you'll be all set! No, of course you won't get fired.

The infrared spectrum is generally broken up into 3 subcategories - shortwave, midwave, and longwave. If you look around a dark room with no windows using a SWIR camera/lens, you won't see anything, because most natural objects (people, walls, basically anything except lights and the cosmos) don't give off SWIR radiation. MWIR and LWIR, however, would still work because pretty much everything gives off radiation at these wavelengths (MWIR is the region of the spectrum which allows one to measure temperature). I suppose you could call this "pitch-black night vision," although I've never heard that anywhere in the IR optics industry.

FIRST is awesome. I was the main programmer/electronics man my junior and senior years of HS (2005 and 2006), it was more fun than any other club/team I did. The competitions are insane, you won't ever find more geeks in one place, heh. The atmosphere is very competitive, but at the same time there's a comraderie between participants and teams. For instance, I helped a team from a neighboring high school with their program, then went out and dismantled (seriously... we got disqualified) their robot a few rounds later.

I live in New Hampshire, where FIRST was founded, so Dean Kamen makes his token appearance/speech (in the same denim shirt) every year. The kids WORSHIP him - it is incredible. I was never particularly fond of him, especially after the segway flopped, but I have to say-- that failure is far overshadowed by the success of FIRST as far as I am concerned.