the reasons? Corporate greed. Period. They cut a bunch of jobs to increase shareholder value. They also cut a bunch of jobs to justify massive investments in their insane AI infrastructure. I didn’t get laid off, but I know a lot of people who were. And there isn’t a justifiable reason for any of them to have been laid off. Not one of their companies was unprofitable. It was greed, pure and simple.

Memory(ies) and Graphics

Have you seen the price of memory lately? All the chipmakers are selling everything to AI vendors. I build a new personal PC towards the beginning of the year. The 64GB of memory I paid $200 for is now going for $875. It’s insane. AI is literally ruining everything. At the same time, graphics cards were (and still are) insane. It took me 3 months to assemble all the components for my PC, and almost all of that was waiting for a graphics card to be available and in stock for purchase.

Health scare

I had a health scare earlier this year. I won’t say more, but the eventual news on that was positive. I also had a close family member have a health scare, and that turned out all right in the end as well. I am really grateful for those blessings. But at the time of each, it was extremely stressful.

Years in Review

Everyone’s doing it. I swear I got at least 30 different “your year in …” emails in the last week. Enough already! Well, after my list, then it’s enough.

The Good

Not everything was bad. Here are a few of the good things I’ve experienced this year.

New Job

I got a new job! It’s a freaking amazing job with a fantastic group of people that I love working for and with. I couldn’t ask for a better group of people. They constantly amaze me and months later I’m still in disbelief that they hired me.

AI, the Good

Wait! You said AI was bad!?!?!?!?! Yes, I did. But there are also glimmers of hope for specific use cases. While general AI is really bad, there are some things it is getting better at. For instance: writing code. Will it replace a software developer? Hell, no. Not anytime soon, and despite most CEOs dreams and the layoffs that are coming back to bite them in the ass, not anytime in the long distant future either.

It can do some specific things in code pretty well. For instance, it can do a simple proof of concept well. It can replicate certain patterns that are already well established in your code, like adding more endpoints in an API. But the bigger your codebase, and the newer (or older, or more obscure) your code libraries, the worse it does. It’s like the equivalent of having a brand new developer fresh out of college or boot camp. It can write code, sure, but you’re gonna spend a lot of time reviewing and fixing that code.

MVP Double Down

I’ve been a Microsoft MVP for Power Automate for 3 years now. This year, I also became an MVP for .NET. Double the MVP, double your… well, no.

Lotsa Speakin'

I got to speak at two conferences I haven’t been selected for before (StirTrek and Techbash), as well as returning to multiple conferences I’ve spoken at previously: Cincy Deliver & Community Summit NA. I also got to speak at several user groups: CBusDATA UG and Central Ohio .NET (CONDG). In addition, I was on a couple of podcasts and presented and created a couple of sessions for online conferences. It was, overall, a pretty good speaking year for me.

I’m Taking Off

My YouTube channel and my blog are really starting to get some traction. I never expected much from either, but my views on YouTube are now in the thousands and trending upward every month, as are my blog views. You all are amazing. Thank you!!

Getting Better

On another health front, I have lost nearly 85 pounds since the start of 2025, so it was a great year for me in that aspect. I’ve still got a long way to go in my weight loss journey, but I’m also very grateful for the progress I’ve made there.

2026

There’s no mistaking that 2025 was a rough year in a lot of ways. But there was also a lot of good. I know I’m often negative about the world right now, especially on my Bluesky feed, but there is hope. There is always hope. So take that hope, and set the goal of making 2026 a great year. I know we can do it.