Welcome to ReVision Energy!

Hey all,


My name is Heidi Kowalski (I'm the 'other' Heidi on campus) and I'm a senior in the new Sustainable Design and Technology B.S. Degree program offered here at Unity. I will be the first student to graduate from this new program! Woot!!
This semester (and perhaps next if things continue to go well) I am working with ReVision Energy, LLC in the Liberty office. I'm the first intern in Liberty! I'm breaking new ground everywhere!!! But I digress... ReVision is a full-service renewable energy company (with an office in Portland as well). They help people and businesses transition away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable energy. They design, install, and service solar hot water systems, grid-tied solar electric systems and high-efficiency wood boilers. They also, conveniently, have 5 or 6 Unity Alumni working for them!


Here's their website if you're interested. Tell them Heidi sent you :P http://www.revisionenergy.com/


Some of the things I've done in the four days I've been there are the usual meeting and greeting of my coworkers and bosses, general shuffling of office materials to make a niche for myself, and getting to work! I already have a laundry list of jobs I need to complete including: creating new site visit books, cataloging the job photo's and renaming them, creating Power Point presentations, and plotting a new clients properties on Google Earth. I completed that job last week, there were 38 (or so) properties that I cataloged.

On Tuesday I met and sat down with Brian and showed him around Google Earth (he had never used it) and the list of buildings I had tagged last week. We took snapshots using a program called MWSnap (which allows you to take more advanced screen shots, he taught me how to use this program) and printed the aerial and street views of the properties. At some point in the coming weeks Brian will be heading up to the Bangor area to visit the sites and make a game plan for designing and installing photovoltaic arrays on these buildings.

Yesterday I finished slogging though all the job pics and cataloging them according to residential and commercial sites. This coming week I'll be renaming (or naming) all the pictures so they are easier to research and find on the shared drives. There are hundreds of images so this will take a while but I'm optimistic!

So far everyone has been great to work with (one of the benefits of working for a small company) and I feel like I'm accompishing a lot. They also let me manage my own time which is awesome. Things are very cooperative but you can also be off and running with your own projects once you know what you're doing.

I can't wait till next week!

Saying Goodbye

Tomorrow is my last day at ZooQuarium, and it is going to be very difficult to say goodbye to all the animals, especially saying goodbye to Jasper. It makes it even harder because Jasper still won't take food from anybody else. A keeper, Nat, who I work with calls him a "momma's boy" since he only will come to my hand for food. I just hope that when I visit he still knows who I am.

Well this summer has been very productive. I have been working at the zoo and a restaurant at night so I could save up enough money to go on an EcoLife Expedition next summer in South Africa. I was able to save enough too!
Working at ZooQuarium is not just about doing presentations everyday in front of the public, but also opening the zoo which includes cleaning everything, doing rounds, and making all the animals' diets and feeding them out. I also worked at the front desk in the admission/gift shop area when needed. It gets pretty hectic working at a zoo, but I love it. I find myself doing odd jobs and different tasks everyday. It's quite an experience. I have now been working at ZooQuarium for three summers in a row and I plan on going back to visit during all my school breaks and working there next summer when I get back from Africa. I'm probably going to stop in to see Jasper before I even go see my parents every time I go home for a school break.

Jasper has been the biggest inspiration in my life, and I wouldn't trade my time I spent with him this summer for anything else in the world. I know I will never forget about Jasper and the bond we've formed, and I just hope that he doesn't forget about me.

Final reflections on a chilly...but awesome summer!

As the summer draws to a close, I wanted to wait until I returned to the United States to post my final report of my internship with the New Zealand Department of Conservation. I spent the last few days working on my final presentation of the survey results on what makes a DOC site successful.
I want to take this opportunity to personally thank all the DOC employees I worked with and for the hospitality they extended to me during my internship. DOC employees like Felicity Lawrence, General Manager for People & Organisation Development, my immediate boss Gavin and Sue, who took me under her wing, all contributed to my enjoyable and successful internship. Provided below is a photograph of my farewell party at DOC headquarters in Wellington, New Zealand.
The highlights of my internship included being responsible for creating a survey that prioritized recreation sites for future management decisions involving public use, working at a DOC site on Matiu- Somes Island and visiting Milford Sound on the South Island. While visiting the South Island I was fortunate enough to see several species of flightless birds that are endangered. I also experienced the largest earthquake in many decades, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale. The epi-center of the earthquake was located thirty miles to the south of Te Anau.
My last week DOC had me visit the zoo in Wellington. One of the most interesting animals I observed was a Red Panda that was eating apples. Provided below is a photograph of the Red Panda.

I also had my final presentation of my survey findings and overall I think it went really well. I was happy to not only get positive feedback but also constructive feedback such as suggestions of how I could have gotten certain information easier and more in depth with other pieces as well.

On my last day my co-workers had a farewell party for me. This came as a surprise and it was such a nice gesture. Although the trip overall had its bumpy parts the good experiences by far outweighed the bad and I learned so much, not only about my field of study but about myself as a person. I will never forget this journey.

Lastly I want to thank Shaun Driscoll, Brad Dannaefred, Greg O’Connor and my flat mates Mike and Annita for their help in making my internship become a reality and helping me on a daily basis. I hope to return to New Zealand in the future. It is truly a beautiful country.

A Good Ending

It’s rut time. Bucks chasing does all over the place acting peculiar. I’ve seen more deer this week than in all my time here so far this summer combined. Just yesterday afternoon Mr. Brecht gave a few calls with his deer call and immediately a young 6 pointer stuck his head out of the golden wheat. A few more calls and the buck was strutting towards with a purpose that was amusing and made me feel strangely uncomfortable. I believe the buck would have walked right up to, so intent was he, but at 30 yards out Feh, the hunting dog, couldn’t resist her instinct any longer and rushed forward towards the field. A quick command by Mr. Brecht stopped her in her tracks but the deer realized something was wrong and charged off into the shadows of the forest.
The last weekend of my internship was spent in a sort of drive hunt. More accurately though it should be called a push hunt. On Saturday night about 20 hunters with 8 dogs between them met to drive the wild Boars out of the corn field. The hunters where placed all around the corn field and a few others, the dogs, and me where assigned the task of running through the corn field to drive the pigs out. I realized very quickly after entering the corn field that it would be very easy to get lost there. Most of the plant stood a good 2 to 3 feet over my head. The serrated leaves left countless small stinging cuts all over my face and arms. It was a crazy experience rushing from one side of a corn field to the other with terriers running by your feet howling and barking coming out the other side just to start over again in the opposite direction.
Two hours later, sweaty and raw, Mr. Brecht invited everyone for a beer at the local bar. It was a good finish to a great summer.

Posted for Nils Bell

Crunch Time!

Yesterday was a very sobering experience for the volunteers at the center. The manager of the center, Simon, called a meeting and announced that two of the volunteers, Sam and Alisdair, were getting kicked out. WFFT relies heavily on the performance of its volunteers. Therefore, rules on drunkenness and noise level at night are extremely important for the welfare of the animals. Apparently, Sam and Alisdair had been spoken to on many separate occasions about staying sober and quite after 10pm. However, that still did not soften the shock of Simon’s announcement. With only 18 volunteers, we weren’t all friends, but we all knew each other fairly well. The center was also scheduled to lose a few volunteers by the end of the week, bringing our numbers dangerously low. Unfortunately, Simon didn’t predict that expelling Sam and Alisdair would cause a chain reaction which resulted in the center losing three additional volunteers prematurely. So for the next week, the remaining volunteers are going to be working extra hard to compensate for the loss.

Week 7- The last week!!

Well this is finally the end. I know everyone says it, but time really does fly by! My cabin and I lived in the moment this past week and took nothing for granted. My ropes group was another amazing group and I was so happy that the last week went smoothly. The last week were filled with some of the most nice, kind, and polite kids I have ever met!They were at camp because they loved it and it is so important to not lose that kid inside ourselves. We get older and take on so many responsiblities that we forget how to live. Kids live everyday, we should not be afraid to do the same

Around the Center

Her name is Sue, but she looks like Cindy Lou Hoo to me.

Ollie enriches himself

Quarantine

Randy the great hornbill. A.k.a- the terrorizer

Food House #1, where fruits and vegetables for the animals are kept

Iggy the Iguana