I Like Diet Coke
When I started at Microsoft around June of 2001, one of
my stretch goals was to build a giant pyramid of Diet Coke cans. At the time, I
was spending up to 14 hours a day in the office trying to get up to speed with
everything going on, meeting with everyone I had always wanted to, and checking
out all of the upcoming products and associated swag. Since I didn't have a
family out here, it wasn't hard for me to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at my
desk, which combined nicely with our free beverage policy. For those of you
who are not familiar, Microsoft has tons of soda cabinets around the company
with a virtually unlimited supply of free drinks. My drink of choice: Diet
Coke.
After the first few weeks, the pyramid was coming along nicely:
Two months in:
After six months, I started using support floss around the outside of each row to keep the cans together:
After one year I had to move it onto the floor
because it didn't fit on the desk anymore (took two hours!):
And finally, when I was done the internal newspaper folks came and took this picture:
After this picture was posted, I recevied several emails telling me how
dangerous aspartame is and how I shouldn't drink so much (yeah, thanks for
letting me know now). I also received a request for
the can tops (which I was saving on the side) for a coworker's daughter who was
collecting them for the Ronald McDonald House. For every top she collects, there
is a 1 cent donation, so it was nice for me to help her out with the 2500+ I had
collected. I was also invited to meet with some Coca Cola executives when they
were on campus which was pretty cool. For the record, I have nothing against
Diet Pepsi, it's just that I wanted to keep consistent. Before I couldn't even
tell the difference (but I sure can now). Anyway, I've cut down on the soda
since then, but I still love it.