For Tat

I suppose it says something about the internet that I reluctantly did not include the first part of that expression.

A while ago, I heard that one of our branches did some great programs with Legos. Now, just to play effectively with Legos you need a lot of them. The branch manager had groups of kids building. It occurred to me that when we bought our Lego table and Duplo blocks (because they're too big to be swallowed and can be left out), we were accidentally sent some of the smaller blocks. We had two unopened bags of them stored for a few years, forgotten.
I sent them to the branch. My boss wasn't thrilled. What if we wanted to do a program with them? Ahhh, but if we do, how much more likely we are to get all the ones from the branch as well as those back! Won't the branch look more kindly upon us? The two bags we had weren't enough to do a program with, unless there were very few kids. Besides, it got more junk out of our storage and to a place where someone would use them. Win-win-win!
Cast your Legos (and other resources) upon the waters ...

A blogpost on how to do a program here: http://showmelibrarian.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-to-host-lego-club.html

I Hate the Movies

Not the actual model.

We have a (relatively) new library with a fabulous (ha) projector system that's supposed to play Blu-Ray and project laptops onto a screen that is supposed to come down and go back up in a reasonable fashion.

Me, I would rather sit and read to 50 squirmy kids for 90 minutes than have to try to operate this useless piece of techsrement. It did come with some sort of remote, but not the sort of remote that you or I use for watching DVDs at home - oh no! I'm not sure what it does, but the remote isn't in anyway useful. In fact, I didn't know we even had one until out of desperation in trying to figure something out, I opened the case on the wall. The remote was inside. Ah, so it wouldn't get lost, I imagine. It would have been nice to have known it was in there, even if it's useless.

This equipment, which was undoubtedly expensive, came with no guide or operation manual. If there had been one, the installers took it with them when they left, just before they hid the remote inside the casing. We have no idea what we're doing most of the time. The only advice they gave me was "Never turn this off," and the man pointed at the main switch. "It will mess up the programming." I have never turned it off. I dutifully put a sign next to that switch that says "Never turn off."

It would also have been nice if there was some audio input so that I could play my puppet show recordings, but no. I have to set my boombox up on the stage for puppet audio.

It's useless. Just plain without any sense or rhyme.

Today we had to show a movie, and I suggested we get going 45 minutes ahead because I know this trash heap can be ... finicky. We inserted the Blu-Ray, pressed the Blu-Ray button and a selection screen was projected. There was no way to make a selection and it would not move past that screen to play. We tried everything. By this time there are now three of us working on it. We tried the laptop, and that was taking forever to come up. We clicked the laptop button and waited for the disc to start up. Nothing but the blue screen of death was being projected. And the laptop wouldn't give the disc back. Finally, I pressed the laptop button again and it came on. We were able to choose "English" and the video progressed.

We were done with five minutes to spare and not all the popcorn was ready, but it was close. This happens almost every time we use the contraption. Something is always going wrong and we have to bash at buttons and find work-arounds.

Meantime, it's busy out in the Children's Room. People are signing up for Summer Reading and asking questions. Fortunately, the internet and wireless were down, so that cut down quite a bit of that sort of traffic. However, I was a quivering blob by then.

I hate that system. It's useless. I can't think of another word than "useless," unless with some sort of string of emphatic intensifiers. I can only hope that the next time they plan to show a movie (even more annoying is that the person who set up the movie schedule no longer works here to handle it herself), I will be either in another country or on another planet.

Please, please let us not show any more movies. Shoot me first.