Barry Hess
Barry Hess
Barry Hess
I run the blogging service, Pika, and I have been blogging since 2004. My blog is mostly personal in nature, touching on technical, pop culture, and other things along the way.
Latest Posts
In the back of my mind I’ve always wanted to do some sort of goofy Amazon Mechanical Turk project. I guess it’s now or never. But I don’t have any ideas… Reply by email
An astounding performance by Cory Wong, Joshua Redman, and more: Reply by email
A friend let me know about Olly’s recent blog post. Olly owns and operates Pagecord, a very nice blogging service running in the same world as Pika. It sounds like another indie blogging developer accused Olly of plagiarism, and that...
We went to Boston the first week of August. The planning for this was unique as the first step was securing tickets to watch these young men perform in one of three cities. See, the closest city to us in which they are performing is...
Parking a vehicle for a concert at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, is quite a challenge. Before heading to the BTS concerts this past week I did some research, even asking Chat GPT about how to handle parking. To its...
It’s been a hot minute. Time for a Barry update! Last week we spent some time by the lake at a rental property. Lots of relaxing and a few activities. Chillin’ My dad, the golfer Part of the location choice was because our youngest took...
This past week was filled with July 4th, a lovely visit from family, and lots of music. The music in this case took the form of drum and bugle corps, of which me and my family are big fans. To the outsider, it’s like paying money to go...
We have collectively been recovering from a physically and emotionally draining two weeks of marching band. We all were caught napping at some point throughout the early days of this week! It’s been nice to have activities wind down this...
The past two weeks have been full of marching band. We’ve been following our kids attending parades for eight or nine years now, chaperoning for most of those. It’s a fast and furious summer competitive parade season, and they’ve had a...
A significant portion of the population in the USA still thinks of Reaganomics as certified fact rather than a largely discredited theory. By this mindset the engine of our economy requires people to strive for a ton of money. A rising...
It’s our 26th anniversary today. We had a nice lunch at Jesse's favorite restaurant. Very nice meal. I've never had a banana split and have been trying to get Jesse to share one with me for a couple of years. So we walked to the ice...
The biggest event of the past week? Ava’s college graduation! Truth be told, she graduated last December, but the ceremony was last weekend and it was a great time. Quite a few family were able to make it to Des Moines to spend a fun...
Sometimes the national anthem at high school track meets can be a bit painful to listen to, but we were fortunate to hear a fantastic one by a high school junior this week. I must say the effects at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child were...
Why am I thinking about dipping back into Mastodon and Bluesky? I’ve been away for six or seven (!) months and it’s been good. I feel a bit like I’d like I’m curious if I could do it in a way that would only be a fifteen-minute...
Spent this morning at Minnebar. This year was the 20th anniversary. I’ve had several posts about Minnebar on this blog through the years. I’ve only been able to go a couple times over the past ten years and it was good to see many...