Hey everyone. It’s January 1 again, which means it’s time for me to own up to the fact that I wrote five posts in 2025. Two of those were about AI. Not surprising given that everyone was talking about it. But that seemed to be all I was talking about. What else was I doing instead?
- I upped my running amount drastically. I covered over 1,600 miles this year. I ran another half marathon distance for the first time in four years. I feel a lot better about my health and my consistency because now running is something I prioritize. I don’t think I’m going to run quite so much in 2026 but you never know.
- I revitalized a podcast. We relaunched Security Boulevard with big help from my coworker Corey Dirrig. We’ve got a great group of hosts that discuss weekly security topics. You should totally check it out.
- I’m also doing more with things like Techstrong Gang and other Futurum Group media. That’s in addition to the weekly Tech Field Day Rundown I host with Alastair Cooke. Lots of video!
- For those that follow my Scouting journey, I was asked to be an Assistant District Commissioner with the goal of becoming the District Commissioner in 2026.
Finding Focus
In total, that means my focus has been elsewhere. It’s what happens in life. We find things that are important to us and we put our energy there. My blog has always been a place where I collect my thoughts and explore ideas, both tech and non-tech related. It’s an authentic part of what’s going on in my head and how I see the world.
One thing I have resisted is the temptation to use generative AI to “fill” the gaps in posting. It’s way too easy to let Claude or Gemini do the hard work of creating content and then just posting the edited version. That’s not going to sound like me. That’s not going to be my insight. It’s an algorithm that has been trained poorly to kind of sound like me. Trust me when I say that there isn’t enough technology right now to generate the kind of snark and witty repartee that you get in a single post here!
Something else that has come up in the past year is that I find myself looking more at the interactions between the people and the tech. The fascinating stories to me weren’t always how many billions had been invested into the Great AI Circle or how many gigawatts are being proposed for new data centers in the middle of South Dakota. Instead, it’s how the people are affected. It’s seeing jobs being cut because we need more capital for GPUs. It’s seeing how people are adjusting to a world where they can just make up ideas on the fly and generate anything they can think of, provided they can refine the prompt enough. That’s where the action is going to be for me in the coming year.
Tom’s Take
Where does that leave this place in 2026? It means I’m going to get back to more writing. Yeah, I have said that the last couple of years. But I realize how important it is to me. Once I write it down it sticks in my head. More importantly, it becomes a part of the larger body of knowledge. I still get traffic on some very old posts here. That means someone is searching to answer the same questions I used to want answers for. That also means that people are still using written words over videos. If that’s the case I’m going to do my part of keep things going.
With all the podcasts and Field Day events and other things going on I might not get back to the magical land of 50 posts in the year but I promise I’m going to do better than five. It’s going to be a long year of AI, quantum computing, security breaches, networking, wireless, industry consolidation, and more. I’m going to do my best to cover it authentically and ensure you have my snarky take on it all.