As I begin this blog post with a bourbon on the rocks beside me, I notice it has been four months since my last entry. That feels surprising because I am recently retired and one would expect I have more time to write my stories. Yet time does not expand in a day, whether we work, raise a family, or leave the daily job behind. Retirement does not grant extra hours; it offers a chance to reorder what matters within the time available.
Every business owner eventually leaves the company they built. It might happen through a sale, a transition to family, an acquisition or retirement. Most owners spend years growing the business but only a few weeks thinking about how they’ll leave it.
Exit planning is integral in shaping how a business is run and financed for years before an owner decides to sell. The earlier it starts, the more control an owner can keep over terms and timing. A handful of signals tend to appear in the business or market before the right moment arrives.
For Mother's Day weekend, my wife Karen wanted to go camping for the first time with our new Jayco travel trailer. We had purchased a new 2025 Jay Flight SLX 175FQ at an end-of-season sale, but it didn't leave the lot until this spring. Given this was a new, untested camper where anything can go wrong, we decided to stick close to Sioux Falls and reserved camping spots at Palisades State Park.
Yesterday, I wrote in my personal blog that I voluntarily retired from the National Weather Service, departing with full benefits including a pension and my retirement investments. After spending a decade as a meteorologist and more than two decades as their information technology officer, I had done all that I had set out to do in my career as a federal employee. It was simply time for me to move on and accept new challenges.
Internal promotions represent a critical inflection point for organizations. When handled well, they fuel growth and retention. However, mishandled advancements often lead to favoritism, resentment and dysfunction. For information technology (IT) leaders navigating rapid technological change, the stakes are particularly high, as promoting from the inside can validate talent or fracture team dynamics.
Ethical promotion processes begin long before a position opens. Organizations must establish transparent systems that remove subjective decision-making and create equitable pathways for growth.
Artificial intelligence has become one of the biggest forces shaping the gaming world in 2026. It is no longer limited to simple enemy behavior or repetitive background automation. Today, AI is influencing how games are imagined, designed, tested, released, updated, and experienced by players. Game studios are using it to speed up development, creators are using it to build assets more efficiently, and platforms are creating new rules around how AI-generated content is disclosed and managed. In short, AI is not sitting on the sidelines anymore. It is now part of the gaming industry’s main operating layer.
In a digital-first business environment, first impressions are often formed long before a conversation ever begins. Profiles, thumbnails, and headshots have become the modern handshake. They signal credibility, effort, and trustworthiness in a matter of seconds.
As artificial intelligence tools make it easier than ever to generate polished images, a growing question is emerging across professional circles. At what point does convenience begin to erode authenticity.
Ransomware attacks are one of those things that many businesses feel only happen to "other" organizations, until it happens to them. It can become very easy to fall into a false sense of security, thinking your business is too small or your industry is too niche to be noticed.
However, sticking to these old assumptions is exactly what gives attackers an advantage. No one is immune. Unfortunately, small businesses are even more vulnerable because of the outside impact that a single attack can have. To understand true risk, it’s important to look past common ransomware myths.
