Day 14: Thursday, March 29th

Today was the last day!  :/

I coordinated with Steven, 4CORE's photographer, to come into the office to take pictures of Ryan (4CORE's primary intern) for the HUB image, as well as drop off some pictures he had taken of Housing Solutions and Southwest Conservation Corps, which are now on 4CORE's Server.  I worked more with putting parts of the HUB together for Teresa or future interns to finish.  I finished the Board of Directors section of the image, and am almost done with Ryan's part now.  Gregg had me do some little things for him this morning, like make labels for some files and continue working with graphs to get the information more organized.  Teresa was in for the afternoon so we got to work together briefly.  We did a wrap-up of my work here and some final paperwork.

We went over my objectives and to-do's that we had set up at the beginning of the internship and discussed which ones I had completed and which ones were not complete.  Most of the to-do's had been to-done, but the main project I worked on, the HUB image, was not complete so I emailed Teresa some files that I had that she could maybe work off of in order to get some of the parts of the HUB done.

For the remainder of the afternoon I did some small little "projects" from fixing a thermo-cam Gregg had, to working with Bonnie, 4CORE's finance manager, to send out some W-9's to some of 4CORE's partners.

4CORE has been such an incredible experience and I will forever be grateful for my time here.  Everyone here is so welcoming and I felt like for a short time I was part of the office! I didn't know what to expect before I started in on this internship but this is a really great program that AHS has, and I am so happy I got to have this opportunity.  Continue to follow up with Four Corners Office for Resource Efficiency and their Energy to Evolve Blog.  


On a side note: this is a really cool Power outlet I found~

Day 13: Wednesday, March 28th

Yesterday's photo shoot was a lot of fun! We got to go down to the junkyard that's slightly out of town and pose around old cars and buses.  It took the majority of the afternoon, but was well worth it.  Today was another long day due to the time I missed yesterday.

In the office I did a few small projects for Gregg such as creating a graph of Weatherized homes and audits that 4CORE predicts to complete, goals, and actual numbers.  This will be filled out over the course of the next year and a half from 4CORE's Wx Crew.  I handed off the work I had done with the new Home Rx forms to Gregg, which he is now taking to the next step and presenting to other staff on how to refine what I had done (in pencil, luckily) and change for the future.  I also worked with Sandhya to see if any of 4CORE's fund donors had been "blacklisted" which would be pretty bad news for 4CORE's funding... As it turns out none of the local donors had been blacklisted, which is convenient.

I tried contacting 4CORE's photographer to see if he can drop off some pictures that I can use in the HUB image I  need to put together, but he has not contacted me back, and I now am pretty sure that the HUB image will not be presented at the exhibition AHS is holding on Friday.  Teresa was not in today but I mostly worked with Sandhya and Gregg to get a lot of work done.  She will be in tomorrow, and we plan to do a quick wrap-up of my time here at 4CORE over the last 3 weeks! It is surprising how fast the time has gone by, and honestly I'm regretting having to go back to school and homework after having had this internship experience!

Steve Smith came into 4CORE today to pay me a visit, which I have been wondering when would happen.  I very briefly talked to him about 4CORE, what I have learned here, as well as showed him some of the work I have been doing here.  Tomorrow is going to fly by and I am sad that it will be my last day! But it has also been a wonderful experience, needless to say.

Day 12: Tuesday, March 27th

Today was a very short day.  I had arranged my schedule with Teresa earlier this week so that I would be able to get a few hours off today in order to help Jerrica with her internship project.  Jerrica is working with a photography studio downtown and wanted a few people to get their pictures taken, to which I happily accepted! We get our hair and makeup professionally done and go to a junkyard to take pictures...  Since I am missing a few hours today though, I'm making those up on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.  For the beginning of the day I worked mostly on the new Home Rx forms and filling those out to run by Gregg.  I also checked in on the progress of the Transportation deliverable and to see when I will be getting the information I need from the surrounding regions' airports.
Tomorrow will be a longer day again, so I think I will be able to get more done, but I am also really excited for this afternoon's photoshoot!

Her photography blog is linked below.
http://durangoweddingphotography.com/big-picture/

Day 11: Monday, March 26th

Today I got the printed out copies of the new Home Rx forms and worked on inputting a lot of that information.  I also cut out some 4CORE stickers that will be used in the main hall.  Moving ahead with the transportation deliverable, I contacted the main airports in the 5 regions 4CORE covers, and am not awaiting stats from them.  I did not progress with the HUB today, it also became clear to me that if I did want this to be my main project I would only be able to exhibit a picture of it since it is a permanent, large, metal board in the conference room here.  Teresa uploaded my blog to the Energy to Evolve Blogsite today.  Since it's Monday, the first half of the day consisted mostly of employee conferences still mostly regarding the large transition 4CORE is going through.  I tried to think further about what my exhibition will include since the HUB image may not turn out as planned at this point.  Since I did the graphics for the annual report, I can show those.  I can also show a set of the new Home Rx forms vs the old ones.  Along those lines I can show the old Step Up chart and the new one I created.  I have also been using the small notebook Rachael gave us almost everyday, so I can show that which has all of my notes.  Another thing to show would be the interview Teresa and I had last week.  As far as a larger project though, I will try to show my plans for the HUB image, but as of now I don't think that our photographer will be able to get pictures for the board in time, and I can't move the HUB easily anyways....
Tomorrow I will continue inputting information to the Home Rx forms to present to Gregg, and work further with trying to contact the airports for numbers.  Again, check out my blog on 4CORE's site!!

http://4core-energytoevolve.blogspot.com/

Day 10: Friday, March 23rd

Today I revised the Blog entry I was working on yesterday, and sent that to Teresa so she can upload the Blog onto the site.  I also worked on coordinating my schedule with Teresa since I may work with Jerrica on her project on Monday, which would make me need to move around about three of my hours.  Teresa and I moved forward with changing the Home Rx files, so we contacted Basin Printing so we can move forth with that soon.  I also contacted 4CORE's photographer so that we can get close to finishing the HUB image, which at this point is about the same. Teresa uploaded my entry to the Energy to Evolve Blog that I did, and will put it on the website on Monday.

Day 9: Thursday, March 22nd

When Teresa originally met with me before starting the internship we created a list of "to-do's" that I would try to complete while doing my internship.  One of those items on the agenda was to choose a blog topic and write a blog for 4CORE's blog: Energy to Evolve.  For the blog I decided to focus on the hotel industry, especially in the United States, and the energy consumption that goes with that, how they can save money on utility bills by becoming more efficient, and which hotels are already moving in this direction.  I took most of the morning to do some solo research on this, and compiled information to then put into a blog.  Without Teresa here, I am unable to log into the Blogsite however, I can still type it up for it to be uploaded later.  This blog is usually mandatory for 4CORE's interns, and is a good way to not only learn more about a certain area of interest, but also inform the public about this topic.  Today was a really slow day in the office in that only three employees other than myself were in.  Gregg and Bonnie are going out to Denver this afternoon to present the "GOVERNOR'S ENERGY OFFICE NONCOMPETITIVE REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS FOR EXISTING WEATHERIZATION SERVICE PROVIDERS."  Sandhya and I put together a binder this morning with all of the proposals and documents compiled to be shown to state representatives.  Tomorrow when I get my blog on Hotel efficiency and consumption uploaded I will also post it to my Daily Blog.

Day 8: Wednesday, March 21st

Today was one of the slower days in the office for me.  Most of the desks in the first office are moved out, and the second office is not set up for me to be in yet.  I used Gregg's old desk today to do most of my work.  I finished up some more prep work on the HUB image- which I still consider to be one of my bigger projects, started making a movie out of some footage Heather shot, and looked into writing my blog entry for 4CORE.  I didn't really work with anyone today, especially since Teresa was gone, but on my own it was pretty busy with just the work that I was doing.  Tomorrow Teresa will be in and we will work together on getting more pictures for the HUB and also get the new Home Rx layouts that I can start working on for Gregg.