Tour of the Water Testing Laboratory

Same work load this week. I finished another three of those drawers, and will be jumping into #10-12 next week, which I believe to be the final three. On another note, there are no hidden meanings in the title this time; this week I took a tour of the City of Olathe Water Testing Laboratory. This was about a week and a half in the works, and completely due to the benevolence of Dewayne, the laboratory manager.

This tour was very interesting. The building consisted of a series of labs, some stereotypical, some not, but each with the purpose for testing both drinking and sewage water for different amounts of different things. This could range from bacteria, to oxygen, to organics, to pesticides, to minerals, as well as many things that I have never learned about. They did some of the tests by hand, seemingly fairly similar to the labs that I do in science classes, but the macro testing was done by very fancy machinery definitely not seen in my science classrooms.

I must say, not only did the amount of tests for this water surprise me, but even more so was the quantity of water that they had to test each year. If I recall correctly, they had to do over 1,400 samples in a year, with a staffing of only about 7 people running multiple tests on each sample. A large amount of it has to be done by the machinery, but from what I saw everyone was still hard at work continuously, especially with all of the documentation and compliances that have to be met. I only scratched the surface, but the amount of paperwork and pencil pushing seems to be even more massive than the amount of testing.

Overall, it seemed like quite laborious work, but the kind of work that is scientifically interesting and significant to the continuation of society. In conclusion, I now know where my water comes from and how it got there.

Scheduled Fun

This week saw the completion of 2 of the 3 file folders. Yeah, not exactly keeping up with my last week self, but there is good reason for it-- because this is conferences week my schedule was different, and I was not able to get as many hours in.

The namesake for this blog is derived from the fact that I have scheduled a tour next week of the water and waste water laboratory with the gracious Dewayne McAllister. One of my coworkers had found out that I was planning on majoring in Chemical Engineering, so they suggested that I get in contact with Dewayne, the laboratory manager. He was very open and flexible about the requested tour, and it is now scheduled next Wednesday, in the building nearby. I do not know quite what to expect from the water and waste water laboratory, but it is bound to be interesting to find what my drinking water goes through.

Like a Machine

I think that I made good progress this week. I feel that I worked at a pace that would make the scanning machine blush.  I continued on my second set of three drawers of files, and I knocked it out in two days. Yup, you guessed it, now the next three are on their way. However, due to some unknown reason, they have taken a few days to arrive, so I now have jumped into putting on letter headings.

Letter headings is a different job that I do for the secretary and general go-to woman for information, Bobbi. When the Public Works Department switched buildings last summer to the one that we are currently in, its envelope letter heads did not exactly switch with it. The letter heads hold the old address, so what I need to do is take boxes of these envelopes and put on adhesive paper in just the right spot that titles our new address while covering the old. But once again, I was like a machine.