| It all started when I decided to take my empty soda cans and do something useful with them before recycling them all. This was the beginning, but it soon became more... much more. |
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| I walked into my cube one day, noticing that the top cans on my tower were a little loose, I pushed them together. When I pulled out my chair to sit down, the entire tower came tumbling down, scattering cans all over the desk and floor. I looked around and there must have been at least twenty people who stood up in their cubes to see where the noise came from. (Of course most people probably knew of my tower and had been expecting it to come down, and so knew where to look.) It didn't take me long at all to notice the fishing line attached to the base of the chair, looping around under the desk, and attached to a bottom can -- sabotage! I'm still not sure who it was, but someone had been shooting rubber bands at my tower for about a week now, and I suspect the two incidences are related. I'm not sure, though -- it could be anyone -- I had to be on constant guard. Jim (my cubemmate) and I came up with a few ideas to catch the would-be tower wrecker including some sophisticated digital surveillance equipment. (My camera controlled by the serial port on the HP calculator, for example.) I wasn't sure how this will play out, but the crime wouldn't go unpunished! They may have won the battle, but the war was mine! |
| After the humiliating defeat that morning, I decided to make a plan. One of the things that we concluded was that in order to tie the fishing line around the can the way they did, they would have had to knock over the tower in rebuild it. Out of spite, I decided to build a tower that could not possibly be re-built within any reasonable amount of time -- one that went from the floor to the ceiling, ten cans around. |  |
| After I had put in my eight working hours, my plan was set
in motion. I asked all of the people in the group if I could use the cans they had around their office and I stole the cans from the recycling bag from the vending machine room. (To be returned, of course.) I found a large cardboard square to be the base of my tower, as the carpet proved to be too soft for this kind of structure. I filled three cans with water and put them in the middle to flatten out the cardboard, then started making a circle of ten cans. When I reached eye level, the structure started to separate out, with each progressive layer being less and less vertical, and pointing further and further out. |
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I reached the second to last row and the integrity of the structure was worse than ever, but I had to press on. Right before I finished the second to last row, I put a can on, and the cans below it buckled from the tiny weight. Hitting the cans directly below, they too buckled, as did the cans below them. Since the structure is essentially a pyramid curved around, as the successive layers of cans fell, the hole got wider and wider until finally the entire tower came crashing down. (This all happened in less than a second, of course, but with so much time invested in the structure, from my vantage point above, it looked like it went in slow motion.) |
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| Never to be swayed from my goal, I made the commitment to rebuild. This time, though, I'd make a few minor alterations from the lessons I had learned the previous time. For one, I would try to keep similar cans on the same row, since the slight variations in the heights proved to be a major source of instability. I also decided to alternate from row to row between right-side-up and upside-down. this way only similar rims would have to meet -- another source of trouble last time. I brushed away the fallen cans (and visited my neighbor's cube to retrieve several) and began the same way I had done before with the three cans in the center and the ring of ten cans around. This time, though, they were all Coke cans, as was the ring above them. Then two of Mountain Dew and back to three of Coke. Next came two layers of Canada Dry, Barq's, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi (now I was of course going for effect), Diet Sprite, Diet Coke, Mountain Dew, two layers of the disgusting mixed generic soda I bought for next to nothing at the Price Chopper, Fresca, Minute Maid, and finally three rows of whatever I had left. |
| The structure was complete and I was triumphant! It
would seem that my roommate Seth took more pride in the structure than I
did, however....
The motto in the background reads, "I no longer drink because I'm thirsty... I drink to get high."
Unfortunately not too long after I arrived the next morning, I was told to take down my creation for fear it would fall and hurt the person in the cubicle behind me. (Yeah, okay.) |
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| Just before pulling out the bottom can to end my triumphant victory in the war of the can towers, the people in my Design Assistants group gathered 'round for one final picture. From left to right, it's John, Ken, Ed, and Mike. I will miss them when I leave. |