So in my day job, I'm a web developer.  

As opposed to all the other stuff I do, including:

  • writing about people getting their diapers pulled down to get a spanking
  • talking to people about asking their partner to put them in a diaper, which they can then pull down to spank them
  • talking to my brother and his wife and select guests, while being recorded, about those guests wearing diapers and.. well, you get the idea

I love what I do.  It's creative, and challenging, and fun.  It's also really hard.  I'm constantly teaching myself new things.  Lately I've been learning all about a certain kind of chart-building, making a tree diagram, programmatically, using a javascript library called D3.js

When I first got started, I went right to the D3 homepage, and from there to some galleries of examples.  I cobbled together something rough, based on an example.  Then, I tinkered with it, moving from junk data to actually using real data, brought to the front end via an ajax call.

After I got it all working, I decided I wanted to get super fancy, and make the radial tree I'd built collapsible.  But I had only a loose idea for how to even do it.  Until I found that someone else had already done just that. (If you're really curious, it's at http://jsfiddle.net/Nivaldo/CbGh2/)

I took what I'd already built to get the data from the back, mixed it with what I'd done on the static tree page, and this new stuff, and VOILA! It worked.

If you're still awake after reading all that, here's where my gratitude comes in.  I'm one of thousands, no more like millions, of people who do this sort of thing.  All over the world, every day, dorkasauruses like me are figuring stuff out, and writing it down where other people can see it.  Whether it's in a book, or on the net, these people are on my team, they've got my back.  

I have so much help learning new things.

It boggles my mind.

 

Posted
AuthorMako Allen
Categories365 Gratitude

Yesterday on my way to work, I got caught in a whopper of a traffic jam.  

Even the express lanes on the beltway, were, for a while, at a standstill.  It was awful.

But it didn't last.  Eventually, I got out of it.  I got to work at a reasonable hour.  

Later that day, I had this enormous technical issue, that could have made me lose about three weeks worth of work if I wasn't careful.

I got through it.  Just like that traffic jam earlier in the day, it was temporary.  I fixed my issues, committed my code, and all was right with the world.

These two things have more in common than it might appear at first.  Misfortune doesn't last.  

Because nothing lasts.  Strawberry jam is sticky, but traffic jam isn't, and neither is a logical jam.  Whenever I find myself caught in misfortune, it's hard to remember this lesson.  

But it's still true.

 

Posted
AuthorMako Allen
Categories365 Gratitude

Since Frolicon, Spacey, Marie Furie and I have been in a group-texting marathon.  We sort of stumbled into a funny game we play which I call "suggestion roulette".  The iOS keyboard has a suggestion bar above it, which helpfully offers you whole words to complete your sentence.

It's kind of an idiot.  It's offered up gems like "No more I want you in my room", and "Not sure if you don't have a good idea of what I want you to be."

But the absolute winner of suggestion roulette the other night was this gem:

Panties on my phone and I love you.  

We all collectively lost our minds at that one.

Posted
AuthorMako Allen
Categories365 Gratitude

I have no idea.

Okay, that's not completely true.  In a few minutes, I'll put on some underpants, eat some breakfast, and go to work.  But speaking in the larger sense, I really have no earthly idea.  I've got a lot of irons in the fire.  I'm trying to get back in shape, working on a third novel, have some other life plans up in the air which are pretty big deals, just started a new job, too.

Every so often I hit some snags, and setbacks.  But then I'll rally, and move ahead.  Recently, I re-watched a movie I absolutely adore, Meet The Robinsons.

The movie is, in large part, about moving forward through adversity, even when you're unsure what to do.  One of the characters in the film, Cornelius Robinson has the motto, "Keep moving forward."  I like it.  It's got a very Taoist flavor to it.

There's a scene in the film where the villain, The Bowler Hat Guy has every part of his evil plan solidly trumped and just has no idea how to go on.

When this happens, he's utterly hopeless, completely defeated.  (Sorry, spoiler.)  

But that's just a perspective.  Lately I've come to see that there's great power and freedom in not quite knowing how the story ends.  I like not knowing what comes next.

Posted
AuthorMako Allen
Categories365 Gratitude

I've been friends with PowerFlower for a while now.  We're moved by many of the same things.  Since we knew we'd be at Frolicon this year, we'd invested a lot of energy and thought into our mutual loves of spanking, diapering, and discipline.  

On Sunday, after intentionally really not thinking about it all con, as Flower, her mommy, and I spent the dwindling last hours of the con together, that thing we had been contemplating happened.

First, I gave Flower a spanking she so desperately needed.  I spanked her bottom, her thighs, insider her thighs, too.  When she was just the right shade of pink, I turned her over, and got her into her easter diaper.

And then I comforted her and told her what a good girl she was.

We both cried a little.  Come to think of it, Flower's mommy cried a little, too.  No wonder.  It was a special moment. 


Posted
AuthorMako Allen
Categories365 Gratitude