Thanks for the reply, kowalski!
That makes sense. For now I just ordered a handful of "ATTINY84A-PU-ND"s from digikey.
That's certainly some very cool and interesting work! I'm anxious to see it in its final form :).
Along the lines of "internet-of-things", have you seen this project?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flutterwireless/flutter-20-wireless-arduino-with-half-mile-1km-ran