Day 9

Today was such a long day. It began at 9:04am when I arrived, oatmeal bowl in hand, to pick up the group to go shopping. We made a list, and with our allotted budget from the school, set off to Lowe's Home Improvement Store. It absolutely did not disappoint. 

We purchased:

--(8)- five gallon buckets with lids for compost collection, Blue with the Lowe's logo on it. 

--PVC pipe (which I learned stands for Polyvinyl Chloride) to make some SUSAN prototypes *

--Spray paint (For the buckets)

--Caulk. Which rhymes with Chalk. Which is used as a sealant for leaks and such (also going towards SUSAN). 

--A Caulk Gun(for application of the Caulk). 

--copper wire 

Glenn, the Lowe's employee working the register, was having a particularly hard time ringing us up. He accidentally rang us up for nine buckets instead of eight, so we got an extra bucket.. That we paid for.. Oh well. The more the merrier I suppose. We took our goods and headed back to our growing and increasingly messy workspace at Mountain Top C. I sat and put pennies in chronological order. Post-penny operation, we came up with a "one page" for our huge important meeting on Tuesday. A one page is something to guide our discussion so we make optimal use of our time, including a brief description of our project and the questions we have to ask for them. The meeting consists of like four people who are way more important than we are, from Facilities Services and other places. We are going to pitch them our idea and see if we can get their input, opinion, and possible problems they can foresee for the project. We are taking the day off Monday since it's a holiday to be home with our families, so tomorrow is our last day to prep for our meeting. Utilizing Google Drive's shared documents, we all got to type on one document at the same time. It got a little hairy, but we got it done. Or, at least, a rough draft of it got done. We can finalize it more tomorrow and Tuesday morning. 

We took a break for lunch, and after being requested to bring scissors, I could tell the second half of the day would be more riveting than the first half. I brought Becca along for the fun because I knew it was going to be good. We were spray painting today. Though dangerous, I think we managed not to get paint in too many places we weren't supposed to. Painted our buckets so we can put them places and they can look pretty and advertise our project. Yellow recycle symbols were designed and cut out by me, spray painted by me and Ben on the lids. Tori designed the "grow" letters and I spray painted those as well onto the buckets. My entire hand was green by the end of it. Talk about getting a green thumb, the wrong way. It then started thunder storming and hailing, and we called it a day. 

Now, to explain SUSAN. Sensors Using Sustainability Arduino Networks. We are creating thermometers, soil moisture gauges, and possibly oxygen level gauges. Hopefully we can implement this in our Alpha Test Phase, sticking it in the compost pile for readings. We are using most of the stuff we bought today to create prototypes. We need tiny little sensors to be surrounded by PVC pipe and caulked in so they are waterproof and connect with wires to the Arduino board, linked to a network where we can monitor them wirelessly. It's a big task, but with composting being a painstakingly long process, we needed a side project. We hope it will add significant value. 

I hope tomorrow we get to take a half day, and get all of our work done in the morning and early afternoon. Here's to dreaming. 

Some sort of sick joke