(no subject)

Dear Draig Technology Ltd:

Your website for the Welsh Language Board is AWFUL. It's difficult to navigate, nothing is ordered in expected fashions, and there's quite a lot buried in .pdf files that should probably just be embedded into the site with an option to print out a .pdf version.

Linguist with an Ax to Grind,
Twincityhacker

(no subject)

I just get to sleep, and the fire alarm goes off. Not my building, but the roughly a stone throws from my window, so I am awake and annoyed, rather awake, annoyed, and standing out in the cold.

The firefighters just entered the building, so everything should be sorted shortly. This is the second time the alarm as gone off in that building in a week and everyone will be very annoyed if it's just burnt popcorn again... Ah, yes, they shut off the alarm. Thank God.

Democracy is getting a toast tonight

Wow. Iowa and Vermont now allow same-sex marriages, AND DC now recognizes same-sex marriages preformed in other states. All in a week.

Now, I have to mosey on down to the bank so I have monetary tokens to swap for alcohol tonight to toast to democracy and love and all other things that makes life good.

(no subject)

Sophie and I went to the Irish Lion. She had a Guinness, I had a hard cider, and we both had a bit of each. The cider tasted good, the Guinness, not so much.

We chatted over drinks about this or that, for two hours, and when we were polishing up our drinks a nice public defender wanted to buy us drinks. We weren't at first, because she was driving and I weigh 120 soaking wet, but we ended up getting two orange juices and talking about his work and the pub and Bloomington in general.

The Irish Lion is the ragged edge of the "respectable" Bloomington. Going east, it's college campus, boutiques, and generally nice places. The west, it's shady, and where most of the murders and drug dealing happens. Next to the bar used to be the train tracks, so there was a literal right side/wrong side dynamic going on.

The pub itself used to be a bar/whorehouse, with the bottom floor being a bar where the railroad men could cash their paychecks and the top being the rooms were the prostitutes plied their trade. The bar next door, The Crazy Horse, was more or less a straight up brothel. The area was called "The Levy" in both senses of the term: the dividing line between goodness and deceit, and where people tried to get a cut of the paycheck they just cashed.

The guy was slightly bitter, as he was getting ready to defend a man for murder. Recently, the police had found the bones of man who had been missing for some time. A few years ago a more affluent family had their daughter kidnapped and the town was crawling with FBI agents. And other things.

The public defender wanted to buy us a drink, because he had a relativity good day and wanted to share the karma. And probably put a little good karma out as he sounded ready to bitchslap one of his clients for being a moron and that if he didn't give something better than the BS he'd be going to jail for a minimum of 25 years.

And he said good something about Jasper, that the people there mostly did things as they should. Bloomington is good on the surface with lots of poverty and a much larger homeless population that would be expected.

A good day - educational, fun, and illustrating how very lucky I am.