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susy derkins
Level 5: 1033 points
Alltime Score: 4366 points
Last Logged In: April 12th, 2014
BADGE: INTERREGNUM TEAM: Team Shplank TEAM: SCIENCE! TEAM: Run-of-the-mill taskers TEAM: MATHEMATICS TEAM: Lab Coats! TEAM: LØVE TEAM: Level Zerø TEAM: Casting Call TEAM: DIYvøters TEAM: Public Library Zero TEAM: INFØ TEAM: MXZero BART Psychogeographical Association Rank 1: Commuter Humanitarian Crisis Rank 1: Peacekeeper


retired
15 + 25 points

The Failure by susy derkins

December 13th, 2007 8:48 AM

INSTRUCTIONS: Was there a Task that you bombed? Were you too ashamed to post it or too afraid of the dangerous red X?

Here is where you can claim partial credit.

Tell us what task you were attempting, why it went wrong, and what you plan to do about it.

I wanted to do the

Up and up and up
INSTRUCTIONS: Climb a structure at least thirty feet in height.
Humanitarian Crisis participants must wave a flag reading: FREEDOM


and I thought that I could get away with climbing my office building. I mean, if you walk up seven floors of stairs, the last ones feel painfully like climbing, including the getting dizzy part. (Yeah, I know, waaay too meek, compared with the level of climbing that goes on around here...)

Since I really liked hanging a pink ribbon, it was much more exciting to hang a flag. A big pink flag. Reading FREEDOM and all. (Well, I was going to write FREEDOM on it eventually).

I started by getting the cord and the pulley and to find out and make the right knots to tie the flag to the cord. (That took several days).

I took the flag to work on a glorious morning, waited for the right moment for its hanging and ended up doing it at the worst moment with several coworkers around who gave me worried looks (worried for my mental health, I guess) but otherwise within an atmosphere of "don´t ask, don´t tell".

I was extatic when going out with my camera to document the impossibly cool pink flag proudly waving in the middle of the otherwise dull building, a song of freedom in movement, passersby stopping to marvel at it, people in the building rushing to the windows wondering why such a crowd downstairs... Well, it wasn´t like that. In fact, I had trouble finding the flag, pink and all. It looked tiny and sad, flat against the glass.

And then I noticed that just in front of me was a perfectly decent climbable structure, from which the task could have been acomplished properly. It was a direct hit: "look, this over here, on the billboard ladder could be a decent completion, and that barely visible piece of pink cloth over there, is your completion... Just fill in the blanks: f-a-i-l-u-r-e-!.



- smaller

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The flag with the cord and pulley. Of course you can´t see them, but there are three different kinds of knots in total. The brown things lying near the lower right corner are snailshells for scale.


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I thought about taking it to work like this but that didn´t work out either: 30 miles of dragging over pavement would have beaten it up pretty bad.


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The moment of truth, lowering it from my four-inches wide window vent.


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It looked OK from above.


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The view from the street. Uninspiring.


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Cool ladder, sad flag on the window.


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The perfect place to wave a flag that ACTUALLY says FREEDOM.



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(no subject)
posted by Charlie Fish on December 13th, 2007 9:27 AM

A reasonably successful failure. Shouldn't stop you from doing it again better though!

(no subject)
posted by susy derkins on December 13th, 2007 10:38 AM

Yeah, and I´ll try to make more successful failures in the future too.

(no subject)
posted by Flitworth on December 13th, 2007 4:38 PM

I fully sympathize with your "this is gonna be awesome" mental image...so many things start that way;). Even though it hasn't caused a complete halt of traffic and onlookers it's quite neat.

Dismal.
posted by Spidere on December 14th, 2007 10:11 AM

...but mainly because of the way you wrote it up (the tasking itself was actually reasonably successful). You definitely captured, as Flitworth says, that beaten-down, letdown feeling that comes after dashed excitement and expected greatness.

(no subject)
posted by Levitating Potato on December 14th, 2007 9:13 PM

Agreed all around. I know well the large plans that just don't quite turn out nearly so awesome as imagined.

We will see a flag from that billboard, though, right?