The Rambling Librarian: This Week:

This week has been a frenzy of activity for me. I've been working on writing a post for you all about the Winter Wrap-Up program from the beginning of the month, but I just haven't been able to finish it; and definitely not this week!

All of this week has been just a whirlwind of preparation for this weekend... and now I can breathe a sigh of relief because it's over!

Friday was the system-wide DIY Teen Tech program. Each branch came up with an activity station and we all set up tables and had a workshop-style program for the teens. There were some pretty cool stations. We had stations for the teens to build clocks using old CDs, use electronic paint to make greeting cards with lights and circuits, learn to use a green screen, etc. Our location did two tables. One on coding and hacking and one where the teens tested a variety of life hacks, then made their own wifi amplifier. We had a pretty good turn out, and everyone got pizza. So win-win, right?

Teens enjoying our coding and hacking station.

Making a wifi amplifier.

Saturday was our Minecraft Madness program. So intense. I'm going to write a real post on this later, so I'll keep this brief. We had 15 teens and tons of crafts and activities for them. My husband and I build an awesome world full of mini games for the teens to take turns playing. 26+ hours of prep-work, and it was almost shot to heck by two problems:

We made 100+ reminder cubes for the program.

First, when we transferred the file to the library's Xbox it got all messed up. There were hundreds of trees in places they weren't before; some of my blocks were gone or had changed; there was even a lake in the middle of the archery range I built! Turns out the library Xbox hadn't been updated in ages. My husband updated it, but the damage to the world was done. We couldn't re-copy the correct file for whatever reason. But we made it work!

Second, our HDMI cords were missing. We spent 30 minutes of the program rushing around trying to find a spare HDMI cord so the kids could play in two-player. It doesn't make much sense to have a bunch of player vs. player mini game and then only have one player at a time! Thankfully my hubby designed this amazing death house that they could go through on single player. It was a big hit before and after we found the needed cord.

Hangin' out at spawn house. It's safer there.

Today the TAG (Teen Advisory Group) teens and I did training for an upcoming program. We learned about making Ukrainian-style (pansky) eggs and made our own demos. The process is pretty complicated, so we really have to know what we're doing before we can assist people during the program in April. It took a lot of patience, but the results are really neat! I kind of hope I have a chance to make another (read, "better") one at the program.