This year has been something different from all of the past years somehow. I can point to several examples however it just seems odd to see the differences of 2025 in comparison to the past and how I thought things were going to go vs how they went.

The main focus of change has to be the weather. At time of typing I can finally say that the fall season has set in and we’re on our way to my favorite season, winter here in Grand Rapids. For some reason the summer here has dragged on for longer than we’re used to or at least that is what it seemed. Normally the furnace starts working in September. When looking outside depending on where you’re looking it still might be confusing as to what time of year it is as there still are plenty of trees not changing for the autumn colors. Either way we’re looking at cooler temperatures finally and hopefully some precipitation as the summer months have been drearily dry.

Aside from temperatures the main buzzword for the year has been AI. It seems to be all we hear about and all that I work on every day in ways to keep our clients site safe and operating smoothly. There are plenty of facets of the tool that we can talk about and I can’t find anything overwhelmingly positive in that bubble that I can address whether it be about image / copy generation designing websites, programming work that it does or the constant attacks it lays on our sites that has to be fortified daily depending on what it’s after.

From the generation side that AI we have these conversations daily about how it threatens our livelihood and I cannot honestly fell threatened seeing what it puts out. From the design side I see tons of images that are just not correct, like people with three hands and images that are just meshed by chance and on the programming side it just creates a shell rather than something that actually works. There have been so many times I have read it telling me how “this method is sure to work” then 18 revisions later I still have to supplement whats there to make it work correctly.

On the other side of the coin it’s always scraping our sites. Almost daily I go into our firewalls on cloudflare and on the sites specifically to block nefarious users, AI specifically. The scraping is relentless and really eats resources of our paying clientele. In comparison to the past as I have written elsewhere, this hasn’t been an issue before.

Regardless of these new challenges that we seem to find daily we should keep in mind the holiday season has begun albeit late and it’s time to enjoy the most wonderful time of the year. Whatever comes up we will find ways to continually enhance our offerings and delivery great products to our clients as we appreciate their support to our creativity and commitment to excellence. So far our fall time has been pretty busy compared to years past and w forward to a productive winter as we move forward into the new year and greet what’s on the horizon.

Thank you as always and stay safe this holiday season.