Two weeks later I am finally posting a debrief! I think everyone has a bit of a Gen Con "hangover" but it was particularly true for me this year. All the prep and the long hours really took a toll on me and I have been laying low since then. But I'm feeling rejuvenated and ready to move on to the next chapter of the server!

First, I've switched everything to whitelist for some added security. We had *zero* problems during Gen Con with users acting up, minus one person who found a glitch in the Matrix - kudos to them for figuring out how to fly around! Once again the community has proven to be the nicest people on the planet. Our tech admin on the server, who has never been to Gen Con, was really surprised and had been wondering why I had such a laissez faire attitude around security. Now that Gen Con is over, it's time to button up a bit and keep our server safe.

The server was featured on the Gen Con Twitch channel a couple of times! Someone logged in on the first day and said "my dad runs Gen Con" and in any other situation I would dismiss that comment as just trying to somehow gain special permissions. But, being Gen Con, I couldn't help but believe them. And sure enough, "Gen Con Dave", the president, popped into Discord to say hi! Couldn't be happier to have all our work recognized.

GK has still been in and out occasionally, still building out Indianapolis. I'm unfortunately anticipating another Gen Con Online next year (or at least a hybrid model), so it's probably reasonable to guess that GenMine will be around again next year and we can enhance and expand our build! Here we come, Lucas Oil Stadium!

It's been really fun to start up a server again and even though it's a little teeny tiny one, I'm excited to keep it going.

THANK YOU to anyone who visited, wrote articles, did Twitch streams, and in general showed support (especially to my husband who dealt with the madness in real life). It's been an incredible experience and if you haven't already, please come say hi!

I'm sure you (whoever you are) have been waiting with bated breath for an update since my last post nearly 2 weeks ago. It's been nuts around here! A couple people offered to help with building out the interior and it looks so amazing - it makes me realize how boring the place would be otherwise.

​If you're looking for screenshots - not gonna get them today. You'll just have to log in starting Thursday!

4. 26 people have signed up so far!!!
I posted up events for other times so maybe those will get approved and more people will sign up for those!

I'm not going to pull a lifestyle blog "here's 16 paragraphs and then the actual recipe" stunt. Here it is! Not perfect but I was going cross-eyed.

In the past week I have:
1. Gotten a root canal
2. Gotten a crown for above root canal
3. Moved out of our house for renovations

So my build is way, way behind schedule.
BUT I have a server up! With plugins! That seem to be working?
AND my Gen Con event submission was officially accepted! I'll need to submit a ton more but that's on tonight's "I can't stand writing //replace anymore" activity.

The other task for today is making that f*cking gif and posting to various subreddits and trying to drum up some help for building out these rooms and exhibit halls. There's no reasonable way for myself to finish in 17 days.

Life Pro Tips:

1. Do not take a nap with your cat.
2. Do not download TikTok.

At least Level 2 is much easier than I originally feared.

I'm still here, I swear! And I am working suuuper hard on this build. The interior is just kind of coming together in bits and pieces instead of having fully finished sections so I don't have much for pretty screenshots. I'm also simultaneously working on Level 2 where possible, so that's adding to my time.

I finally finished up the east side exterior and will have the final exterior door done tonight as well. There *will* be a gif.

No pictures today - I'm just posting because I feel guilty not keeping up with the blogging.

OK, so *technically* I am not done with the exterior, but I am so sick of it that I need to redirect my efforts for a bit. Plus it's probably only about an hour of work to wrap up.

Here is my first side-by-side of the interior. I still have some tweaks but I'm doing the best with the default colors and textures that I can. It came together pretty quickly, plus I even built some of the Level 2 rooms (they're exactly the same dimensions in the exact same places, but up...)

Soooooooo Cloooose....

I've started thinking through the interior. One hiccup is that because of real terrain, the floor of the west end of the building is higher than the east end by four blocks.... I'll figure it out.

Approved!

I just got an email from the Gen Con events staff saying it's OK to make the Minecraft server. What a relief! They had a couple of guidelines for me to follow around how to register events but I am now SUPER excited to keep moving this along.

Which... it has and hasn't been moving along. I've done a lot of work on the exterior build but am still not done which puts me behind schedule. Very disappointing but now that I've gotten the OK to move forward I may try to get the server up early and recruit some help. And I can finally contact the couple of people who have already offered which is awesome! So I'm going to focus on that instead of getting bummed out about the building progress.​